Sideblog dedicated to languages! Also: linguistics, glottology, etymology, phonology, philology, literary analysis of foreign languages, and some more topics. Main blog is @erlann. I speak Italian (native), English (C2), German (B2), French (A1). So I'm currently working on strengthening German and learning French. I like getting exposed to Icelandic, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, as I plan on learning some of these in the future. I also speak my hometown's dialect and understand neighboring ones, and Latin. "Itôŝer" means "languages" in a conlang I created some time ago for a novel.
i looooove learning a new language and slowly realizing that i'm starting to understand it more and more. like i'll be watching a movie, an anime or a series in that language and realizing that i recognize way more words than two months ago, that i now understand the order in which these words are placed, that i now know enough about this culture to know where this saying is from ; some days later i understand a sentence without reading the subtitles, i randomly find a post in this language on the internet and i understand what it means... i don't know how to explain this, it just feels like a new world is slowly opening up to you and it's so exciting, you know ?
The word foreign is etymologically related to door.
Foreign comes from Latin forānus (‘outsider’), a derivative of forīs (‘outside’). It got its silent g because people believed it had something to do with reign – which it doesn’t. English door is a distant cousin of forīs.
Within Germanic, it’s related to German Tür and Swedish dörr, but these do stem from slightly different Proto-Germanic words. My infographic tells you more.
As somebody whose name contains an Umlaut, it always makes me mad when Americans people who don’t use a German keyboard layout just leave out the dots. That is not my name. :(
correct:
ä = ae
ö = oe
ü = ue
(and ß = ss)
INCORRECT:
ä = a
ö = o
ü = u
Leaving out the dots can actually change the meaning of words. Examples:
schwül: muggy, sticky
schwul: gay [homosexual]
ächten: to outlaw
achten: to regard/respect sb./sth.
schön: beautiful
schon: already, yet
Not typing the dots in Finnish also often changes the meaning of words, however how you should type when you can't use the dots is the opposite in Finnish.
correct:
ä = a
ö = o
INCORRET
ä = ae
ö = oe
The Finnish ä/ö are not grammatically umlauts.
For example haen and hän are two separate, unrelated words, former meaning "I retrieve", latter meaning both "she" and "he".
So if you need to type the name Väinö, it's infinitely better to type Vaino (even though this does change the meaning from "calm spot of water" to "persecution") than Vaeinoe which is complete gibberish and difficult to pronounce. It looks even worse when there are long vowels, such as in the surname Jääskeläinen. Do not type Jaeaeskelaeinen, type Jaaskelainen.
Some other exmaples:
hellä: gentle
hella: stove
Häme: the name of a Finnish region
hame: skirt
kökkö: crappy, poor
kokko: bonfire
mää: the sound sheep make, (dialectal) I
maa: ground, country
sää: weather
saa: receives
säde: ray
sade: rain
tälli: a punch
talli: a stable
language learning is such a great hobby for nosy bitches who want to find out. like yes I want to know what people in every corner of the world are talking about and I want to hear it firsthand
P-Celtic and Q-Celtic - How Does The Theory Fit In?
We finally get onto a wholly linguistic conversation that I find oddly fascinating. Truly, learning about language and how we believe it developed is such an interesting concept.
There are two main theories in Celtic language distribution and the ways it branched off.
The first is the Insular/Continental theory. Scholars suggest that the main distinction between the different Celtic languages derives from a massive difference between Continental Celtic language and Insular Celtic. To them, the Goidelic and Brittonic languages only developed once the Insular Celts had split off from the Continent and arrived in Great Britain. This forms a very rigid, structured tree that has a set linguistic evolution
PIE < Common Celtic < Continental Celtic < Insular Celtic < Brittonic and Goidelic
It's pretty straight forward. I don't think there is much I can add to that conversation as it favours a direct evolution of language that you can follow like a family tree.
But it is the second theory that we'll be talking about in detail today.
The P/Q Celtic Hypotheses
At some point in the study of Celtic linguistics and etymology, the theory was put forward of a new way of examining how and why the Celtic language branches off the way it does.
Scholars noted that the main, core difference revolved around the use of the specific sound in the languages.
In Proto-Celtic, the *kw is a hard sound found in a lot of their words. It is typically put down in written form as /C/ or /Q/.
Q-Celtic languages are the languages that kept this *kw format in their language. P-Celtic, on the other hand, moved away from *kw and developed a /P/ sound in their language.
