Using some of these accent marks is such a circumflex.
@danmacarroАй бұрын
Also the occasional grave accent in native words in poetry to show you are pronounced certain normally silent 'e' vowels, like "blessèd" or "learnèd"
@a_capitalistАй бұрын
You could say it isn't clichÉ
@thomasking1490Ай бұрын
Also both Florence and Cologne are just borrowed from French.
@pattmahineyАй бұрын
I love ū
@javen9693Ай бұрын
jj also forgot the flex in the bizarre "papier-mâché", which has no reason to still be used
@haraldisdeadАй бұрын
In highschool, we were annoyed at the German exchange students having private conversation in German AND speaking English, so we started talking in Elizabethan English, and they had no idea wtf we were saying.
@JacobMaximilianАй бұрын
😂 this is amazing. Keep doing what you’re doing cuz it f’n lit😂
@FealuinixАй бұрын
I've had the same experience speaking in a ridiculous British accent around Chinese students in high school.
@oida6599Ай бұрын
Which is funny, because Elizabethan grammar is closer to German than modern English is.
@TheIchiakiraАй бұрын
Same for me in France on the french exchange, we just spoke in broad Yorkshire and not even the teachers knew what we were talking about 😅
@benardman2665Ай бұрын
That's awesome haha
@mariacarolinaoliveira933Ай бұрын
3:50 Acute marks are only called so when they "slant" to the right, like this: ó. When they "slant" left (ò), they're called grave marks. Furthermore, the two "dots" (ö) are only called umlaut when the pronunciation of the vowel they're over changes from the usual sound it makes to another. That usually happens in words coming from german, such as doppelgänger. When the "dots" are over a vowel in order to separate it from another syllable (as in naïve), they're called diaeresis or trema.
@EnigmaticLucasАй бұрын
“trema” refers to the two dots regardless of whether they’re used as an umlaut or a diaresis
@deadbushinc.5105Ай бұрын
Actually it doesn’t matter that much what you call the diacritic. When talking specifically about the underlying phonetic processes? Sure, separate the terminology. But otherwise it’s literally the exact same two dots above the vowel
@daroguk8071Ай бұрын
@@deadbushinc.5105It matters because that often changes the way these symbols work, changing an umlaut Ü to U in German will turn it into a completely different word while that doesn't usually happen with diaeresis (like naïve)
@deadbushinc.5105Ай бұрын
@@daroguk8071 i guess? I just don’t see the purpose of giving these two functions separate names *when talking about English*. After all ‘doppelgänger’ is no more or less regular of a spelling as ‘naïve’ to an average speaker of English
@JustANervousWreckАй бұрын
there's a lot of Americans who just call the dots "umlauts" regardless of the context
@SamAronowАй бұрын
In the early 20th century it was more common to write “cañon” than “canyon,” as I’ve learned from a lifetime of collecting old maps.
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
Shalom! Great to see you here!
@nicholascoleman1131Ай бұрын
In Los Angeles there is a street called Benedict Canyon Drive, that follows said canyon, but when it crosses into more affluent Beverly Hills, becomes Cañon Drive, and when it crosses the city border again BACK into Los Angeles becomes merely Canon Drive. Always one of my favorite examples of this…
@EmperorTigerstarАй бұрын
I think the most under-appreciated "advanced" English is all of the idioms we use. So many ESL speakers could master the grammar yet still be confused by all of the idioms we use all the time.
@yoshilovesyoshiАй бұрын
Like? One that I can think of is you can't make an omelet(te) without breaking a few eggs, but I think most non-native speakers can get that one once they understand what an omelette is.
@ffc1a28c7Ай бұрын
I mean, this is indicative of literally every language in existence. 成语 are infamous for essentially no foreigners (except maybe people like 大山, lol) using them lol.
@spai3Ай бұрын
@@yoshilovesyoshi I'm not sure eggs/omelettes is an idiom (it might be, it feels like a grey area). By definition, an idiom is a phrase whose meaning can't be deduced from the words it contains. Breaking eggs to make omelettes might be too literal, I'm not sure, and a lot of typical idioms online are the same. A better example of an idiom would be something like 'break a leg' or 'under the weather', maybe even 'you can say that again'.
@jootersblaccatАй бұрын
@@yoshilovesyoshi That's a metaphor, not an idiom
@ajayredonkulus6628Ай бұрын
@@yoshilovesyoshi The example I use with my students is, "The grass is always greener."
@TurtleMarcusАй бұрын
For a long time in English, "thou/thee" was singular and "ye/you" was plural. "Ye/you" was also used to address superiors - similar practices exist in French and Spanish. So by using "thou" with everyone, the Quakers wanted to show that all are equal in the eyes of God. They also refused to use titles, like "your highness" and "your honor", for the same reason, only using personal names or the title brother/sister. This, combined with the refusal to swear an oath", often led to Quakers being held in contempt of the court.
@gregblair5139Ай бұрын
Actually "thou" was familiar and only existed as a singular. "You" was formal, but could be singular or plural.
@OptimusPhillipАй бұрын
Interestingly, even outside of the Quaker religion, God was traditionally addressed with the informal "thou/thee". The issue of Quakers refusing to swear oaths actually got so bad that the British Parliament had to pass a law so that Quakers could give affirmations in lieu of oaths. Later, the United States Constitution would include similar provisions, declaring that both oaths and affirmations would be acceptable in all instances.
@daanwillemsen223Ай бұрын
Dutch has a similar thing, gij/gullie. Still used in the southern dialects
@mindcraft4362Ай бұрын
May be wrong - but isn't "ye" just an archaic spelling of "the" (due to the inability of typewriters to type the letter thorn in the past)
@OptimusPhillipАй бұрын
@@mindcraft4362 It's both. Yet another set of English homographs.
@minuteman4199Ай бұрын
The phrase "I cut the tree down then I cut the tree up" makes perfect sense to me as a native English speaker, but could cause confusion to others.
@polissemizando5409Ай бұрын
"He was murdered by a tree."
@obscuredvision264426 күн бұрын
Just don't cut up in class!
@japjeetmehton992112 күн бұрын
It took me a minute to understand what this.
@tomtomtrentАй бұрын
Regarding Anglicization of names, it’s particularly interesting to see in Wikipedia how you have five King Philips of Spain, and then when you get to the current one, he’s Felipe VI
@TurtleMarcusАй бұрын
I've heard some people say that it's good practice to keep the original name of living monarchs, but the localized name for historic monarchs.
@Epicrandomness1111Ай бұрын
In Italy, English translations with monarch names use anglicisation, when in the UK or US, we would now use the Italian form: Humbert I vs Umberto I
@AmonRa-z8wАй бұрын
In Russian, too, foreign rulers from different eras are spelled differently, for example, when Prince Charles was not king, he was called that, but when he ascended the throne, he was called Karl in Russia
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
@@TurtleMarcusIn Russia they did that. They use to call Charles “Чарльз” (Charlz), but upon becoming King he became Карл (Karl), to keep with the historical tradition. The name is also the German form, since well, the English monarchs are German 😂. Funny enough all King Louis are called Людовик (Lyudovik), using the Latin form, except Louis XVI. He officially was change to Луи since he was removed from the throne and was remembered by his secular name, instead of his regal one.
@MrEdman4Ай бұрын
Wow. “Filipinos” from “the Philippines” makes a lot of sense now
@parmenides130eАй бұрын
Fun fact: Quakers used a form called "nominative thee" where "thee" is used as the subject pronoun (instead of "thou") and with the third person form of the verb instead of the second. So, where a speaker of standard early modern English might say "thou goest home" a Quaker would say "thee goes home." The Quakers didn't originate this usage as it's found in a number of western British dialects, but they were definitely using it (and had dropped "thou" except in very formal instances) by the time Nixon was growing up. How's that for obscure English?
@coreblaster6809Ай бұрын
Very cool!
@robertAGCАй бұрын
Did they also monkey with the genitive case? I noticed the mom said “thou lie,” where “thy lie” would have made far more sense in context, within the standard informal mood.
@parmenides130eАй бұрын
@@robertAGC Thanks for this question. It made for a really interesting rabbit hole. As far as I can tell, they seem to preserve the early modern genitive intact; so, "thy" or "thine" (when the pronoun is separated from the thing possessed, e.g., "thy kingdom" but "the kingdom is thine"). I think what's happening with the Stone clip is that he's actually using (or approximating) standard early modern English, either to avoid confusing his audience that knows Quakers use "old fashioned" English but aren't aware of their dialectical variation or because he (or his screenwriter) wasn't aware of it. I guessing that the line "thy father will have to know of thou lying" is supposed to be understood as "your father will have to know about you lying." Edited for clarity.
@WilliamHostmanАй бұрын
Most of the Quakers fled from Western England to the US for religious freedom... Several other Ordinum-based faiths typically still use their own German dialect, most notably the Amish.
@coreblaster6809Ай бұрын
@@WilliamHostman This is well known about quakers in the US
@louisng114Ай бұрын
One fascinating obscure part of English grammar (which Tom Scott did a video on) is adjectival order. For example, one would say "adorable sleepy black cat" and not "black sleepy adorable cat" or any other order.
@adriannaconnor6471Ай бұрын
Adjective order is obscure only to native speakers. It's one of the things you teach early on to ESL students.
@louisng114Ай бұрын
@@adriannaconnor6471 As someone who is ESL, I have never been explicitly taught adjectival order.
