Indians 101: Indian Words in English
English really isn’t a Native American language, but -virtually all of today’s Indians speak this as their first and primary language. During the past several centuries the English-speaking...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Working Words
The English language belongs to the Germanic language family and is closely related to Dutch, particularly to Frisian. However, unlike many of the other Germanic languages, English has been influenced...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Gender
English is an Indo-European language which evolved from Old English (Anglo-Saxon), a West Germanic language. Over the past thousand years, English has acquired words from many different languages. In...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Politics and Government
Politics and government are all about words. In politics, words are often created to define and describe new situations. Words are also redefined by politicians. Below the squiggle, the origins of some...
View ArticleOrigins of English: The Anglo-Saxon Roots
All aspects of language—pronunciation, usage, word meanings, vocabulary, grammar—change through time. Word meanings and vocabulary are most sensitive to external social, cultural, and historic forces....
View ArticleOrigins of English: The Normans
The Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066 was the single most significant event in the history of the English language. The Norman Conquest led to a language that was very different from what it had been...
View ArticleWords About Religion: Street Prophets Coffee Hour
Welcome to the Tuesday Coffee Hour here on Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can hang out and talk about what’s going on in our worlds. Religion becomes possible because language makes...
View ArticleOrigins of English: The Germanic Languages
English is a Germanic language which simply means that it has historical connections to a group of languages which are found primarily in Europe. The Germanic Language Family is a part of a larger...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Latin
English has incorporated many words from Latin and there are some people who are unfamiliar with linguistics who assume that English is, in fact, a Latin-based language. English is, of course, a...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Celtic Influences
In his 1707 book, Archaeologia Britanica, Edward Lhuyd noted the similarities between Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish Gaelic, and Scots Gaelic. He was the first to group them together under the generic...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Order Out of Chaos?
Some people feel that English is a confusing language. With regard to grammar it sometimes seems like there are several different unrelated rules for conjugated verbs and that irregular verbs which...
View ArticleOrigins of English: The Irish Dialect
A dialect is simply a way of speaking at a particular location. All languages are bundles of dialects which vary by pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.Just 165 years ago, most Irish people spoke...
View ArticleOrigins of English: The Birth of American
The United States was born of a revolution against English rule in the late 18th century. In 1782 the citizens of the new country adopted the designation American and twenty years later, Congress first...
View ArticleOrigins of English: The Norse Influence
In 793, Norse raiders—commonly called Vikings—struck the monastery at Lindisfrarne off the coast of Northumberland in England, The monastery, famous for holding the relics of Saint Cuthbert, had been...
View ArticleComments on English: Plutocracy, Democracy, Oligarchy
Words in English come from a variety of interesting places. Let’s look at three of the words which some of us use in talking about our government: plutocracy, democracy, and oligarchy.
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Origins of English: Automobile
For more than a century now, Americans have been having a major love affair with a device known as the automobile (see Car Gods of the Shopping Mall). As a result American English has developed a few...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Fornication and Adultery
Fornication is something that American politicians are not supposed to do, yet they seem to get caught doing it on a fairly regular basis. Americans tend to be both fascinated by fornication and...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Blue
The origins of words dealing with color can be a bit baffling at times. The deep origins of the English word “blue” seem to lead back to the Indo-European word *bhlēwos which meant “yellow.”Note: the *...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Some Animal Words
Since I like to spend lots of time in the woods with wild animals, I thought it might be interesting to look at the origins of some of the words we use for these animals.Note: the * indicates that the...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Left and Right
While we are accustomed to using left and right with regard to politicians and political ideas, it is interesting to look at some other concepts about these two words.
View ArticleOrigins of English: Geography
Geography, a word meaning “describing the earth” is based on the Greek word “gē” meaning “earth.” In describing the earth, English has a number of words for different physical aspects of the earth.
View ArticleLiberty and Justice: Street Prophets Coffee Hour
Welcome to the Tuesday Coffee Hour here on Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can hang out and talk about what’s going on in our worlds. I thought I’d start things off today by talking...
View ArticleCurses: Street Prophets Coffee Hour
Welcome to the Tuesday Coffee Hour here on Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can hang out and talk about what’s going on in our worlds. I thought I’d start things off today by talking...
View ArticleBlackmail: Street Prophets Coffee Hour
Welcome to the Tuesday Coffee Hour here on Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can hang out and talk about what’s going on in our worlds. Let’s start today’s conversation with a little...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Bimbo and Slut
The words “bimbo” and “slut” certainly sound like Republican words born from their pathological hatred of women and their disgust regarding anything that might remotely be considered sexual. These...
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Origins of English: Dunce
John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) is generally considered one of the three most important philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. In Medieval times people were called by their Christian...
View ArticleWhat's Your Favorite Day: Street Prophets Coffee Hour
Welcome to the Tuesday Coffee Hour here on Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can hang out and talk about what’s going on in our worlds. What’s your favorite day?
