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Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog

Archive for May, 2014

Longest two-word sentence?

Wednesday, May 28th, 2014

Here is a sentence in Dutch composed of 10 instances of the word bergen which someone identified only as Adriaan contributed to our Dutch Tongue-twister page.

Als bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen, bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen.
When lots of mountains deposit lots of mountains, lots of mountains deposit lots of mountains.

I don’t speak Dutch, but it seems at least to be grammatical to my German ear if bergen can mean “lots of” and “deposit”.

Can any of yall confirm my inclination? Is it grammatical?

Maps of All the World’s Languages

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

Here are maps of where all the world’s languages are spoken: http://www.muturzikin.com/

Pope Hilarius

Friday, May 2nd, 2014

George Kovac wrote today in response to our Good Word hilarious, “Bob, and of course, there was Pope Hilarius, who reigned from 461 to 468. You cannot make up material this good.”

“I was disappointed the current Pope chose ‘Francis’ instead of reaching back to revive this name, so that when someone says, ‘This new pope is kind’, I could respond, ‘Yes, he’s Hilarius 2.'”

French Pronunciation

Thursday, May 1st, 2014

Jan Collins raised a question today about French which all French learners (and some speakers) might be interested in:

“Can you please tell me when people stopped pronouncing final consonants in French? When I see the historical words I never know how they would have been spoken.”

In the Early Modern French Period, which began about 1700, French passed through an “open syllable” stage, when all syllables had to end on a vowel and could not end on a consonant. That is why those ending on consonant sounds, always are spelled with a “silent e”, e.g. l’homme, pronounced [lOm], because the [e] at one time was pronounced, and still is in some songs.

However, few words—only new ones—end on consonants that are pronounced; otherwise they are silent unless they appear before a word beginning with a vowel:

  • muet [mye] “mute”
  • nez [ne] “nose”
  • mot [mo] “word”

French opened all the syllables ending on nasal consonants, [n, m], by nasalizing the vowel. That is why French has nasal vowels, e.g. temps [tã] “time”, grand [gRã] “large”.