@JorWat25Ай бұрын
Similar is 'ablaut reduplication', which explains why clocks go 'tick-tock' and not 'tock-tick', and why the phrase 'live, laugh, love' sounds wrong in any other order. It's also why 'big bad wolf' breaks the order of adjectives.
@CompuBrains27Ай бұрын
I agree the first way is *more* correct, but I wouldn't correct someone who said it the second way. It just sort of throws off the pacing of speech.
@garethwilson1150Ай бұрын
I've wondered whether George Michael broke this rule when he sang about "little hungry schoolgirl's pride and joy". "Hungry little schoolgirl" seems more natural.
@tristenm1526Ай бұрын
Something I really like about English is the way in which Germanic-derived, French-derived, and Latin-derived words carry different implications and levels of formality. The original examples I saw were the difference between "kingly" (Germanic) which sounds almost sarcastic or casual, "royal" (French) which is fairly straightforward and formal, and "regal" which sounds almost pompous and fancy. This also creates the situation where words have more and less directly-derived adjectives. For example, if you wanted to describe something as being like hell you could literally just call it "hellish", but you could also say "infernal" (Latin). And how some words have only one option; like with "moon" there's no word "moonish" or "moonly", but there is "lunar". Then there's the fact that romance and germanic languages therefore have familiar sounding words used in a slightly different way. For instance, the German for "dog" is "hund" which sounds like "hound", which in English is a type of dog. Or "geld" sounding like "gold" but meaning "money". In French, there's "fatiguée" which sounds like "fatigue" but means "tired", and so on. Lastly, this also makes romance languages sound very fancy and, well, romantic to us English speakers. And though I haven't heard this observation from other people, I do personally find that Germanic languages as a result sound more...humble? Folksy? Old-fashioned, I guess? Part of which probably just comes from the fact that Romantic languages tend to have more emphasis on the vowels, and in the case of French more silent letters, which makes them sound light and airy. While Germanic languages, especially German itself, have lots of consonants and every letter is emphasized. All very interesting!
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
Borges has interview where he addresses that. Quite impressive to see a prolific Spanish writer commend English for such nuances.
@whateverIwasthinkingatthetime27 күн бұрын
Well the French did besiege England for like 300 years and of course Englishmen became the peasant lowerclass and Frenchmen the Upperclass, thus words of Latin origin took on a fancier feel than the older Germanic ones
@vari153526 күн бұрын
^^ see above reply from @whateverIwasthinkingatthetime. it's not so much about the phonology as it is about the fact that after 1066 french became the language of the ruling class while english was the language of the working class.
@erbeilas435523 күн бұрын
Every letter is not emphasised in German! If a word ends with an r preceded by a vowel, the r is not pronounced. "Der" is pronounced deah.
@TheRemakersIrelandАй бұрын
In Ireland we still use "ye" as "you all" In Dublin, they use "yous". Sometimes you might hear "yis".
@wingtip88Ай бұрын
Pittsburgh USA area uses “yinz” I believe.
@krombopulos_michaelАй бұрын
"ye" in Ireland is considered pretty rural still in my experience. When I went to college in Dublin, the Dublin boys found it hilariously quant that I used it in casual conversation as a plural "you".
@mrgoldengraham027Ай бұрын
In the North of England, I do find most people treat "you" as the new singular and "yous" as the plural 2nd person pronoun. Also, a lot of the time saying "us" instead of "me" especially in a phrase like "give us.../pass us..."
@jlinkproАй бұрын
North Midwestern (MN, USA) here. "Hey, how yous doing?" is addressing a group of people in some rural areas in the north west of the state. I am unsure of how common using yous as a plural you is, but I'm sure it bleeds into Canada in many places, eh? Having grown up near Fargo, it is good to hear my home accent on this channel, but I suspect the host on this channel is Canadian, as the accent leans real heavy on the double-o ooh in 'about' and such
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
“Yous” 😂😂😂😂
@TheDanLevyАй бұрын
Fun Fact about names changed upon immigration - it was almost NEVER the local English speaking government official who made the change. They would rely on the ship manifest for the names of the passengers so any changes to names would have to have been done at some point before departure from the start point. Also the officials all spoke multiple languages so it would not have been due to misunderstanding of the immigrant. At New York's Ellis Island, for example, most of the immigration officials spoke multiple languages to be sure that they would be able to communicate with newcomers. NY Mayor in the 1930s & 40s Fiorello La Guardia (for who one of the 2 NYC airports is named) was certified as an interpreter for Italian, German, Yiddish, and Croatian while working at Ellis Island.
@courtneyjohnsonhaber4591Ай бұрын
@@TheDanLevy yes that's a pesky little myth. It's hard for us to think people would deliberately change their names now (also there's more legalities involved with that now) so people assume it was changed for them. It's hard to think that often people wanted to assimilate themselves in their new homes. After all it was a fresh start and they probably would never return to their home country ever again.
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
In Argentina this was indeed the case, so you end up with families where members can have of to four different spelling of the same last name. 😂😂😂😂 at the time they dismiss it, but since some Argentines can request Italian citizenship, this of course is cause for massive confusion lol
@altragАй бұрын
Name changing is still a thing that happens to this day. I've noticed Chinese and Taiwanese people in particular seem to often have separate "English" names in addition to their Chinese names and use both regularly depending on who they're interacting with. Though from the people I've known, they don't generally try to Anglicize their Chinese name - they just pick an English name they happen to like. Indian and (non-English) Europeans generally don't seem to change their names, though many end up getting them pseudo-Anglicized inadvertently just because its easier to accept our poor pronunciation than trying to correct us constantly. Not so sure what's "common" for people from other cultures to do - I'm mostly just going by personal experience so I'm limited to just the folk I've known and worked with for the most part. I would imagine for example that people who have clicks in their names (from any of the several "clicking" languages) would struggle in most other parts of the world (English or otherwise) if they didn't modify their name - that clicking is a very unique aspect to only a handful of languages and those of us who never learned how to do it struggle pretty hard to even approximate it. And of course almost all cultures coming our way have to Romanize their names when written, as few languages share the English alphabet. Even (non-English) European names can have all the accents and marks noted in the video. At the very least those tend to get overlooked to the point of forgotten, especially when there's a computer system involved as much of our critical banking and government software - not to mention our keyboards - are still limited to the old ASCII character set.
@courtneyjohnsonhaber4591Ай бұрын
@@altrag yeah I know people adopt English names but they don't usually legally change their names, just go by an English name.
@altragАй бұрын
@@courtneyjohnsonhaber4591 Ehh I'm not so sure about that. How could you legally have a name like 张伟 in an English-speaking country? You'd at the very least have to Romanize it (write it using Roman characters) and it's almost certain anyone trying to read it out would pronounce it in an Anglicized manner (given that the vast majority of us don't know anything about Chinese pronunciation). It also depends when they adopted their English name. If they chose it early enough to get it registered in their home country and have it printed on whatever documentation they bring with them, they may have their English name as their legal name when they come across. Others who didn't choose early enough might not. I'm sure there are rules and common practices for that (and those probably change country-by-country, or even by region within a single country - ie: China is very large and there's a lot of cultural diversity spread across 1.4bn people, much like there's a notable cultural difference between New York and Texas even if both states are just seen as "American" to outsiders). Overall, I imagine there's a bit of everything going on. Which is fine, if it works it works. I was just pointing out that Anglicization isn't entirely a thing of the past. We're not as pushy about it (especially when it comes to names that are still within their home countries - primarily place names) but it's not a dead practice by any means, and never will be as long as we all speak different languages with different writing systems. There's a level of necessity that just will always be relevant even if we think we "should" all somehow know how to read, write, speak and type every name from every language - it's just not possible no matter how much we may want to "respect other cultures".
@jan_KilanАй бұрын
bro auto-generated captions are loving the “Royal Wii”
@PokeNebulaАй бұрын
Wii wouldlike to play…
@aluxtАй бұрын
Æ was a very common letter in Old English, where it was pronounced like the vowel in "ash"-the name "ash" comes from the rune it replaced. You'll still see it in archaic spellings of names like Ælfred or Æthelthryth. Its usage died out in part because the imported fonts from mainland Europe didn't really use it, so English adapted as it also did with replacing þ "thorn" (also a name of a rune) with a stylized y (hence "ye olde shoppe") or th (what we arbitrarily settled on).
@galladeguy12319 күн бұрын
English is typically thought of as having a two-way demonstrative system, meaning words like "this" and "here" are used for things close to the speaker, and words like "that" and "there" are used for things far from the speaker. But technically, English has a three-way system. The words "yon" and "yonder" can be used for things very far from the speaker (though only "yonder" can be used for locations like "here" and "there"). Sadly for all funny word fans, "yon" and "yonder" are no longer commonly used in most dialects of Modern English, and "yonder" remains only in reference to location. The only yon-related word that's still commonly used in Modern English is "beyond."
@rkt7414Ай бұрын
I've had a hard time explaining to my Korean peers that some words are only "pirate words," "cowboy words," "knight words," etc. Not just historical; historical and occupation specific.
@rkt7414Ай бұрын
Also, btw, I as an American have had no exposure to this "Royal 'we'" register of speech and did not know it existed before this video. I wonder if Canada's closer ceremonial ties with British monarchy may have something to do with this gap in common knowledge. I can promise my perspective is not unique, I would be willing to bet that if 100 Americans were polled on their knowledge of this linguistic concept, that less than 5 would be aware it exists, if any of them.