Whilst not the only major difference in Celtic etymological evolution, it is the one we have used most to differentiate between the languages and where they might have evolved from.
P-Celtic Languages are:
Welsh
Cornish
Breton
Lepontic
Noric (?)
Gaulish
Q-Celtic Languages are:
Irish
Scottish Gaelic
Manx
Celtiberian
Gallaecian
It's insane how languages so far apart can remain so similar. In the P/Q Celtic theory, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was actually Gaelic. The idea has its upsides, but also its downsides.
There is of course, the question in hand. Why did the Gaelic languages have such a strong similarity to Hispano-Celtic? How did they evolve to be similar?
This is where some interesting information from Irish Mythology comes in handy. Because its genuinly astounding that we can find links so early in time.
According to Irish Mythos, the island itself was invaded by six different races over time. The mythos is largely Christianised now, but it is the second, third and final race that invade Ireland that interests me.
The races of the Parthalon, Nemed and Milesians invade Ireland centuries apart, but all have one thing in common. They were said to have arrived from the Iberian Peninsula. The Milesians specifically are representations of the Irish people, and are the Gaels that became the ancestors of all Irish living on earth.
This is attested to in two main texts. The 9th Century AD text Historia Brittonum is a seemingly anonymous work of texts that discuss the three Iberian settlers' groups. The Parthalon all die of plague in Ireland, the Nemed are driven from the island by the Fomorians and return to Iberia. But the Milesians overcome the Tuatha De Danann and maintain sovereignty over Ireland.
Fun Fact: Historia Brittonum is considered the earliest attestedd mention of King Arthur! Though some believe Aneirin's Y Gododdin, estimated at potentially the 9th Century AD, may actually be the real first mention.
The second text that mentions Iberians settling Ireland is Lebor Gabála Érenn. It is allegedly an ancient history of the founding of Ireland and was compiled in the 11th Century. This one is heavily rooted in Christian texts, as it stems from Adam and states a Scythian king is the forebearer of all Gaels. It includes the languages forming from the Tower of Babel, and that a man named Goidel Glas crafted the Goidelic language. The Goidels spend 440 years wandering the earth after leaving Egypt during the Exodus.
An exile called Mil and his followers reach Iberia and conquer it, building the city of Brigantia. He has a large tower built, from which his son Ith stands atop and glimpses Ireland in the distance. Ith sails to Ireland with his men and meets the three Kings of Ireland. At some point Ith is killed and his men return to Iberia and plot their revenge. They fight the Tuatha De Danann and eventually come to terms, with the Milesians taking the world above (Ireland) and the Tuatha De Danann taking the world below (Irish Otherworld).
I'm aware I've just went on a mythological rant there, but the fact that 9th and 11th Century writers believe the Irish stemmed from the Iberians is very fascinating when you look at P/Q Celtic theory. The Celtic languages in Iberia were Q-Celtic alongside Goidelic. Makes you wonder just how much our ancestors were able to understand about these similarities? Is it indeed possible that Iberians settled Ireland and gave rise to the Goidelic languages we see spoken today?
One of the best examples I can give you is the word used to denote 'son of' in Gaelic vs Brittonic.
In Scotland and Ireland, we know *mac means 'son'. Surnames like McCarthy or MacLeod are prevalent and denote a patronymic society.
In Welsh and Cornish, we have *map or *mab. It was often contracted to *ap, but carried the same meaning of 'son of'. So we get Owain ap Gruffydd and Dafydd ap Gwilym.
The P/Q difference is clear here. And it pops up the more you research into the etymology of Celtic words.
This was a fun, if slightly shorter article to write. And its always a bit of a thrill for me when Celtic mythos and Celtic linguistics combine to form plausible theories, even if some of them are a bit of a stretch.
Remember: I'm not some attested theorist or anything close to a recognised Celtic researcher or expert. I'm just a young woman who enjoys deep diving into a pan-culture I get really excited about and using the information I have to try and discern my own theories about things to use for my novel work.
You know the meme where you go "the name of [noun with a diminutive] implies the existence of [a hypothetical HUGE form of same thing, but without the diminutive]" like "existence of dorito implies the existence of THE DORO" and it's a huge-ass corn chip the size of a wheel of cheese?
Well, in finnish, the word for moth is "yökkönen", from "yö" (night), the suffix "-kko/kkö" which has many purposes but one of them is to change any word into "person involved with doing something with the root word", and the dininutive "-nen". So the name of moth is "little night creature".
