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• Post #4380719

  The Germanic ancestor of ‘thing’ and its cognates, such as German ‘Ding’ and Swedish ‘ting’, meant “folk assembly”. The Latin ancestor of the Romance words for “thing”, such as French ‘chose’ and Spanish ‘cosa’, meant “legal case”. Both the Germanic and the Latin word underwent a long series of meaning shifts resulting in the modern meanings “matter; thing”. My infographic shows how.

• Post #4361825

  Nu de media geen genoeg krijgen van Ceuta, is het aardig om stil te staan bij de uitspraak. De Spaanse uitspraak kun je benaderen met 'Seeuwta' en 'Theeuwta' (met de Engelse th van 'thick'). De uitspraak 'Seejoeta' die je continu hoort (laat staan 'Koejoeta'), lijkt er in de verste verte niet op.

• Post #4113069

  It won’t be too big of a surprise that the words ‘of’ and ‘off’ come from the same Old English word: ‘of’. However, if we go further back in time, it turns out they’re part of a huge word family that includes ‘after’, ‘ebb’, German ‘von’ (“of”), ‘aber’ (“but”), and Ancient Greek ‘apó’ (“away from”). All of these words can be traced back to the same Proto-Indo-European ancestor. Click my new infographic to explore this family:

• Post #4028867

  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 words do stem from slightly different Proto-Germanic words. My infographic tells you more.

• Post #3763195

  The Spanish way of saying “from where” is ‘de donde’. However, to speakers living a thousand years ago, that would’ve meant “from from from where”. In Old Spanish, “from where” was simply ‘onde’, a descendant of Latin ‘unde’. However, this word would end up getting reinforced by ‘de’ (“from”) twice because of an interesting series of ambiguities. Click my new infographic to see how it happened.

• Post #3627723

  Naarstig op zoek naar winterse woorden die met sw- beginnen, liet ik me tegen mijn principes in verleiden om het even aan Google AI te vragen. Ach, we hebben in ieder geval weer gelachen.

• Post #3606880

  Spanish ‘usted’ and Portuguese ‘você’, words meaning “you”, don’t look much alike, but they have the same origin: Latin ‘vostram mercēdem’, literally “your mercy”. Click my new graphic to learn how ‘vostram mercēdem’, a reverential way of addressing someone indirectly, gradually became the pronouns ‘você’, ‘usted’, and Catalan ‘vostè’ – a fascinating history in which no Arabic was involved, contrary to a persistent myth.

• Post #3428320

  The word ‘quick’ has many surprising relatives. It’s related to ‘vital’, ‘vivid’, and Spanish ‘vivir’ (to live) via Latin, and to ‘bio-‘ and ‘zoo’ via Ancient Greek. Germanic relatives include Dutch ‘kweken’ (to grow; to foster) and German ‘keck’ (sassy). Zoom in on my new infographic to learn how these words are related:

• Post #3295946

  The Spanish words ‘primavera’ (spring) and ‘verano’ (summer) both derive from Latin ‘vēr’ (spring). Originally, ‘primavera’ was early spring, while ‘verano’ was late spring. However, their meanings shifted to later in the year, and ‘estío’, the original word for summer, was dethroned. That’s not the only interesting story the Romance words for the seasons have to tell. Click my new infographic to learn all about the four seasons in the five largest Romance languages.

• Post #3171036

  The word ‘town’ shares its origin with German ‘Zaun’ (fence) and Dutch ‘tuin’ (garden), even though their forms and meanings are quite different. They all stem form Proto-Germanic *tūnan, whose meaning is reconstructed as “fenced area”. Over the course of 2000 years, they’ve grown apart. My new graphic shows nine unexpected but true cognates in English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and Swedish. 1/

• Post #3036535

  Op 20 juni geef ik tijdens de Dag van Rome 2026 een lezing over het oudste taalfoutenlijstje van Italië: de Appendix Probi. In taalfoutenlijstjes op internet worden allerlei woordvarianten aan de schandpaal genageld: ‘Je moet proprio zeggen, niet propio’, volgens Italiaanse lijstjes. Verandering wordt vaak gezien als verloedering, omdat mensen gewend zijn om normatief naar taal te kijken: ze denken in termen van ‘goed’ en ‘fout’. Zulke taalklachten zijn van alle tijden. Zo’n 1600 ... 1/

• Post #3036534

  Over the past few days, I’ve created two infographics on early Germanic loanwords from Latin: one on construction, with words such as ‘kitchen’ and ‘street’, and one on food, with ‘cheese’, ‘butter’ and others. Today, I’m wrapping up the trilogy with an infographic on utensils. ‘Fork’, ‘pan’, ‘sack’, ‘mint’ and ‘chest’ – they were all borrowed into Proto-West Germanic, the ancestor of English, when the Romans controlled large parts of north-western Europe during the early first millennium AD.

• Post #2914280

  After my infographic about words such as ‘wall’, ‘street’, and ‘kitchen’, which are very early Germanic borrowings from Latin, here’s a second one, this time about food. While words such as ‘carnivore’, ‘cereal’, and ‘edible’ are late and obvious borrowings from Latin, words such as ‘cheese’, ‘pear’, and ‘wine’ were adopted from that language 2000-1500 years ago, when the Romans occupied the parts of Europe where the ancestor of English was spoken. Next episode: utensils! 1/

• Post #2849840

  ‘Probably’ is often pronounced /probly/. The syllable ‘ba’ is deleted because it’s followed by another syllable starting with a b. This is called haplology – or haplogy if you will. Some people have an issue with /probly/, but what they don’t know is that their beloved form ‘probably’ is the result of haplology too: in Middle English, it was ‘probablely’. Haplology can be found in all ages and places. My new infographic shows cases from English, Latin, French, Greek, German, and Portuguese.