@CavoukuАй бұрын
@@rkt7414 For a very minor note, it came up in an episode of Recess, where King Bob started referring to himself as Pharoah Bob, and using the Royal We.
@thomascortes968Ай бұрын
I was playing pictionary with my Belgian friends and the words "Swashbuckler" and "Buccaneer" came up and they'd never seen them before. I just said they're both pirates but I have no idea why they exist, let alone how to draw them.
@HelloHamburgerАй бұрын
@rkt7414 Royal We was referenced by one of my favorite movies. Wreck It Ralph, when Ralph met Vanellope. I have only watched the video once but I forgot what I saw that made me think something similar. I saw something he said and then was like, "I wonder if that is more common knowledge in Canada?" Since I am from the US. I'm kind of suprised he didn't mention the forgotten English letter "thorn" pronounced like "th" and is what the "y" in "ye olde England/Tavern" comes from since they don't have thorn. Ampersand was a letter that faded away and not sure what its prior use was or if it had one besides the modern use but it is now just used as a fancy symbol for "and". "&"
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
@@rkt7414it’s often used in American pop culture as I said.
@FreeBirdJPYTАй бұрын
Thank you for using my video 🙏
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
It's a great vid!!
@scdave_archiveАй бұрын
You gotta realise that "thee" and "thou" are still very much spoken causally in some places, like in Leeds in the UK. The killers song "I predict a riot" confused a bunch of people cause they thought they were trying to be old timey. Also singular us/our is very common in northern dialects. "Give us some more cake" is very natural to say when referring to yourself
@WatchVidsMakeLists11 күн бұрын
Or like the Limmy sketch where he's being robbed by a Glaswegian man who says "Gies your laptop"
@joaquinclavijo7052Ай бұрын
As a native spanish speaker I find very strange the way some english speakers write the name of my country's favourite infusion: "mate" as "maté" to make a distinction form the english word mate. However "maté" in spanish means "i killed". I cannot think of other example of english adding an accent to a word that originally doesn't have it, it is usually the other way around.
@mattbalfe2983Ай бұрын
A accent over an e in English just means disregard rules about silent e's changing a vowel. If you pronounce the e in Mate it will be spelled Maté.
@paradoxmoАй бұрын
As previous poster said, the accent e just means “actually pronounce this e” in situations where it looks like it should be dropped. Another use is poetry, where for reasons of meter sometimes you must read a word like “blessed” as “blesséd” rather than the normal pronunciation of “blest”.
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
I think here the dieresis might be of better use as in “Matë”
@mattbalfe2983Ай бұрын
@@revertrevertz5438 Fair, I also think if we had spelling reform ( something I think English is in need of, particularly since it has become the dominant global language,) you'd replace the silent e after consonants with umlauts like German has done.
@EnigmaticLucasАй бұрын
@@revertrevertz5438That would imply that the E is a normal English long E
@PinuzzuoАй бұрын
An interesting note is that many Italian cities see exclusive use of their anglicized forms: always Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice, Genoa, Padua, Turin, Naples and rarely or never Roma, Milano, Firenze, Venezia, Genova, Padova, Torino, Napoli. The theory is that English adopted these names from their French forms Rome, Milan, Florence, Venise, Gênes, Padoue, Turin, Naples during the period that French had higher literary prestige than Italian.
@funghi2606Ай бұрын
There is also the possibility that they just didn’t used standard Italian at the time, the name of Padova in the local dialect is “Padua”, so most likely they used how the local referred to themselves at the time
@TylerJerviАй бұрын
There is a great video on this whole topic! I’m pretty sure it’s by Overly Sarcastic Productions. If you can find the video, it’s worth the watch!!
@gamermapperАй бұрын
They also have their own names in the regional languages although they mostly aren't written and enjoy even lower prestige
@TheAlexSchmidtАй бұрын
Some of them have been dropped though, like we used to call Livorno "Leghorn." (Yes, it is where the chickens came from.)
@tompatterson1548Ай бұрын
Much less Venexia!
@patricklippert8345Ай бұрын
I remember talking to a friend who wasn't a native English speaker and one time they were agreeing with me about something and wrote "Yes, it's" which threw me for a second. It's is a contraction of "it is" so technically that would be correct, but intuitively we wouldn't use it like that.
@ZipplyZaneАй бұрын
Contractions only occur when all of the words are unstressed. In "yes, it is," the final syllable is stressed, and thus the I in is cannot be elided. This doesn't apply to "not" at the end of sentences. We do say "No, it isn't," though we have to say "not it is *not"* if we add emphasis to the "not" part.
@Craxin01Ай бұрын
@@ZipplyZane A lot of English language rules are present but not particularly discussed. It's something we know but probably can't explain why as you did above. Trying to explain why to someone speaking ESL might confound us ourselves, so it's easy to understand why someone might make such a mistake speaking ESL.
@plasmaballinАй бұрын
A similar example is that we only make contractions out of "have" and "has" when using them as an auxiliary verb and not as a synonym for "possess". I can say "I've bought a car," or "he's bought a car", but if I say, "I've a car," it just sounds weird, and if I say, "he's a car," you're going to ask how I met a sentient car.
@TiberentenTVАй бұрын
@@ZipplyZane Now *that's* a rule I beg to differ on.
@SporeMurphАй бұрын
@@plasmaballin Although that example is not standard English, that is the way many people (native English speakers) speak in Ireland. "He's a new job", or "I've a computer problem"... is common in rural Ireland.
@NighteyАй бұрын
"Amok" in German has a specific meaning: like "Amokfahrt" or "Amoklauf", amok drive or amok run. It means when someone is intentionally creating harm and mass hysteeria to other people by a killing spree, mostly accompanied by terroristic means or mental issues. Like speeding through a crowded mass, it's a "Amokfahrt" or when someone shoots as many people as possible, it's a "Amoklauf". Oh and there's also "Amokflug", amok fly. The word is originally from SE Asia, Indonesia or Malaysia iirc. Also I would bet many native German speakers even with an ecellent level of English would think that the English phrase "run amok" implies many deaths because of that reason.
@adamfendos3099Ай бұрын
Amuk comes from the Malay language and was introduced into English by British explorers in Southeast Asia. It means “rushing in a frenzy” or “attacking furiously”
@limbobilbo8743Ай бұрын
Theres a story I read where the members of the band Mötley Crüe didnt actually know that umlauts change the pronunciation of the word in German until they were performing in Germany and heard the crowd calling them “moatly croo”
@evanherk28 күн бұрын
While there's no way of representing crüe in normal English, mötley would be mutly.
@limbobilbo874328 күн бұрын
@@evanherk apologies I havent done german in a while
@etasjo22 күн бұрын
@@evanherk that still doesnt work because theres so many different pronunciations of u
@ravenlord4Ай бұрын
I like seeing really old documents with the "long s" and even sometimes the letter "thorn".
@LilianHaseАй бұрын
German used ſ in both printing and handwriting till pretty recently (when the Nazis banded Fraktur in 1941). Icelandic still uses þ and ð :)
@LeofwineАй бұрын
I love going through medieval manuscripts, where the long as and thorn have more friends, like ash (æ) and eth (ð).
@ecstasycalculusАй бұрын
Is the long S anything like ß in German?
@stevethepocketАй бұрын
Terry Pratchett had a lot of fun with this, often having his characters (in a setting where proper spellings are more of a suggestion, as they were in old-timey England) write long S's as F's since that's what they look like to modern readers.
@ZekiraethАй бұрын
Whenever I see long s in an old text (which doesn't happen very often), I can't help but read it with an exaggerated liſp.
@_MrMoneyАй бұрын
It's curious that in english an "ñ" is called an n with a tilde. In spanish "tilde" just refers to the regular acute accent while "ñ" is treated as a completely separate letter to "n"
@k4zuh1r0Ай бұрын
I remember learning the Spanish alphabet when I was in grade school and wondering why there were two "n"s.
@TylerBird03Ай бұрын
Yeah "enne" vs "enyey"
@Jose-ii3xxАй бұрын
I can't remember the specific name of the ñ diacritic in Spanish. "Travesaño?"
@Jose-ii3xxАй бұрын
"Virgulilla." Now that's a cute word
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
Yeah, some languages do this, which has always seemed curious to me. I think Swedish does this too, the O with the dots is considered a different letter from O without.
@jayblossom5349Ай бұрын
Native English (USA) speaker here, and a professional editor by trade. A couple of things you could address in a future video: 1. This particular verb use, which I find fascinating: "Here we come a-wassailing" (or "a-caroling") or similar uses like, "Johnny came a-courting, and soon he and Susie were wed." 2. The "vocative O", which is used frequently in the King James Bible ("Hear, O King, and hearken unto my voice and consider my supplication") and occasionally elsewhere (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel). Today it's usually confused with the interjection "oh," but they are completely different words, of course.
@jamesparsonАй бұрын
I am here on KZfaq a-commenting.
