English in the Modern Idiot by Victoria Chatham

 

AVAILABLE HERE

I was sorting my way through homonyms, homographs, and homophones, those tricky little similarities that can and do trip up the unwary writer. In case you are unfamiliar with them, homonyms are spelled and pronounced the same way but with different meanings, like the word pen: an enclosed area or a writing tool.

Next are homographs, words spelt the same but with different pronunciations and meanings, as in these two examples. The wind is blowing – indicates moving air and rhymes with pinned. I have to wind my watch, which rhymes with find. 

Lastly are homophones, words with the same pronunciation but different spelling and meanings. Do you think it will (rain, rein, or reign) today? Or: Can I come to the park (to, too, two)? Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to insert the correct word. In this, Google is not your friend, as all of them are proper words. If you fail, I promise you will not self-destruct. (Sorry, Charlie.)

The vagaries of the English language are numerous and devious, but how did we get into this mess? English as we know it developed like good wine over time. Going back in history, we would likely not understand a word said then, as a person from A.D.-whatever would be unlikely to understand us today. 

Historians tell us that five invasions of Britain contributed to the development of the English language. The earliest people to inhabit the British Isles were the Celts, an Indo-European group from before the common era. Spreading westward into Southern France, Spain, and Central Europe from as far east as the Black Sea coasts, the oldest evidence of the Celts was found in Hallstatt near Salzburg in Austria. The languages they spoke still survive today in the forms of Gaelic found in Brittany, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and more familiarly, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Although innovative farmers and artisans, the Celts did not have a developed form of writing. We know of them mostly from Greek and Roman historians, who did. Bear with me while I throw a few dates around. The Romans had already made contact with the Celts about 55 B.C. Still, the Roman invasion didn’t begin until later, around A.D. 43. They brought with them not only their road and fort-building skills but their language too, and Latin became the universal language of the time.

The Romans remained in Britain until the fall of their Empire in A.D. 420. When they decamped, Britain and her shores were left undefended. Roll forward to A.D. 450 or thereabouts, and along came the Anglo-Saxons, Germanic tribes who raided the coastal areas but by a couple of hundred years later had settled in different parts of Britain, and guess what? Each tribe had its own dialect. What we now call Old English mostly came from the dialect of the West Saxons, who settled an area in the south of England known as Wessex.

After the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons came Christianity, not a military invasion as such. The religion was not unknown in Britain, but the Anglo-Saxons suppressed it as much as they did the Celtic tribes. That all changed in A.D. 597 with the arrival of St. Augustine, who was determined to Christianize pagan Britain. The monks who inhabited the early monasteries began to record the oral stories of the Anglo-Saxons. This assimilation of Anglo-Saxon oral tradition into the Christian culture led to many words with Latin roots finding their way into common parlance.

Did you think that was it? Sorry, not a bit of it. Next came the Vikings, those invaders from Scandinavia, raiding and pillaging their way around Britain between A.D. 750 and A.D. 1050. Sharing many similarities with the Anglo-Saxons, their language was absorbed into the emerging English language. In addition to their oral traditions, they carved marks into bone, stone, and wood. These marks were called futhark, the runic alphabet.

With me so far? Not to worry, we’re nearly done. So after the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Christians, and Vikings, next came the Normans. I, and every English school kid of my era, knew that the Normans invaded Britain in 1066, dispatching the English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Along with William, the Duke of Normandy, forever more known as William the Conqueror, came a new language and culture, adding another layer to those already in existence. The language used in court, government, and the church was now Old French. Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, only existed in the lower orders of society.

Over the next few hundred years, this mix of oral and written history developed into the English language as we know it today, along with our love/hate relationship with its glorious, sometimes messy, grammar. However, we are not done yet. So far this year, no less than twenty new words have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, so English as we know it continues to evolve.

 

​Victoria Chatham

  AT BOOKS WE LOVE

English language - Fun Facts by J. S. Marlo

 

 

 

 

The Red Quilt

"a sweet & uplifting holiday story"

is now available 

click here

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I'm currently re-writing and re-plotting a series I wrote over a decade ago. Not only am I having lots of fun with it, but it also made me realize how much I grew as an "English" writer. Here are some fun facts about the English language I dug out while I was brainstorming some new subplots. 

 

A pangram sentence is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once, like The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

 

An ambigram is a word that reads the same when turned upside down, like SWIMS.

 

A palindrome is a word that reads the same forward or backward, like racecar, radar, or madam.

 

An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once, like KOBO is an anagram of book, or schoolmaster is an anagram of the classroom.