But coming back to the diminutive meme, the existence of yökkönen would imply the existence of yökkö, the big (or at least medium-sized, or non-small) night creature. Through a happenstance completely unrelated to moths or other insects, "yökkö" is the finnish vernacular word for a night shift nurse.
Timeline of the evolution of the French language from its birth to the modern era
→ Before 58 BC, Gaul had around 10 million inhabitants who mainly spoke the Gaulish language, made up of Celtic dialects.
→ From 58 to 50 BC, Gaul was invaded by Roman armies under Julius Caesar.
→ From the invasion to the 5th century, Gaulish dialects and Classical Latin, but above all Vulgar Latin, coexisted in Gaul, and the reality for most Gauls was bilingualism.
→ From the 5th to the 9th century, Gallo-Romance gradually emerged from the Vulgar Latin spoken in northern Gaul through successive linguistic changes. This very early form of French gave rise to the oldest known text attesting to the use of French: The Strasbourg Oaths, a military oath between Charles the Bald and Louis the German.
→ From the 9th to the 13th century, Old French (also called roman, romanz, or romance) spread across Europe and beyond, influencing—and being influenced by—many other languages and cultures such as English, Latin, Arabic, Scandinavian languages, Italian, etc.
→ From the 14th to the 15th century, there was a transitional language between Old and Modern French: Middle French. These centuries were marked by major upheavals. The 14th century was characterized by the Black Death (plague) and the Hundred Years’ War, which led to the disorganization of institutions.
→ From the 16th to the 18th century, the Renaissance gave rise to Classical French, which borrowed words from Greek, Italian, and Spanish. The authors of La Pléiade also created new word forms (for example through suffixation and prefixation).
→ In 1539, Francis I signed the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, whose Articles 110 and 111 imposed French as the language of law and administration.
Article 110: In order to prevent any doubt regarding the understanding of the rulings of our sovereign courts, we wish and order that they be made and written so clearly that there may be no ambiguity or uncertainty, nor any need for interpretation.
Article 111: We therefore wish that all rulings and all other legal proceedings be pronounced, recorded, and delivered to the parties in the French mother tongue and not otherwise.
This measure thus made French the language of the State, but it was not directed against local spoken varieties—only against Church Latin. At that time, French was spoken mainly in Paris and among the aristocratic classes of northern France.
→ That same year, the first French–Latin Dictionary, by Robert Estienne, was published. Thanks to the invention of the printing press, there arose a need to codify the language, and grammarians, lexicographers, language theorists, and linguists gained importance.
→ In 1631, Cardinal Richelieu commissioned Théophraste Renaudot (a French physician, philanthropist, and journalist) to create the first French-language written press in Paris: La Gazette.
→ In 1635, Richelieu noticed that nine writers regularly met in Paris to discuss matters of language. In order to support them—but also to supervise and control them—the cardinal founded the Académie française (the French Academy), a cultural institution whose mission is to “contribute, on a non-profit basis, to the improvement and influence of literature.”
→ In 1694, the first Dictionary of the French Language by the Académie française was published, having been commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu.
→ May 1st, 1789, marks the beginning of the French Revolution with the first Estates-General, which led the Third Estate (the common people) to revolt against the nobility.
→ The Revolution went beyond the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, as the Jacobins imposed French as the “universal language of the Enlightenment”, and therefore as the mandatory mother tongue for all. The use of patois and dialects then became synonymous with “social regression”, seen as remnants of the Ancien Régime, just like the use of Latin.
→ In 1794, Abbé Grégoire presided over a major investigation whose report, titled Report on the Necessity and the Means to Annihilate Patois and Universalize the Use of the French Language (or Grégoire Report), concluded in favor of eradicating patois in favor of French. Through this action, the abbé sought to unify the people and facilitate the spread of knowledge. From that point on, French was taught in schools, but patois did not disappear so easily.
→ November 9, 1799, marks the end of the French Revolution with Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état, which established the Consulate, an authoritarian regime under his control.
→ In the 19th century, the Romantics opposed Classical French. In order to enrich their works, they used both “noble” words and “low” or colloquial ones.
→ At the end of the 19th century, Realist writers adopted new vocabulary resulting from the Industrial Revolution(transportation terms such as tunnel, rail, wagon, tender, tramway, steamer; medical terms such as analgesic, hydrotherapy, homeopathy, etc.). 80% of people still spoke their local patois in everyday situations.