View ArticleOrigins of English: Things in the Sky
For the past 200,000 years people—more specifically, Homo sapiens sapiens—have been gazing at the sky above and the objects which it contains. Sometimes people simply marveled at the beauty which they...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Indo-European
In studying how languages have emerged, changed, and died, linguists use the concept of the language family: a group of closely related languages that exhibit similar traits, but which are still...
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Origins of English: Chauvinism
In tracing the histories of English words we are often led into other languages, such as Latin, Hindi, French, Chinese, and so on. Occasionally, however, the origin of a word lies not in another...
View ArticleAncient England: The Anglo-Saxons
In the year 43 CE, the Romans under Emperor Claudius arrived in Britain to bring some semblance of civilization to the savage people of this island. They left in 410 and in the centuries which followed...
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Friday Night Fussin’
Fumin’, a-fussin’ and a-fightin’ I’m so upset I might start bitin’ Don’t like those grammar-killers I hear all day If they’d clean up their act I’d be okay
View Article"Islamic" versus "Islamist." Republicans and Israel's Likudniks do their...
"Extremist Islamic Terrorists"An oxymoron."Islamic" is the generic term for all things Muslim. Used properly it applies to practicing Muslims regardless of country, sect, race, or sex.The murderer,...
View Article"Islamic terrorism" oxymoron runs up 819,000 usages on Da Google
There's more involved here than words."Islamist terrorism" is what you want to say when you talk about ISIS and al-Qaeda. They are properly "Islamist" because "Islamism" and "Salafism" are the names in...
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Morning Open Thread: DECODING SHAKESPEARE – Part I – Speak the Speech
Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT) We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 6:30 a.m. Eastern (and perhaps sometimes earlier!). Feel free to...
View ArticleIdiots are Wrecking Our Nation!
Everybody knows what the word "idiot" means, right? It means a person of low intelligence, somebody who doesn't know grits from granola, somebody who couldn't find his or her ass without a flashlight...
View ArticleQuisling Means Traitor & Collaborator-Lets Add a New Word In English For...
From Wikipedia: J.R.R Tolkien used the term in English in "On Fairy-Stories", a presentation given in 1939…..[5] The term was widely introduced to an English-speaking audience by the British newspaper...
View ArticleSpeak English? No, speak Russian!
By now, you've heard of a white woman's racist rant to another shopper at JC Penney. “Speak English. You are in America. If you don't know it, learn it.” Part of the rant was caught on a video that...
View ArticleMonthly Book Post, August 2017
Ale and Alienation: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham—but you get on too fast. I have not yet said that a boy should be taught to rush into the snares of...
View ArticleWith no fix for roads, Michigan Legislature ponders English as official language
Michigan Republicans are Blödmänner, Idioten. I know, I know, it’s not German they’re worried about, especially since they seem to like Nazi slogans like “Lügenpresse,”“Blut und Ehre” and “Arbeit macht...
View ArticleOrigins of English: Ghost, Haunt, Death
While beliefs about what happens after death vary greatly in the cultures and religious traditions around the world, a common theme found in many cultures is the belief that a dead person’s soul can...
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English Learners: Please take this survey & poll
Hola!This post is aimed at persons who originally spoke a language other than English and then later acquired the ability to understand and speak English. Here is why:As many of you already know, I am...
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Top Comments: Nothing much, really
So for this, my inaugural entry into doing Top Comments, I had a perfectly geeky topic in mind, based on this DK conversation and tweet after the Democratic Debate last night.xWho is the Michael Jordan...
View Article2011 Banished Words List "Refudiates" Palin - Twice!
Each year around New Year's, Lake Superior State University releases a just-for-fun "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness." Originally designed...
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"Duuuude?"... it Finally Makes Sense
1.Dude - Miriam Webster Dictionarynoun ˈdüd also ˈdyüd\Definition of DUDE1. a man extremely fastidious in dress and manner : dandy. 2. a city dweller unfamiliar with life on the range; especially : an...
View ArticleEnglish Words From A to Ant
In 1884, the first fascicle of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was published. It had taken 27 years to produce this first part of the dictionary, which was entitled A New English...
View Article2012 Banished Words List announced; I helped banish "shared sacrifice"
It seems worn-out phrases and cliches are a "ginormous" part of "the new normal." If we want to "win the future," we must get out of our "man caves" and "occupy" the English language to stop this...
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📌 ThisWeekInTheWarOnWomen: Anne Feeney, EmptyVessel's DearMenSTFU,...
Back in 2014, when this site gave uneven “reception” to diaries triggered by certain real-world events, Empty Vessel posted Dear Men, STFU (557 recs, 1167 comments) — a trenchant, brilliant,...
View ArticleForces at Work in the Human World
The human world is an enormously rich and complex system. (“Human world”– defined as everything in the world we live in that’s different from how the world would be if our species had never...
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