 

An isogram is a word with no repeating letters. The longest one in English is subdermatoglyphic.

 

An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word. These are some acronyms that have become accepted English words: scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), laser (light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation), or sonar (sound navigation and ranging).

 

A contronym is a word having two meanings that contradict one another, like to bolt (to secure or to flee), to buckle (to fasten or to collapse), or left (remained or departed).

 

A portmanteau is a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two other words, like brunch (from breakfast and lunch).

 

A capitonym is a word that changes its meaning when its first letter is capitalized, like Turkey (the country) and turkey (the bird).

 

About 4,000 words are added to the dictionary each year. That’s roughly a new word every two hours.

 

The shortest, oldest, and most commonly used word is I, and the shortest complete sentence in the English language is I am.

 

The longest word in English is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which is a type of lung disease caused by inhaling ash and dust.

 

The most common adjective used in English is good, the most commonly used noun is time, and the word run has the highest number of definitions with 645.

 

There are seven ways to spell the sound ee in English. This sentence contains all of them: He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas.

 

E is the most commonly used letter in the English language, A is the second-most common, and Q is the letter used the least.

 

More English words begin with the letter S than any other letter.

 

The ampersand used to be the 27^th letter of the alphabet. I often use it, and I'm kind of sad it disappeared from the alphabet in the 17^th century.

 

The only one word in the English language contains the letters X, Y, and Z in order is hydroxyzine, and the longest common word with all the letters in alphabetical order is almost.

 

The longest common word you can make using only four letters is senseless, the longest one with no vowels is rhythms, and the only one with three consecutive double letters is bookkeeper. 

 

The first number spelled out that contains the letter A is one thousand. You don’t use the letter B until one billion.

 

Some English words exist only in plural forms, like binoculars, scissors, pants, glasses (spectacles), shears, jeans, and pajamas.

 

In the world, there are 378 million native English speakers (those who speak English as their first language) and 743 million non-native English speakers (those whose first language isn’t English). In average, a native speaker knows between 20,000-35,000 English words.

 

I belong in the non-native group, and I have no idea how many English words I know, but I read somewhere that those who read fiction have a larger vocabulary than those who read non-fiction (fiction tends to contain a wider range of vocabulary than non-fiction) or don’t read.

 

So, happy reading! An adventure, and a few new words, await you between the pages of a new book. Better still, read to a young child and take him or her along on the adventure.

 

Stay warm & stay safe!

 

JS

 

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

 

English words you didn’t know were French - by Vijaya Schartz

Visit Vijaya's author page at BWL

According to Merriam Webster, there are over 7,000 French words today in the English language. The pronunciation and spelling might differ slightly, but they are plainly recognizable. 

So many familiar words in the English language are French, like: attache, avant-garde, aviation, bachelor, ballet, bon voyage, brunette, bureau, cabaret, chauffeur, chic, cliché, cul-de-sac, debris, deja-vu, delegate, detour, dossier, elite, expatriate, façade, fiancé, film noir, gallery, gazette, heritage, homage, hotel, identity, illusion, insult, irony, liaison, literature, machine, magnificent, massage, metabolism, neutral, novel, occasion, parasol, recipient, reservoir, ricochet, rich, ridicule, risqué, sabotage, sentiment, silhouette, solicitor, souvenir, technique, uniform, variety, etc. to name a few. 

Since the French and the British were enemies for centuries, why did so many French words make it into English? We all learned in school that the Normans, Vikings who had settled in Normandy, led by William the Conqueror, conquered England in 1066, by winning the battle of Hastings. 

After their victory, these French speaking Normans established a new nobility in England, and used French as the official language of the English court. And for two centuries, all legal and official English court documents were written in French. The Norman nobles took control of the lands by marrying into former English nobility. In time, the two languages and the two cultures melded. 

During the Crusades, Richard Lionheart battled in France, to reclaim French territories previously owned by the Normans. This conflict about territory between the English and the French led to the 100-year war (1337-1453) during which English soldiers lived and battled in France, some of them for most of their lives. 

For these reasons, many medieval English words were derived from the French, and French words and expressions survived a thousand years into the English language. Words like chivalry, majesty, archer, assault, court, dungeon, enemy, felony, honor, injury, judge, justice, liberty, noble, prison, parliament, quarter, royal, robe, sir, survive, tournament, treason, uncle, among many others, are French words brought by the Normans.

As for the modern French words in the English language, many come from cooking terms. Rather than making up an English word, it’s easier to use the original French word and Anglicize it. So, in a “restaurant” on the “Menu” you can have your potatoes “sauteed,” with a “soup” and a “roux,” eat an “omelet” a “salad” or “escargots” which are the most common variety of snails. But snails sound slimy, while “escargots” sound like a culinary delight. 