→ In the 20th century, the advent of new technologies (such as radio, airplanes, automobiles, and trams) led to a movement toward the standardization of French. People now wanted to understand one another from region to region. Patois came to be used mainly by older generations.
→ During the First World War, soldiers from France and its colonies were sent all over the world and brought together in military units. This mixing of populations completed the disappearance of patois in favor of the French language.
→ On January 7, 1972, the French government enacted Decree No. 72-9 on the enrichment of the French language, providing for the creation of ministerial terminology commissions to expand French vocabulary. This was a reaction to the growing use of English vocabulary due to globalization and the Internet (e.g., star, scooter, live, interviewer, click, etc.).
→ On August 4, 1994, following the 1972 law, the so-called Toubon Law was enacted, aiming to impose the use of French in many areas (signage, work, education, etc.), particularly in public services.
→ In 1990, the Académie française and Francophone institutions published the 1990 report on spelling reforms (e.g., removal of hyphens in certain words, removal of the circumflex accent on i and u except in certain cases, etc.). Although officially recommended, it was not until 2008 that these changes were clearly encouraged in education in France.
notes ─────── ❖ ───────
This timeline was originally written in French and even though I tried my very best on the translation, there might still be some small errors or some things that are not comprehensible when translated into English. If you come across these difficulties when reading, please tell me so I can edit the post !!
I also want to clarify that this timeline is a very condensed version of the history and that obviously some details are missing, I only included what I thought was important and what I wanted to remember. Also keep in mind that what I, a 15 year old French student, and you think is important or interesting might differ, so you might want to look into it yourself if you want more detail and see more of the parallels between language and the political history of France.
My sources are Wikipedia, Alloprof, my own history and French textbooks and texts of law especially for the last section.
If, like me, you're interested in this topic feel free to talk to me about it, my comments and dms are always open for interesting conversations !
Not to be rhe ten millionth person to say “USAmerican President Donald Trump Is An Incoherent Public Speaker Whose Train Of Thought Can Be Best Described As Scat Jazz” but I just remembered that when he talks at international events it is several dozen people’s job to translate what he’s saying and what he intends to say to world leaders in real time
If anyone reading this isn’t fluent enough in English to understand the sentences that man says, please know that he has essentially mixed a number of adjectives and topics together in a hat and is pulling them out at random like a horrible children’s game
Like that waxy jaundiced bitch will straight up be like “J'étais sur internet l'autre jour – internet, la plus grande invention américaine. Et la Chine a “internet aussi. Pas un bon internet, pas comme le mien, j'ai un internet formidable. Les gens me disent : « Donald, ton internet est génial ! » On adore l'internet de Donald. Mais la Chine… Chine, Chine, Chine… Vous savez qu'ils mangent des oiseaux ? C'est terrible. J'adore les oiseaux. La Chine mange des oiseaux. Pas comme nous. Pas comme mes oiseaux. Mais vous savez, c'est comme ça, et c'est terrible. Mais voilà ce que je vais faire : je vais sauver les oiseaux. Je vais sauver internet et sauver les oiseaux. Tous ces magnifiques oiseaux. Pour l'Amérique. Et la Chine va nous détester pour ça. Ils vont nous détester parce qu'on est les meilleurs sur oiseaux”. And people will lose their minds
International translators have had this problem for A While - if they *don't* clean up what he says to sound coherent, they look like they're doing a bad job.
Explore Trump translation challenges, tips for interpreters, and 2025 strategies for accurate political translation and Trumpslation success
There was a scandal in Poland because one translator decided to translate him accurately, tone, vocabulary level and word salad tangents and all. Polish conservatives who don't speak English and previously only heard smoothed out translations that sounded coherent and used big words were up in arms about how the translator was "inserting her political agenda", "mocking him", "exaggerating", "purposefully trying to make him look bad" and "incredibly unprofessional". I listened to the translation in question. It was literally just accurate.
The German live interpreter for Trump's inauguration speech went viral after going "HOW LONG DO YOU WANT THIS SHIT TO GO ON???" in the middle of translating his speech.
All the steps of learning a language are easy but the problem is you have to do it over and over and over again and over again and over again and your brain needs time to process and you never quite stop feeling like you’re a bit stupid and you can do it you know you can because everyone can do it eventually but merciful god above, does it take a long time and there’s no true endpoint really because the kicker is that you’re never done learning your native language either so there’s no end point there’s just living until you die.