@ling.academy23 күн бұрын
@@jamesparson 🤣
@MogswampАй бұрын
Etymology is such a fun, addicting rabbit hole to go down. Loved this one
@indyfan9845Ай бұрын
A note on Peking vs. Beijing: The old Wade-Gilles Romanization of Chinese is based on an old version of the South Chinese dialect, so Peking might have been more accurate to how it was pronounced in Southern China back in the 19th century. Pinyin pronunciation is based on modern Beijing-dialect Mandarin, created to push Beijing dialect on much of the rest of China. This is according to my Chinese history professor, who is from Southern China.
@pawelabramsАй бұрын
Also why Chiang Kai-Shek is called Jiang Jieshi in the North, and why Hongkong is called Xianggang in Beijing (Hsiang Gang in Wade-Giles)
@louisng114Ай бұрын
Can confirm as a Hongkonger.
@LilianHaseАй бұрын
Peking is not W-G. W-G transcribes 北京 as Peiching. Peking is based on the pronunciation of mandarin spoken in Nanjing (Nanking). While it is different from standard mandarin, it's the same language and is mutually intelligibly. “Southern Chinese” usually refers to non-mandarin variants like Wu, Min, and Yue.
@m3gal0z3rАй бұрын
Peking is based off Cantonese pronunciation which is prominent in the South
@bedrock6443Ай бұрын
Peking doesn’t come from wade giles, it come from the Chinese postal system. Wade Giles is kungfu taichi and kungpao chicken.
@SRMkayАй бұрын
RobWords has a great video on collective nouns for groups of animals. It turns out a lot of the more obscure ones (flamboyance of flamingos, dazzle of zebras, etc.) came from English writers in the 15th century inventing collective nouns that men would need to know and be able to use in order to be considered gentlemen. Most of those words have no attested prior history.
@michaelnewsham1412Ай бұрын
Yea, it was actually a word-game at that time. You had to think of a collective noun that recalled what the animal was (supposedly) like e.g. parliament of owls (owls are wise), a skulk of foxes (sneaky), an exaltation of larks.
@ultrahevybeatАй бұрын
Speaking of the metal dots, there is an old British band called Trojan but they wanted to look cool so they spellt it Tröjan. "Tröjan" in swedish means "The sweater" i bought their records just for that
@mitchkovacs1396Ай бұрын
In math writing we use something like a Royal We, e.g. "Taking the derivative, we see that..." or "We must be careful to define..." etc. But it's almost implied that the "we" is an inclusive "we" that compounds the author and the audience since math proofs are seen as explorations that both parties go on together
@redpanda7967Ай бұрын
That's a different concept. When you write "we" in an academic paper it usually refers to multiple people - the writer an the reader. The Royal "we" only refers to one person. "We must be careful to define..." means something different than "I must be careful to define..." But, when king Charles says "We will form a government." it means the exact same thing as "I will form a government." Please correct me if I'm wrong.
@SamuriLemonX18Ай бұрын
Yes I thought it was done because papers often have multiple authors
@oliverlemke46523 күн бұрын
@@redpanda7967Hm, Im not sure how correct this is. As far as I remember, all academic papers in Computer Science Ive ever read were written in the plural form “we”, not the singular “I”. I seem to remember I was also explicitly taught to do it this way. So even if you’re talking about work you did (not something you’re deriving together) you’d use we. Although single author papers are kinda rare nowadays anyway. But I looked up one I remembered (“Distinctive Image Features from Scale-Invariant Keypoints” by Lowe if you’re interested), and he does indeed use “we”.
@RAINBOWEXPLOSIOАй бұрын
Not only does knowing the origins of the "royal we" make that one scene from the big lebowski just a bit more funny, but i also noticed that i will use the "royal we" on accident not because of any monarchical influences but because a lot of lets play youtubers would use the word "we" to make the viewers feel more included.
@perforongo9078Ай бұрын
Or what's called an "inclusive we".
@laurencefraserАй бұрын
@@perforongo9078 Linguistically, Inclusive vs exclusive 'we' is something other languages have but English does not, where you can make a distinction between 'speaker + listener (and optionally others)' and 'speaker + others (but not the listener)'. English has, essentially 'ambiguous we', in that it doesn't make the distinction and the listener is left to guess (possibly with the help of context, body language, tone, etc) who is and is not included. Unless you're refering to a different discipline using the term differently, in which case 'yay technical dialect induced ambiguity!'. ... seriously, there are people whose actual job as interpreters is to translate between sufficiently divergant technical dialects of English (typically business trained executives vs individuals with highly specialised training in narrow (or not so narrow) technical fields who lack said business training, but sometimes other similar situaitons).
@friendlyfire786128 күн бұрын
You mean "by accident"😂😂
@tomhalla426Ай бұрын
Another fossil phrase is “hoist on his own petard”. AFAIK, a petard was a demolition charge, and hoist in the sense of blown up.
@courtneyjohnsonhaber4591Ай бұрын
"Sleight of hand" is my go to example. Or "test your mettle"
@crusatyr1452Ай бұрын
@@courtneyjohnsonhaber4591 And many people eggcorn those into "Slight of hand" and "Test your metal"
@TurtleMarcusАй бұрын
Reminds me of this exchange from the show, Community: Britta: Shouldn't have worn that petard if you didn't want to be hoisted by it. Jeff: ...What do you think the expression "hoisted by your own petard" is referencing? Britta: I guess I just assumed that in the old days a petard was a special outfit like a leotard, with a lot of fancy buckles and loops on it, and that rich people would wear them when they were feeling especially smug, but then poor people would tie a rope through one of the loops, and hoist them up a pole and then let them dangle there as punishment for being cocky. Jeff: Never look it up. Your explanation is way better.
@dr.seesaw8894Ай бұрын
The "fro" in "to and fro" is always my go to example of a fossil word!
@gabriellegeorge2648Ай бұрын
@@crusatyr1452 TIL I've been hearing/saying these phrases wrong!
@whiskeywolfgang24 күн бұрын
One interesting tidbit about the old English we see in pop culture is that the cliché "Ye" as in "Ye Olde Shoppe" never existed. It comes from the letter Thorn (which no longer is used) that was basically the "TH" sound. It just happened to look a lot like a Y. So people assumed it was Ye, when in actuality it was pronounced "The Old Shop" just like today
@puranto23Ай бұрын
I think English adjectival order is something we're never formally taught in school and yet we all have an immediate intuitive understanding of which makes learning it as a second language tricky.
@AP-cc5ymАй бұрын
I came here to say this, the average native english speaker could not explain to you why it’s a “big green dragon” as opposed to a “green big dragon” other than the second one sounds weird.
@lostcauselancer333Ай бұрын
English did use to have a formal version of “you.” It was just “you,” and “thee,” was the informal version, hence Quakers using “thee” and “thou” to stress humility.
@EnigmaticLucasАй бұрын
The informal was lost because using “thou” for the wrong person was tantamount to picking a fight with them, so people started using “you” for everyone (except God) just to be safe
@rcm926Ай бұрын
@@EnigmaticLucas everyone picking a fight with God
@ClementinesmWTFАй бұрын
As a quick note: “thou” was the nominative/subjective (ie the same class as “I”, “he”, “she”, “we”, “they”), while “thee” was the objective (ie “me”, “him”, “her”, “us”, “them”). The same goes for ye/you, but just as we dropped one form entirely, the other form was just combined to use the accusative as both the subject and object. They also both have their own possessive forms and reflexive forms just as any other pronoun: thy/thine/thyself and your/youres/youself (both of these are only approximations with modern spellings of course).
@robgronotte1Ай бұрын
My understanding is that "you" was originally only a plural pronoun, for which "ye" was the singular. Though maybe that was only in the objective case? Anyway, it would have been better if we had kept the distinction, because now it is so confusing to say "you" for both individuals and groups that awkward forms like "you all", "y'all", and "you guys" are often used as the plural.
@ClementinesmWTFАй бұрын
@@robgronotte1 “ye” was the subject form of the plural which also was eventually used in the T-V distinction for the 2nd person formal singular (see: “usted”/“ustedes” in Latin Am Spanish for a similar existing usage). “You” was the equivalent object form for the pronoun (I:me::he:him::she:her::ye:you). It does make it especially funny and strange that “you” became the catch-all since it was the objective case of the plural pronoun, but that is indeed the case.
@victorhogrefe7154Ай бұрын
There is a whole group of Yiddish and German words that have bled into English like, Gestalt, Kindergarten, School, Weltanschauung, Zeitgeist, Schadenfreude, Doppelgänger, Rucksack, Schmooze, Klutz, Kaputt, Schlep, Mensch, Kvetch, and Gesundheit.
@LeofwineАй бұрын
The word “kaputt” is an adjective and doesn't need to be capitalised. Sincerely, a German.
@DHirschАй бұрын
But many times it is possible to distinguish between words from Yiddish and words from German: you see, Yiddish is written in Hebrew letters, so its words do not have an "official" spelling in the Latin alphabet like the words in German, and usually they are written as they sound in English. By the way, the word for school in German and Yiddish is "Schule", which came to English as "Shul", which is another word for synagogue.
@FozzyBBearАй бұрын
Weltanschauung has been on the decline for decades, eclipsed by worldview.
@Warriorcats64Ай бұрын
@@Leofwine Ich glaube, deine sprache hat "das Handy". Auf Englisch ist "Handy" keine Sustantiv, sondern ein Adjektiv. Hochachtungsvoll, -Ein Typ aus den USA.
