That doesn't rhyme with what

Have you ever noticed that what doesn’t rhyme with that? Likewise, car doesn’t rhyme with war, and neither do trash and wash, catch and watch, and camp and swamp. Why is that? It’s all because of the /w/ sound. Zoom in on my new graphic to learn more.

There are many more instances of /w/ having affected the following vowel, both in English and other languages. In my short article on Patreon, you can read all about five word families in English, German, Dutch, West Frisian, Danish, and Swedish (750 words, tier 1).

Free zoom talk on writing about language

If you like books about linguistics and languages (perhaps you'd like to write your own?), here's a free talk for you!

On the 27/1, linguist and author Danny Bate will be putting questions to four other linguists and authors over Zoom, getting our experience of writing linguistically for the public. Thrilled to be part of this fivesome! :)

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/3vtcugW9QaG7lj8nWW_f0A#/registration

Fancying fantastic phantom phenomena

The word phantom stems from the same root as photo, phase, phenomenon, fantasy, and fancy. The reconstructed meaning of this root is ‘to shine’. Many words were derived from it. It’s their Ancient Greek descendants that ultimately became the words above. On their journeys – some of which went through Latin and Old French – their forms and meanings changed. Zoom in on my new infographic to learn all about this fantastic word family.

Palaver about metathesis

The Spanish word palabra and Portuguese palavra, meaning ‘word’, have the same origin as French parole and Italian parola. However, there’s a big difference: the r and l were swapped. Swapping two sounds is a linguistic change called metathesis. Zoom in on my infographic to see more examples of metathesis in five Romance languages.

Axing for metathesis

There are people who stigmatise the use of to ax as a variant of to ask. However, to ax is at least 1200 years old. It stems from Old English ācsian with /ks/, a very frequent variant of āscian with /sk/. Later, in Middle English, writers such as Chaucer used both axen and asken. The /ks/ forms were perfectly normal until people started to discredit them – and, sadly, those who use them.

Swapping two sounds, as happened with /sk/ > /ks/, is a process called metathesis. My infographic shows more examples of metathesis in English and some of its Germanic sister languages. Dutch became the absolute queen of metathesis during the Middle Ages.

Next time, we’ll look at metathesis in the Romance languages.

About to ask/ax/: Old English āscian/ācsian came from Proto-West Germanic *aiskō(ja)n (‘to claim; to demand’). This verb also produced Dutch eisen (‘to demand; to claim; to require’), West Frisian easkje (id.), and German heischen (‘to request; to implore’). The German word owes its h to influence from the verb heißen, one of its meanings being ‘to order’. *Aiskō(ja)n and its descendants are related to Russian иска́ть (iskátʹ, ‘to seek’), Lithuanian ieškóti (‘to seek; to search’), and Sanskrit इ॒च्छति॑ (iccháti, ‘to desire; to seek’).

H to the rescue

The French word huit (‘eight’) stems from Latin octō, so why does it have an h? The same goes for Spanish huevo (‘egg’): this word stems from the h-less Latin word ovum. Their h was added in the Middle Ages to prevent these words from being read wrong, as u and v weren’t different letters yet, which meant that uit (‘eight’) could be read as vit (‘lives’). Zoom in on my infographic to learn all about this auxiliary h in French and Spanish.

Modern French normally has an h only in words that had one in Latin, or in Germanic or another language it borrowed the word from, such as in homme (‘man’) from Latin hominem, and heaume (‘helm’)from Germanic *helma. Likewise, Spanish has an h where Latin had one, and in cases where Latin f became the Old Spanish sound /h/, such as hazer /hadzeɾ/(‘to do; to make’), which comes from facere and is now hacer with a silent h.

In those words, the modern instances of h are etymological, while the h of huit and huevo was added to indicate that the u was not to be read as the consonant that would eventually be spelled v. The Académie Française didn’t differentiate between u and v consistently until 1762.

On my Patreon, I tell the full story of the letter h in Latin, Spanish, Italian and French (1000+ words, tier 1).

The demise of the Latin case system

Last week, I posted several graphics about words in the Romance languages. Many people on my platforms asked why I always depicted Romance words such as Italian giorno ('day') and Spanish siesta as stemming from the Latin accusative case forms diurnum and sextam instead of the nominative forms diurnus and sexta. They pointed out that in Latin, the accusative was used for the object of a sentence, while the nominative, the lemma form in dictionaries, served as the subject case. Today's graphic tells you what happened to the Latin case system, explaining why it actually is the accusative case that's at the base of almost all modern Romance nouns and adjectives.

Doublets in German

Today, my eleven-part etymological doublet series is coming to an end with an episode on German. This episode was a request of several people. The orange German words on the right have the same Proto-Germanic origin as the blue ones on the right, but they took a very different path. Word pairs like these are called doublets.

