Origin of languages

Plenty of fish What is the origin of the expression “plenty of fish”? Well, I have hunted this one down and as of yet unable to find the origin. Usually idioms which refer to animals come from well known sources like the Bible or Aesop’s fables. However, the exact origin of plenty of fish alludes [...]

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Slavic languages or Slavonic languages Which is right to use Slavic or Slavonic languages when referring to such languages as Russian, Polish, Ukrainian etc?  Slavic is American English, which is used in about 70% of situations, while Slavonic is UK English used in about 30% of the world (at the very most some estimates are [...]

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Language and the Neanderthals Neanderthals  had  the capacity to speak just as Modern humans do, at least that is what their genes tell us.  According to Johannes Krause and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute, in Germany who were part of a European team that studied the Neanderthals genome.  The specific gene is FOXP2, and is [...]

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Verbs evolve linguistically different Commonly used verbs are less likely to change A verb that is used often will change verb slowly, whilst a verb that is used less frequently will change less. This is according to a Harvard University team lead by Martin Nowak. Nowak is not a linguist but rather a professor of [...]

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Origin of the word idiom ‘son of a gun’ I love the origin of words, they help me learn new words in a foreign language by adding richness to the word I am trying to learn.  Here is an English word origin that is interesting.   In English we say ‘son of a gun’.  The [...]

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Berlin Berlin was a Polish city or at least western Slavic in origin. Berlin was actually founded by Western Slavic fishing tribes.  They built a reasonable size city until Eastward expanding Germans launched a series of offensives against them.  Slavic tribes were able to retake the city, but were more peaceful fishermen and tradesmen and [...]

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Southern dialects in the USA Scottish highlands in the Appalachian mountains Did you know that many of the southerners, especially in the Appalachian Mountains still have words and accents that are connected to their origins? That is the Scottish highlands. Its amazing if you go down to the back parts you can still almost hear [...]

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French kiss Origin of the term French kiss The term French kiss dates back at least to the 1920s. I think it has something to do with the specific culture of France in the roaring 20s. The States had the Great Gatsby and decadence expressed in materialism, while the French had a decadence expressed as [...]

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Mayan language The Mayans were the only perhaps the only indigenous peoples of the Americas that had a written language. And what it revealed was a powerful civilization marked my rituals and blood. The Language Mayan languages were written in the Maya hieroglyphic script. Some of the script were sounds and others words. The surviving [...]

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Slavic Perun The ancient Slavic people, by church and Byzantine accounts and archeological evidence had one supreme god, which ruled the heavens.  The ancient Slavic god was named Perun.  Perun battled the evil enemy Veles and sent him to the underworld. This god Perun was the supreme god of all and his rule was manifest [...]

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