@jootersblaccatАй бұрын
@@FozzyBBear Yeah, I've never heard it in my life until now as a 16 year old, I was confused till I saw this reply lol
@Beavis-ej3nyАй бұрын
I believe the thorn symbol Þ is an old English letter meaning the TH sound. Lots of translations would replace the thorn letter with Y, which is why you see stuff like "Ye Olde” rather than "Þe Olde"
@MosoKaiserАй бұрын
And said replacement was due to the printing presses being used in England lacking type pieces for thorn, so a substitution had to be made. Y was picked because looked the most similar. A kind of similar thing is behind why the letter W is called "double U" in English, while in many other languages it's called what translates to "double V", more accurately matching what the letter actually looks like: When a character for the new "w" sound in English was needed, in the Latin alphabet in use at the time letters V and U weren't yet disctinct from one another, so a double U, i.e. VV, was chosen to represent the sound. Then by the time the V/U distinction rolled around, the name "double U" for the letter had already stuck and has remained in the language as a sort of archaic remnant.
@IlljwamhАй бұрын
One of my favorite English rules (that no English speaker is ever taught but we all intuitively understand) is the order of adjectives: opinion, size, condition, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose. So you could say, "My lovely little polished antique oval green Laotian porcelain storage basin," but never, "My oval Laotian polished little porcelain lovely storage antique green basin".
@eskipotatoАй бұрын
As someone studying linguistics at university, here's a few thing I'd point out. The 'umlaut' symbol (pronounced oom-lout, rhymes with shout) should actually be called diaeresis in English. It's known as umlaut in German since it modifies the sound of the vowel, and that vowels with it are seen as inherently separate to the vowels without it. In contrast, languages that use the double-dot as an accent marking (French, English) call it diaeresis, because it's mainly used to indicate that the two vowels are to be pronounced as separate syllables from eachother. Also, the 'backwards' acute accent is known as a grave.
@oliverlemke46523 күн бұрын
As a native German speaker, this is absolutely correct. The German alphabet is considered to have 30 letters, those being the 26 English speakers will be acquainted with, as well as ä, ö, ü, and ß. So yes, they are typically considered entirely separate letters, not variations of the respective vowels, as might be the case in some Romanic languages.
@bujlerАй бұрын
I don't know if this quite fits, but one concept that I've only just learnt about, despite using it for all of my life is the order in which we use adjectives. For instance it's a nice old brown dog, and not a brown old nice dog.
@bobbyg1068Ай бұрын
This one is interesting because it's obscure to native speakers who follow the rule intuitively, but less so to second-language learners who have to memorize it rote
@RayuazАй бұрын
I came here to comment this. It's by far the weirdest thing about english for me because (as far as I know) there's no written rule about it, it's just supposed to be intuitive.
@jaymzx0Ай бұрын
It's one of those 'you just know it' things that are difficult to explain, like German articles.
@mazterlithАй бұрын
I think the rule is that the more "fundamental" the adjective is to the noun, the closer it is to the noun. A brown dog is and presumably has always been brown, but hasn't always been old and depending upon the day might be nice.
@fornanaАй бұрын
Huh, I have never thought about this in my life. I don’t recall ever being taught it either.
@YetkhaPakoAsonАй бұрын
11:20 Wow !!! Same is true in Urdu. Higher class Nawabs, Sultans and landlords use the collective noun "Hum" and " Hamaraa" when referring to themselves instead of more common "Mein" or " Mera"
@patrickscannell637026 күн бұрын
Interestingly, Bhojpuri has fully replaced "mai" with "ham" in all speech, similar to how in English all forms of "thou" have been replaced with "you"
@erichale83827 күн бұрын
There are two forms of the double dot. When it alters the pronunciation of the vowel, it's an umlaut. When it indicates that two vowels should be pronounced separately, as in the names Noël and Zoë, it's a diaeresis
@violet_broregardeАй бұрын
Fun fact: in linguistics, these "accent marks" are all called diacritics; any mark you put over a letter is a diacritic. An accent mark is specifically marking the accented syllable of a word. Additional fun fact: tilde in Spanish just means diacritic; they call the marks on jalapeño, pingüino, and corrió tildes.
@serenusmagister76429 күн бұрын
Fun fact to complement the fun fact: following the RAE dictionary (DRAE) you can call all of those "virgulilla", although i've just seen it being used to indicate the accent of the ñ, so that's how i call it.
@TrevorGrismoreАй бұрын
My last name has undergone a few transformations over the centuries. It was Germanized from Croismare/Croixmare to Griesemer when they moved from modern-day France to Germany to avoid anti-Protestant bias in the 1500's. They moved to the colony of Pennsylvania and kept Griesemer in 1730. Then it was Anglicized from Griesemer to Grisamore around 1810-1820 when some moved into the Northwest Territories to avoid anti-German bias. Then it was simplified from Grisamore to Grismore by some branches of the family throughout the 19th century. Some members of the family use Grisamore still, and many who stayed in Pennsylvania later than the 1820's still use Griesemer. I've also found many other variations, like Grismer, Gresimer, Griesmer, and Kriesemer.
@RainyDayDanceАй бұрын
whats funny about words that use accent marks in english is that most native english speakers dont even use them when writing out the word and the meaning is still kept intact.
@vari153526 күн бұрын
2:59 the two dots here (called a diaeresis) serve the function of indicating that the two vowel sounds are pronounced separately (e.g., reëlection is re-election, not reel-ection; coöperation is co-operation, not coop-eration). another example is coëd. they serve the same function in french; without the diaeresis, naïve would be pronounced the same as nève. (when they function this way, they're called a diaeresis; when they indicate a completely separate vowel sound as in german, they're called an umlaut.) 5:46 i mean, british english still spells words like encyclopaedia, orthopaedic, oestrogen, and manoeuvre like so. it's just that the singular letters æ and œ are becoming less common. 18:46 worth mentioning that "whom" is on track to become a fossil word! we use it in "to whom it may concern", but in every other context its use is gradually fading. 21:51 this is definitely not rare. you still have people (prescriptivists) insisting on saying "[Person] and I" instead of "Me and [person]", using "whom" wherever appropriate, not ending sentences with prepositions, not starting sentences with conjunctions, not splitting infinitives, etc., despite these "rules" being naturally broken all the time by native english speakers.
@Adam-326Ай бұрын
3:48 Actually, that accent over the “a” is called a grave accent.
@mamajuana3603Ай бұрын
Its still an acute accent man...why leave this comment anyway...get off j.j.s glizzy
@theoriginalediАй бұрын
I came to say exactly this. 🙂
Ай бұрын
Merci.
@brun4775Ай бұрын
The umlaut and diaeresis are different symbols that just look the same. Über and doppelgänger have umlauts showing a vowel change. Naïve, Zoë and coöperation have diaereses showing the marked vowel is pronounced separately from the preceding one.
@daroguk8071Ай бұрын
Yes thank you, English speakers rarely get this right
@belg4mitАй бұрын
That is a contrived distinction. It would be like saying the sequences of "bass" in "My brother's bass guitar shaped like a bass (fish) is made of bass (wood)." Are different sequences of symbols because they encode different meanings.
@whytortureiswrongАй бұрын
Exactly. The umlaut (German use of ¨) actually used to be a tiny E written above the letter, which was simplified into the symbol we know today. BTW, wherever Germans cannot use this symbol, such as in URLs or email addresses, they simply add an E (ueber, doppelgaenger, etc.). The diaeresis (French use of ¨ also known as "tréma") indicates that you have to pronounce the two vowels separately: you don't pronounce Zoë "zoo", or coöpt "cooped"). The New Yorker, being a high-brow, fancy magazine, is therefore using it the way it is supposed to be used.
@brun4775Ай бұрын
@@belg4mit Not really. It's more like saying that the letter o and number 0 are different symbols, even though they often cannot be distinguished. Especially in handwriting as opposed to typed text.
@brun4775Ай бұрын
@@belg4mit Or to follow your example more closely, it would be like saying each of those are different words.
@scheck006Ай бұрын
It's really funny that the company Uber doesn't use the german dots because now that the taxi service is available in Germany, the germans pronounce it as it's written, completely unaware that the Americans were trying to use one of their words.
@haukenot3345Ай бұрын
Considering that English "über" is usually used as an emphatic (like hyper), which isn't all that common in German, it's probably for the best. "Über" would not have worked as a brand name in Germany.
@scheck006Ай бұрын
@@haukenot3345 yeah that's definitely true.
@TiberentenTVАй бұрын
@@haukenot3345 Even worse: 'über' in a transportational context has the meaning of 'via' in German, so a company name like that would be associated with making intentional detours.
@WatchVidsMakeLists11 күн бұрын
@TiberentenTV So you could travel somewhere "über Uber?" (via Uber?)
@TiberentenTV11 күн бұрын
@@WatchVidsMakeLists Not really, I'm afraid. In this case, you would say "mit Uber" ('with Uber') or "mit einem Uber-Taxi" ('with an Uber taxi'). 'Über Uber' would only work if Uber were a place.
@reillycurran8508Ай бұрын
To corroborate the fact that immigrant families will usually have at least one story of a grandparent having this happen, my grandfather was one of the last folks to enter the country through Ellis Island, and they had actually stopped the practice by then, but when he made friends in University they all had trouble understanding his name was Ibrahim and kept confusing it with the English name Abraham, and so after some deciding he decided to lean in, and my grandfather went by Abe for the rest of his long and fulfilling life. Although he had much more of a penchant for tall tales than a certain famous politician who shared the nickname.