Many of the examples are courtesy of Matthieu Pierens, who provided me with a list of German doublets stemming from various languages.

As you can see, many orange words come from Low German/Saxon. This group of languages, spoken in the north of Germany and the northeast of the Netherlands, goes by several names in German, ranging from the names of the local dialect groups (e.g. Westfälisch, Ostfriesisch) to Niederdeutsch, Niedersächsisch, Plattdeutsch or simply Platt. Nieder- (‘nether-’) refers to the elevation of the regions where it’s spoken.

Despite these terms containing the words German and Deutsch, this language group has a different history than German: while German originates from Old High German in the south, Low German/Saxon has its origin in Old Saxon in the north, a language more closely related to Old English.

Old High German and Old Saxon grew apart during the second half of the first millennium, when the former had its consonant system thoroughly changed by the High German Consonant shift. The grey box in the graphic illustrates some these changes.

Low German/Saxon was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League, providing a lot of loanwords to Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. Sadly, it has been stigmatised as a debased form of Standard German in Germany, and of Standard Dutch in the Netherlands, a process that gained momentum after World War II, when Standard German further spread. As a result, the use of Low German/Saxon has been steadily declining, especially in the cities of Northern Germany.

Doublets in English from Germanic

The English word shirt has the same origin as skirt. While shirt directly stems from Proto-Germanic *skurtijōn (‘short piece of clothing’), skirt was borrowed from its Old Norse descendant. Today it’s time for number 10 in my doublet series: English doublets with a Germanic origin. Tomorrow: German.

What’s the reconstructed pronunciation of the Proto-Germanic words? And how about the Old English forms of the words in the left column? If you’re subscribed to tier 2 of my Patreon, you have access to an audio file of these words (30 words, 1:00).

Doublets in Dutch (2025)

The Dutch words zolder ('attic') and solarium ('tanning salon') are doublets: they both stem from Latin sōlārium ('roof terrace'). Solarium comes from English, which in turn borrowed it from Latin in the nineteenth century. Zolder, on the other hand, entered the language at least fifteen centuries earlier: it was borrowed from spoken Latin into Proto-West Germanic, the distant ancestor of Dutch and the other West Germanic languages. Here's number 9 in my series: Dutch doublets from Latin.

How can you recognise early borrowings from Latin, such as Dutch zolder, English kitchen, and German Kirsche? In the article on my Patreon, you'll learn all about the three main features that betray a word's early arrival (1200 words, tier 1).

Doublets in Galician

The Galician words palabra (‘word’) and parábola (‘parable; parabola’) are doublets: they both stem from Latin parabolam. Palabra was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into Galician. Parábola, on the other hand, is a late borrowing from written Latin. A similar pair of doublets can be found in many Romance languages; French, for example, has parole (‘speech; word; utterance’) and parabole. Here’s episode 8 of my doublet series: Galician.

Portuguese and Galician both stem from Old Galician-Portuguese. How and when did they diverge? Why do some people call them the same language? What are the main differences between them in terms of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary? Read the answers to these questions in my article on Patreon (1200 words, tier 1).

Doublets in Catalan

The Catalan word metzina means ‘poison’. It stems from the same Latin word as Catalan medicina, meaning ‘medicine’. Metzina was inherited from spoken Latin. Its form and meaning changed a lot over the centuries. Medicina, on the other hand, is a late borrowing from written Latin. Pairs like this are called doublets. Here’s episode 7 of my doublet series: Catalan. Next in line is Galician.

Doublets in Romanian

Romanian femeie (‘woman’) and familie (‘family’) stem from the same Latin word: ‘familiam’. Femeie was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into Romanian – as well as a pecular meaning shift; more on that below. Familie, on the other hand, was borrowed from written Latin. Pairs like this are called doublets. Here’s number 6 in my doublet series: Romanian!

Femeie may look like female and feminine, but it’s not related to these words at all. Female stems from Latin fēmella, a diminutive of fēmina (‘woman’); feminine comes from a derived adjective.

The Latin ancestor of femeie is familia (‘household’), a word that’s related to famulus (‘domestic servant’). Romanian femeie still meant ‘family’ in older Romanian (a meaning that evolved from ‘household’) but it underwent a meaning shift to ‘woman’.

This type of meaning change is called totum pro parte, ‘the whole for a part’. It’s a kind of metonymy: the word for the whole (the family) comes to denote a part (the lady of the house). A totum pro parte is often used when talking about soccer teams: when we say that Ireland plays against Denmark, we don’t mean the entire countries but only their national teams.

A nice parallel can be found in Albanian: that language borrowed Latin familiam as fëmijë, but this word came to mean ‘child; offspring; todler’.