A “cuisine,” in French, refers to a kitchen. By extension it also means what you cook in it. “Four,” for a French person has nothing to do with numbers. It’s just a baking oven. 

When I first came to America, my husband asked me if I wanted my pie “a la mode.” When I asked him what it meant, he looked flabbergasted that I didn’t understand his French. You see, “a la mode” only means “in fashion,” which is nonspecific and doesn’t relate to pie, or, as I quickly discovered, vanilla ice cream. See, the French do not mix pie with ice cream and would consider this a “faux pas.” I quickly corrected my preconceptions in the matter. Since then, I always eat my pie “a la mode.” 

I also wasn’t familiar with French fries, as there is nothing French about them. Fries were invented in Belgium, where half of the population also speaks French. Maybe that’s what created the confusion. But the French simply call fries “frites” or “pommes frites” as potatoes are “pommes de terre,” which translates as apples of the earth. 

Somehow, because the medieval English nobles spoke French, the French word tends to sound more luxurious. A “mansion” a “manor” or a “chateau” sound like places where upper nobility “resides.” That’s probably why Cadillac calls some of their models “deluxe.” French makes it sound more expensive. 

Another French import is the modest “beret.” It was a traditional civilian cap for centuries, favored by the Basques, long before it was adopted by French Special forces in the 20th century. Shortly after, many other countries adopted the beret as military attire. 

“Cadet” in French means “second son.” In the old days, to avoid dividing the lands, only the oldest son inherited the charge and the fortune of his father. So, the second son had to find a job, and for noble families, short of buying a bishopric, only a military position would do. It’s interesting to note that the American word has evolved to mean a student in a military or law enforcement academy… that they are no longer second sons, and some cadets are now women. Yay! 

Once in a while, the French word has come to mean something else in the English language, just enough to confuse a native French speaker. “Madame,” for example, is a mark of respect in France. But when you speak of a Madame in the US, it’s usually the woman in charge of a house of ill repute. Same word, very different meaning. 

When I first saw a jar of “Marmite” on the shelf at AJ’s I wondered what it could be. Given that a marmite is simply a cooking pot in French. It didn’t tell me what was in it. After tasting it, I could only assume that it was made of the burned residue in old cooking pots, to give some taste to bland English food. In truth, it’s a condiment made from yeast residue in beer vats. 

 

“Coin” in French means corner. In English it’s loose change. This may come from the fact that coins used to be cut into halves and quarters to make change, which created corners. 

“Queue” in French is an animal’s tail. Then it also refers to a waiting line (where impatient dogs would wag their tail). 

“Library” is also a French word, but it means bookstore. For a French person, the familiar place that collects thousands of books you can borrow is called a bibliotheque. 

Talking about books, you can find mine everywhere online. Here are two 5-star sci-fi fantasy romance.

ANGEL FIERCE

Arizona Literary Award 2019

Find it HERE

Something’s rotten on the angel planet. When Avenging Angels turn up dead, Urielle, their Legion Commander, suspects the handsome intruder brought unspeakable evil to Azura.

Maksou never met a woman he couldn’t seduce. He came to the forbidden planet to rescue his friends and get rich in the process, but the jungle crawls with lethal life forms… including a gorgeous warrior angel, who saves his life but keeps him prisoner and challenges his irresistible charm.

Urielle, sworn to protect Azura at all costs, has no use for a maverick who ignores the rules and endangers the planet… no matter how attractive. Especially when the Galactic Trade Alliance (GTA) wages a secret war to get their greedy hands on the priceless crystal at Azura’s core.

MALAIKA'S SECRET
Byantium Space Station novel

Find it HERE

Special Agent Tyler Conrad works security undercover on the Byzantium Space Station and adheres to a strict moral code. When strange beings with wings are murdered, and a dangerous lion wanders the station’s indoor streets, Tyler’s investigation leads him to a mysterious woman, who could make him break all his rules and get them both killed.

Forbidden to love, the beautiful Malaika, guardian of the glowing crystal in the temple of the Formless One, is an illegal mind-reader who hides perilous secrets. She has seen the great evil coming to Byzantium but must hide her extraordinary abilities or perish with her people.

When Admiral Mort Lowell, a hybrid Tenebran nicknamed the Vampire, makes a surprise visit to Byzantium, Tyler knows something wicked is afoot…

Vijaya Schartz, author
Strong Heroines, Brave Heroes, cats

http://www.vijayaschartz.com

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