@northierthanthouАй бұрын
I taught some ESL learners about use of "like" for reported conversations. I'm like, no one ever taught you this? And they were like, how did no one mention this before?
@jayceewedmak9524Ай бұрын
Please don't ✌ 😊
@penguinlimАй бұрын
@@jayceewedmak9524Please do 🤪✌️🤭 It's a commonplace colloquial construction. Knowing it will aid comprehension and help them sound more natural.
@jayceewedmak952427 күн бұрын
@@penguinlim no it won't. It interrupts the flow of the sentence and communicating the thought. It like interrupts the flow of the sentence and like communicating the thought like. ✌
@penguinlim27 күн бұрын
@@jayceewedmak9524 ? The "like" you're (incorrectly) mocking here isn't the one the original commenter was describing anyway. (They were describing the quotative 'like'). But knowing *either* colloquial use of "like" *will* aid in comprehension because people use both of them. Whether you like it or not, people use "like" in different ways from academia English. That's just a fact. (Irrelevant), but filler words actually are shown to improve the flow of a sentence and listener's comprehension within casual conversations. Most sociolinguists will agree on that. There is a book written by a linguistics PhD literally called "Like, Literally, Dude" about this.
@jayceewedmak952427 күн бұрын
@@penguinlim I used a simple example. I was not mocking. ✌
@bobsnow6242Ай бұрын
Least surprising thing I learned today: J.J.'s favourite magazine is the New Yorker.
@user-ze7sj4qy6qАй бұрын
most surprising thing i learned today: the new yorker spells reelection reëlection
@user-sh3cf7kd6eАй бұрын
I am a Hebrew speaker and weirdly, we use the word "amok" as a meaningful word. I had no idea it came from English. We say it differently and it sounds like an Arabic loanword.
@youssefbh830Ай бұрын
I can't think of any Arabic word that sounds similar, but according to Wiktionary & Etymonline, it came originally from Malay, then got into English and Hebrew through Portuguese.
@user-sh3cf7kd6eАй бұрын
@@youssefbh830 Yeah, probably came from English. We use the phrase "an amok run". I know it's not from Arabic, but the diffrent way it is pronounced in Hebrew sounds like Arabic.
@adamfendos3099Ай бұрын
Amuk comes from the Malay language and was introduced into English by British explorers in Southeast Asia. It means “rushing in a frenzy” or “attacking furiously”
@thematthew761Ай бұрын
It’s Malay in origin
@oliverlemke46523 күн бұрын
@@user-sh3cf7kd6eindeed very interesting, as German has the exact same expression of an “amok run”, the best translation of which is probably a mass shooting (or more generally a killing spree, typically of terroristic nature).
@GrievousRebornАй бұрын
Lauri Törni a Finnish soilder that fought for the Finnish army, the German army and then the US army had his name anglicized when he came to the US to Larry Thorne
@kentfink9509Ай бұрын
On QI, the British comedy quiz show, they claimed that Royalty used "we" because the Queen or King were direct contacts with God, and therefore speaking in behalf of the both of them.
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
That makes sense. I also think it makes the king sound like he and the country are a single entity.
@WittyUsername14Ай бұрын
How douchey
@forthrightgambitia1032Ай бұрын
For what it is worth English is not unique in this. The plural you in French (and indirectly in Spanish) developed from a royal plural used by Roman Emperors. I believe the purpose of this was that the Emperor had a conception of themselves not only as an individual person but as representing the entire state and those who form part of it.
@TiberentenTVАй бұрын
@@forthrightgambitia1032 No it was in fact a very common trait of Latin written language, especially in letters, to use the first person plural instead of the singular in order to not appear egotistic. This is called a 'pluralis auctoris' (author's plural) or 'pluralis modestiae' (plural of modesty). Over time, this fashion vanished in everyday writing, but the conservative imperial chancellery kept going with it. From there, the chancelleries of Germanic kings took it on, and so it became a stylistic tradition that survived through the Middle Ages and even right into our time. And that's the reason why the royal 'we' is exclusively used in official writings of ruling monarchs: Because those are the writings that come out of their chancelleries, which adhere to a certain formalistic style of writing that, via tradition, ties them to their historic predecessors. When kings and queens don't use their chancelleries, they also don't use the royal 'we'. By the way there's another realm in which the tradition of the 'author's plural' survived, and that's in literatur: Whenever an author of a book is turning directly to his reader, he is likely to use 'we' instead of 'I'.
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
@@TiberentenTVGonna say that, the Royal Plural even used in the Hebrew “Let’s make men…” “Elohim” …
@riversidepark4107Ай бұрын
Even more confusing is when encountering Midwest English where proper nouns have unnecessary “the”s and “s”s as in “I gotta run to the Krogers to pick up a 30-rack of the Hudephols before the Buckeyes game”
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
Oh that’s common where I live too. British people by contrast often drop “the’s” which I find weird. Like “he’s in hospital” or “it was added to museum.”
@crusatyr1452Ай бұрын
@@JJMcCullough I always saw it as being the same grammatical phenomena behind "He's at school" or "I'm at home" There's no obvious reason why we wouldn't say "He's at the school" or "I'm at my home" those dialects just do that for more places than in ours.
@rcm926Ай бұрын
Probably a holdover from the German heritage of the area, in German the different words for "the" tell you the gender and declension of the noun, and so it's important to use them in a lot of situations where its pointless in English.
@vidcas1711Ай бұрын
@@rcm926Part of it too is that there’s a lot of stores that actually have the “s” at the end if it’s named after a person, stores like Woodman’s, Kohl’s, Menards, etc. As a result, people just add the “s” to any store name that sounds correct.
@riversidepark4107Ай бұрын
Good insight! Glad I got my personalized episode of “your city is now unique”!
@romad357Ай бұрын
I was taught in school that "amok" is a Indonesian word though not specifically from which language spoken in the Indonesian archipelago. Another word commonly used in English, is née to mean "born" or "originally called". As for German vowels with umlauts, they can usually be written in English by just adding an "e" after the vowel: Göring becomes Goering, Nürnberg becomes Nuernberg, and my late German Shepherd mix's name Schäfer becomes Schaefer.
@loganbaer8990Ай бұрын
So for Elizabeth I’s speech at Tillbury, she does use both the formal “Royal We” and the informal I (my people, my army). This was used as a rhetorical device telling the army that not only did the monarchy as an institution rely upon them, but Elizabeth the individual did too.
@maxhatterschannel5140Ай бұрын
No offense, just a correction, but at 15:50 the "Köln" was pronounced very inaccurate.
@TurtleMarcusАй бұрын
It surely was an English Monoglot Moment.
@drgwdrgwАй бұрын
....and Firenze didn't come out well either.
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
He doesn’t speak German or Italian, so I think he is kind of making the point here. One can’t expect to keep the names in the original languages. It’s like when hear Germans say “Sank you” instead of “Thank you”. The point was not to pronounce it flawlessly in German or Italian.
@maxhatterschannel5140Ай бұрын
@@revertrevertz5438 When you say "It's not this; It's actually this" , then yes, you have to say it correcly
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
@@maxhatterschannel5140 Kind of, in this case he doesn’t speak German or Italian so I wouldn’t expect JJ to pronounce it “flawlessly” and yet it helps to know the Cologne isn’t named thusly in German.
@FairyCRatАй бұрын
As a French guy, I notice that our influence has been pretty big on African-American naming culture especially, with the prefixes "De-" and "La-" being the most common examples, but also many names like André. However there have also been many misspellings made along the way, and one that especially bothers me is how the common feminine ending "-ée" is often spelled as "-eé" which would look like a typo to any French person. Also what's funny is that we most commonly spell Zoé with an acute, not an umlaut (or "tréma" as we call it). Also the acute accent that goes the other way around (like in "déjà", already) is actually called a grave accent. We also still use the ethel in some common words, including fœtus and œsophage, however we just call it an "E in the O"
@dwaynekeenum1916Ай бұрын
Meh misspellings for names is cheese, like saying mohamed and muhummad and mohaimed are misspellings
@gamermapperАй бұрын
un œuf, un bœuf
@gamermapperАй бұрын
african americans for some reason also use some hebrew names even aliyah for some reason
@davidmartin8211Ай бұрын
Don't forget French came in two waves. First the Normans and then The later migration of French Protestants.
@FairyCRatАй бұрын
@@dwaynekeenum1916They're more like transliterations, given that the source language uses a completely different alphabet that doesn't map easily onto ours.
@MichalSventekАй бұрын
Growing up we were always taught (in Central Europe) that Amok means somethings like "blind rage".
@phanerosАй бұрын
A fun "advanced" topic is one that builds on your very first category: accents. You conflated two different accents at the start -- the double-dot is actually the symbol for two different accents. You identified the umlaut, which changes the quality of a vowel and shows up mostly in loanwords, most often German ones. The other usage, which appears in names like Zoë and Chloë, somewhat common spellings like naïve, and those pretentious spellings of more common words e.g. coöperate, is a diaeresis, which is used to denote that a vowel sound does not combine with its neighbours. So the ë is Zoë is a diaeresis because the e still makes an /i/ sound, but doesn't combine with the 'o', making a Zo-e kind of sound. The ü in über is an umlaut because it's a German word that is just spelled that way, and it symbolizes an entirely different sound ([ʏ] instead of [ʊ]). You can generally tell them apart as a diaeresis must appear as part of a vowel cluster to be meaningful, though it's still technically possible for an umlaut to appear there as well (e.g. äu). It's also not-uncommon for umlaut 'ö' to be written as 'oe'.
@drdalaАй бұрын
4:00 it seems jj does not like piña coladas or getting caught in the rain...
@joshbaughman6076Ай бұрын
My favorite subject, linguistics, and my favorite KZfaqr. Tis a grand day. I think one ‘high level’ that ESL learners often don’t learn is what linguist John McWhorter refers to as “back shift”. It’s the way in which we stress different parts of some multi syllabic words depending it’s grammatical category. Ie “REbel”(person) vs “reBEL”(act), REcord vs reCORD, etc… it’s a dead giveaway on people who have otherwise near perfect accent and grammar. Not an L2 learner but I think many native English speakers don’t realize just how many vowel sounds really exist in the language (12-14) as opposed to the 5 orthographic expressions we call vowel letters.
@adriannaconnor6471Ай бұрын
We pro-DUCE PRO-duce.
@TurtleMarcusАй бұрын
English also has a lot more diphthongs than other widespread European languages like German and Spanish. Actually, some American speakers seem almost incapable of pronouncing clear, non-diphthong vowels when speaking Spanish or French.
@Celestina0Ай бұрын
Similar to a word like ‘blackboard’, a board you can write on with chalk, compared to ‘black board’, a board that is black
@michaelnewsham1412Ай бұрын
Trip-ups for ESL learners: the silent 'w' in sword and silent 'l' in salmon.
@DarthCody700Ай бұрын
You left out in the anglicization section most Roman and many Greek names which we use in very much altered form. For example Octavian is Octavius, Mark Antony is Marcus Antonius, and Julius Caesar is most similar in spelling, but is actually pronounced 'Iulius Kaisar.' And similarly Plato is Platon, Alexander is Alexandros, and Aristotle is Aristotélis. The most amusing is the Roman senator Cicero, who's name is actually pronounced 'Kikero" which is relevant at the time since it was intended to be a humbling name created in reference to his father apparently having a nose that resembled a chickpea
@kyle-silverАй бұрын
The “accent grave” is also used in poetry sometimes: most high school students will come across it when they start reading Shakespeare. Words like “belovèd” or “betrothèd” might get the accent to show that the “-ed” is a full syllable and not reduced
@johntr5964Ай бұрын
We tend to hellenize a lot of foreign names in Greek, at least in older texts and translations. So George Washington would be "Geòrgios Washington" (or even "Vashington" in some translations), Benjamin Franklin is still called "Veniamin Franglinos" and so on and so forth. Today, other than cases such as Franklin's, the only place you usually see such hellenizations are with the names of monarchs, so King Charles III will be always called "Károlos" in Greek media and such. Many foreign place names are also changed in that way.
@AmogumoguАй бұрын
3:53 the second one is called a grave accent
@mamajuana3603Ай бұрын
Frig off grammar nasi i just googled it its the same thing...🤡
@aardappeleten7701Ай бұрын
Nasi lemak or nasi goreng?
@haukenot3345Ай бұрын
3:46 The "backwards slanted acute accent" is actually called a grave accent. Similarly, the dots in Zoë or those in the New Yorker are actually not an umlaut, but a diaeresis, signifying the beginning of a new syllable in words that might otherwise be mispronounced. The diaeresis usually appears in words of French origin, while umlauts occur in German and Scandinavian words.
@rcm926Ай бұрын
As someone who's into linguistics the frequency of mistakes, mispronunciations and omissions in this video hurts a lot, but I'm glad that J.J. is spreading word of the field.
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
When you make a video I am sure it will be perfect in every way :) :)
@rcm926Ай бұрын
@@JJMcCullough I wasn't trying to be rude or anything, and I enjoy your vids a lot, but I thought I needed to say that there are a lot of holes in this video (especially for one with "experts only" in the title), so many that listing them all would seem somewhat more patronising and take a bit too much time out of my day. I could give specific examples if you'd like, I'd be willing to do it if I know for sure you'll see them. Btw Google Translate has a pronunciation feature (in icon of a speaker that says "listen" if you hover over it) that you can use to get accurate pronunciations in most languages, it says the word out loud so you can easily repeat it. It's an excellent tool and I recommend it to a lot of people.
@samanteaterАй бұрын
@@rcm926Better yet, if it's a person's name you can't pronounce, just go to their Wikipedia page and click on those weird-looking symbols in parentheses after their name. (Or, if you're a real one, spend an afternoon learning IPA and you won't even have to do that much).
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
What “missoronunciations” do you see, I feel like some of them were done purposefully to make a point like the Montenegrin one. Others is because he’s speaking in English, so of course he won’t pronounce a Japanese name flawlessly.
@rcm926Ай бұрын
@@revertrevertz5438 From what I remember, umlaut should rhyme with "shout", not "shot", Köln he pronounced as Klun, wrong vowel sound and wrong placement of the 'l", Firenze he said with the wrong vowel sounds as well, Πέτρος uses omikron (ο) and not omega (ω), yet he pronounced the o as an omega, in 'Ιωάννης I believe you say it like "yo-an-nis" and not "eye-oh-nas", although I'm not sure exactly how the pronunciation was in Koine Greek, the variation that the New Testament was written in. I don't think he did it to make a point, why would he do things incorrectly and misinform people on purpose? And as I said, anyone can easily find the pronunciations of any word quite easily, if you're a content creator who makes videos you script and prepare for there are many ways to find the pronunciations, it's not like he's forced to guess.
@wernerlindorfer3693Ай бұрын
Just ask your community, patreons, discord, whatever how to pronounce certain words. Köln and Firenze were so far off...
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
I did
@tango_doggyАй бұрын
noticed too
@wernerlindorfer3693Ай бұрын
@@JJMcCullough And they said Klön instead of Köln? Strange...
@user-wz2wz4op7pАй бұрын
@@wernerlindorfer3693 Don't bother with this guy. After watching a couple of his videos, it's clear he's pretty arrogant and doesn't have much integrity.
@wooloolooo074Ай бұрын
the melyoko spygee killed me where did the g come from and whered the ć go 😭 its miloyko spyich if you are wondering how its said
@nate_stormАй бұрын
he’s consistently bad with foreign names but that was still surprisingly awful
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
I think he was making a point of how useless the original spelling to English readers 😂
@dictatorofcanada4238Ай бұрын
I think JJ exaggerates this issue, to pronounce his name somewhat well all you have to know is that “c” is pronounced “ch” at the end of south Slavic names, and most European languages pronounce “j” like the English “y”.
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
@@dictatorofcanada4238 That’s the point. To a Montenegrin it might be easy, but imagine having to learn the multiple rules of each language in order to pronounce it correctly.
@jackgir9534Ай бұрын
One of the bands, hüsker dü, used as an example of the metal umlauts phenomenon, was actually named after the ‘70s swedish board game of the same name. The umlauts in this case were not a stylistic choice but lifted directly from the title. Hüsker Dü translates to “do you remember.”
@gamermapperАй бұрын
dunno if it's wrong but it seems like nowadays all global pop culture comes from the anglosphere and even when it isn't is often in english. i really want to see the 70s back imo. when swedish or italian culture was equally as influential.
@johannesgrahn93Ай бұрын
It seems like an American board game, not a Nordic one. According to wikipedia at least. In any case the umlauts wouldn’t be lifted from Swedish, since the phrase is Norwegian or Danish (in Swedish it would be ”Kommer du ihåg”) and ü doesn’t really exist in any of the three languages apart from the odd loan word like in English (the phrase would be ”Husker du” without umlauts). Swedes use the umlaut in ä and ö and Norwegians/Danes don’t use it at all.
@erbeilas435523 күн бұрын
Husker du is norwegian for "do you remember?", not Swedish, and does not use umlauts. No Scandinavian language uses the ü, and Danish and Norwegian only use å.
@-TheLynx-Ай бұрын
I didn't know Æ was being used in English at a point, which is interesting. I always figured it was one of the "exclusive" additional letters, alongside Ø and Å that exist in Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic e.t.c. The fact that Æ is also pronounced the same in English as in the Scandics and Nordics is facinating!
@FealuinixАй бұрын
Umlaut? UMLAUT?! In German loanwords like doppelgänger or über where it changes the vowel, usually to a weaker form, yes, that's an umlaut. But in the name Zoë, and words like reëlection or coördinate, the dots establish that the vowels are pronounced separately. That's called a *diaeresis*.
@BS-vx8dgАй бұрын
17:18 "That's just how English culture be". I _always_ get at least a few smiles from a J.J. video, but this one made me literally laugh out loud.
@ZipplyZaneАй бұрын
Interesting, because I would have expected no 's.
@darkseraph2009Ай бұрын
A note, when the dots are used in a word to separate vowels such as in Zoë, they're called a dieresis. And when the acute accent is written top left to bottom right it's called a grave accent.
@HayTatsukoАй бұрын
Best metal umlaut was the absolutely ridiculous one on the "n" in "Spinal Tap".
@56independent42Ай бұрын
2:52 It's called a "diaresis" in this case because instead of activating a new vowel quality (which it still does here because English vowel-syllable placement rules but let's ignore that), it splits a dipthong into two vowels. It's like the use in Catalan and Spanish with "païs" and "vergüenza". The other uses mentioned before are called an umlaut because it changes the sound of the vowel in German. 3.49 the "acute slanting the other way" is called a "grave accent", also used in Catalan.
@mariosportsmaster7662Ай бұрын
Didn't the Real Academia Espanola 9the Spanish version of the Academie Francaise) recently come out a few years ago and say you don't have to always use the diaresis/umlaut in words that use it?
@Leck400Ай бұрын
@@mariosportsmaster7662 no, you have to mark in some way that in "vergüenza" the "u" is pronounced.
@controversialverdictАй бұрын
Apologies if this is somewhere further down in the comments, but there is a correction on the 'little dots'. Those on German loanwords are indeed umlauts, and indicate the alteration of a vowel sound (and can often be replaced by a letter 'e' following the umlauted letter) By contrast, the 'little dots' over the 'e' in Zoë and the 'i' in naïve are not umlauts, but actually a visually similar, but technically distinct diacritic called a diaeresis, and these are used when in a sequence of consecutive vowels, the one with a diaeresis should have its own distinct pronunciation from those preceding it, and that the full sequence not be confused with a digraph or a diphthong. Metal umlauts are of course nonsense, but undoubtedly cool.
@minuteman4199Ай бұрын
The funny thing about the metal umlouts is that in German words with umlouts are often diminutives or used in words to make them cute sounding, rather than menacing like the metal heads think. I'm having a hard time explaining this, it was something my German speaking wife explained to me.
@NosceresАй бұрын
A Latin textbook I ordered online just arrived in the mail today. I read the section about the relationship between Latin and other languages, with an emphasis on English, and I then log on to KZfaq and find J.J. published this video. I think it is self-evidence that we can deny it no longer: the (linguistic) Force flows through J.J.
@nakedmongoose6837Ай бұрын
One aspect of English that a lot of my fellow nonnative speakers struggle with is the fact that actors are *in* movies, but *on* tv shows. For example: Jennifer Aniston was *in* Horrible Bosses, but she was *on* Friends.
@arrunzoАй бұрын
Good example! English definitely has particularities with prepositions like "in". I would add that not all difficulties are the same between all learners of English. It depends on the original language of the learner. Spanish and Portuguese speakers are much more likely to mix up "in" and "on" in English compared to speakers of other Romance languages because they use "en" or "em" most of the time for both meanings. This is in contrast to French and Italian speakers who don't mix them up in English nearly as often because they say "dans" or "in" for "in" and "sur" or "su" for "on". When it comes to teaching English, it's important to recognize that speakers of certain languages are far more likely to have a pattern of making certain mistakes. Everyone starts from a different point.
@revangerang24 күн бұрын
I'm just guessing but the different usages might be because being in a film is similar to being in a play? And you go to a theater to watch a play or a film. Whereas we have televisions and radios in our homes, and their programs are being broadcast "on the air."
@beachboysandrewАй бұрын
I still see Æ used a fair bit in historical / Anglo-Saxon names such as Æthelred the Unready
@duodecasylabus2503Ай бұрын
4:00 Fun Fact in spanish it is called Virgulilla, and Tilde is a catchall term for diacritics
@Jane_8319Ай бұрын
Grave marks sometimes are used on the e in -ed (think “accursèd”) meant to indicate the e is pronounced. It’s usually in poetry.
@AndreDutraTVАй бұрын
In my experience, a lot of Americans write my name by putting an apostrophe after the e; “Andre’”. Instead of doing the accent mark. They managed to do it on my high school diploma😢
@KennethConnally-np9itАй бұрын
The reason the Quakers' use of "thee" was meant to be informal is that "thee/thou" *was* the informal second person pronoun in English when it was in use. "You" was the formal version, equivalent to usted in Spanish or vous in French
@basedmemerАй бұрын
Many other accent marks are used in English loan words such as the circumflex ^ as in "crème brûlée", the macron - as in Māori, å as in ångström, etc.
@ZipplyZaneАй бұрын
The general rule is that you don't need to use the accent marks if you don't use italics. I definitely usually see Maori and angstrom, though I admit I see creme brulee both ways.
@gamermapperАй бұрын
crême brulée
@tompatterson1548Ай бұрын
I use macrons on latin words when using them in reference to specific roman concepts (ie dictātor vs dictator)
@maurobraunstein9497Ай бұрын
The diaresis (dots) actually has a function in English: it marks vowels as pronounced separately. This is how "Zoë" doesn't rhyme with "Joe". The acute accent was used by Shakespeare to denote E's that were pronunced rather than silenced (in order to fit the meter), which is how "nakéd" doesn't rhyme with "baked". These uses are entirely separate from the loanwords with these accents, and both have centuries of history..
@ptittannique5621Ай бұрын
Fun and interesting video as always! Re. zoologists not using the "correct" term to refer to a group of animals -- one of my favourite remarks in the video, being a zoologist (ichthyologist) myself -- not only is this completely accurate, but the relationship between "common" and "scientific" language as a whole is a complex and fascinating one. For instance, scientifically speaking, the plural of "fish" can be "fish" or "fishes", and both are not equivalent in a scientific context. Likewise "schooling" and "shoaling" are two completely different behaviours of fishes, not regional linguistic variants. Anyway, I look forward to more!
@_Shadbolt_Ай бұрын
That's really interesting. Writing is so much about audience empathy isn't it? You just have to know what people will understand what you mean by your words, or, as often happens in academic writing, spend half the paper defining your terms before you begin haha.
@jaseernestАй бұрын
My favourite obscure fact about the English language is that it's only 99.99% gender neutral because boats are always referred to with feminine pronouns. I.e. "The Titanic was the largest ship in the world at the time of HER sinking." It always surprises foreigners (and sometimes natives) when I tell them.
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
Oh dang that’s a great one I should have included
@JJMcCulloughАй бұрын
Countries, too. I remember my high school history teacher used to talk about Canada “expanding her borders” and things like that.
@jaseernestАй бұрын
@@JJMcCullough countries being feminine is less common these days but it still seems to be the rule for boats in news articles, online encyclopedias, etc.
@EnigmaticLucasАй бұрын
What’s even weirder is that back when English had actual grammatical gender, boats were neuter
@arrunzoАй бұрын
Is that really mandatory, though? I always thought it was optional, like it was a figure of speech, not that "she" and "her" were literally the pronouns you were supposed to use. I mean, do they write in official documents about countries and ships "she" and "her"? It would be news to me if it were that common.
@MrEdman4Ай бұрын
“Peking” is a French transliteration, the change to “Beijing” became popular as English took global prominence. Also the romanization standard changed
@adanactnomew7085Ай бұрын
I have two that you've missed. The first is words that can be spelt incorrectly, correctly, only in specific contexts. Drive Thru. Movie Tonite (that aren't slangy). The other is 'Headline English', the super condensed language you'll see in headlines or signage.
@Celestina0Ай бұрын
Headline language can lead to funny misreadings… “N.J Judge to rule on nude beach”
@revertrevertz5438Ай бұрын
@@Celestina0I recalled this one form the 80’s: “British Left Wafers on the Falklands” 😂
@aaronmeko3894Ай бұрын
Actually in English the two dots are called Diaeresis and indicate that the vowels in a dipthong are to be pronounced separately. For Zoë it's telling you it's pronounced Zo-ey instead of Zo (like how you'd pronounce the oe in Oboe). A dipthongs are combinations of two vowels in English - he kind of brushes past them with ae and oe in this vid, but they are real parts of speech in lots of languages.
@brun4775Ай бұрын
Diaereses are actually different from diphthongs, which have nothing to do with spelling but vowel sounds. Both the 'o' at the start of oboe and the 'oe' at the end are diphthongs because the character of vowels changes as it is spoken. In both cases the vowel starts with an 'o' sounds but ends closer to a 'u'. Compare the start of oboe with the start of obstruct. Oboe has a diphthong but obstruct doesn't. Diaeresis means that the marked vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable to the vowel before it.
@patrickchuan4550Ай бұрын
"cannot be literally translated or used in any other context" seems like a valid reason for introducing a new word into the vocabulary.
@GAISENSEАй бұрын
Love the Katamari reference ❤ As you probably know, the use of Royal 'we' is just a translation of his equally pompous royal way of speech in Japanese.
@mebammeАй бұрын
As a non-native, I've never really internalized why (and when) you leave out the verb in sentences like "This page intentionally left blank" or "This message brought to you by".
@adanactnomew7085Ай бұрын
You can think that theres a silent comma there.
@brun4775Ай бұрын
You can’t. Neither of these examples are sentences.
@d-man4485Ай бұрын
I don’t think this is really that big a deal, my brain inserted “is” into both of those sentences when I read them in my head (native here)😅
@StephanieJeanneАй бұрын
It's usually used as a sort of formal or authoritative voice in writing. That "This page intentionally left blank" on documents shows that an institution like a bank or college is telling you something. The second one is an announcement by a corporate entity such as a TV station. I hope that helps.😊
@kirkkermanАй бұрын
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@psi_maeАй бұрын
2:37 that is probably the most “Zesty” thing JJ ever said in one of these videos
@d_cave486Ай бұрын
JJ is forty, he won't know what that means😆
@TildeSoundsАй бұрын
@@d_cave486he seems like hed get a kick out of learning about it tho