• Post #2849839

  Words such as 'museum', 'formula' and 'ratio' instantly give away their Latin origin, but did you know 'wall', 'street', and 'kitchen' come from Latin too? They were borrowed during the Roman occupation of the part of Europe where Proto-West Germanic was spoken, the ancestor of English and its West Germanic sister languages. Today’s infographic about construction terms shows six of these early borr...

• Post #2386489

  The Spanish word for a river is ‘río’. ‘Río’ and ‘river’ – these must be etymologically related, mustn’t they? No! They’re as unrelated as can be. Surprisingly, ‘río’ is related to ‘rival’ and ‘derive’. They come from a Latin word for “stream”. ‘River’, on the other hand, is related to ‘riparian’ and ‘arrive’. These words derive from a Latin word meaning “shore, bank”. My new infographic tells you the story of all of these words.

• Post #2360601

  The word ‘queen’ is distantly related to the first part of ‘gynaecology’ and the second part of ‘misogyny’. It’s also related to Norwegian ‘kone’ (wife) and ‘kvinne’ (woman), but they’re not full cognates. While ‘queen’ comes from Proto-Germanic *kwēniz (wife), ‘kone’ and ‘kvinne’ stem from *kwenōn (woman). In English, this became the disparaging – and now archaic – word ‘quean’ (slʋt).

• Post #1926026

  The word ‘ma'am/madam’ is part of a huge word family. It contains the same root as ‘dame’, ‘damsel’, ‘domain’, ‘to dominate’, ‘danger’, ‘dome’, and ‘despot’. In the Romance languages, it’s related to Spanish ‘don’ (Mr.), French ‘dimanche’ (Sunday), and Italian ‘duomo’ (cathedral). All of these words were built on the foundations of a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “house”. Click my new infographic to learn more:

• Post #1781585

  The word ‘king’ has a fascinating story to tell. Its Proto-Germanic ancestor *kuningaz was derived from the word *kunjan, which became English ‘kin’. A king was a descendant of royal or divine kin. The word *kunjan, in turn, stemmed from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to produce”. This root, through Latin and Greek, gave us many words, including ‘genre’, ‘nature’, ‘genital’, ‘genesis’, ‘pregnant’, and ‘gonorrhea’. Zoom in on my new graphic to learn more: 1/

• Post #1772261

  Voor een tekstje voor kinderen in groep 3 zat ik te worstelen met eenlettergrepige woorden met een f. Ik vermijd LLM's als de pest, maar ik dacht: ach, laat ik toch maar eens de AI-modus van Google proberen. Die begon te hallucineren als een papegaai aan de tramadol. Ziehier:

• Post #1587311

  The English word ‘fabric’ is a notorious false friend of Spanish ‘fábrica’: a fabric is a material, while a fábrica is a factory. However, these words are real cognates: they stem from the same Latin word: ‘fabrica’. This Latin word even produced ‘forge’. Click to learn all about these words. For those interested in how ‘fabrica’ could ever evolve into words such as ‘forge’, I described the sound changes step by step.

• Post #1437700

  It will come as no surprise that ‘to live’ is etymologically related to ‘life’ and ‘alive’. However, these words are also related to ‘to leave’ and German ‘bleiben’ (“to stay”), which used to have an English cognate: ‘to belive’. Even ‘lipo-’ in ‘liposuction’ is related, as are the parts ‘-lev-’ and ‘-lv-’ of the numerals ‘eleven’ and ‘twelve’. All of these words stem from a common Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to stick”. Click my new graphic to learn all about this word family:

• Post #1437698

  Dubbel goed nieuws! 🥳 Vandaag heb ik twee boekcontracten getekend bij Ambo/Anthos - een daarvan met Frans van der Vleuten als schrijfcompagnon. Dit najaar verschijnt er een soloboek van mij vol met wetenswaardigheden over winterse woorden. Wist je bijvoorbeeld dat ons Nederlandse woord 'schaats' uit Noord-Frankrijk komt, dat 'rendier' niks met 'rennen' te maken heeft en dat ... 1/

• Post #1396071

  The Old English word for a flower was ‘blōsma’. While this word survived, becoming modern ‘blossom’, it gave up part of its meaning to a French loanword. Interestingly though, this loanword, spelled both ‘flour’ and ‘flower’ in Middle English, stems from the same root as ‘blossom’. Moreover, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the spelling variants ‘flour’ and ‘flower’ were differentiated. Each was assigned one of the meanings: “finest part of ground grain” versus “blossom of a plant”.

• Post #947789

  Eggs are oval. The word ‘egg’ is even etymologically related to ‘oval’. ‘Oval’ comes from Latin ‘ōvālis’ (egg-shaped), a derivative of ‘ōvum’ (egg), the ancestor of Spanish ‘huevo’, French ‘œuf’ and others. Latin ‘ōvum’, in turn, was a distant cousin of Germanic *ajjan, the ancestor of Old Norse ‘egg’. This word was borrowed into Middle English and gradually displaced the native word ‘ey’. Click my new infographic graphic to learn more. See post 2 for an anecdote on ‘eggs’ and ‘eyren’.

• Post #870036

  Despite their similar meaning and appearance, the verbs ‘to search’ and ‘to seek’ don’t have any etymological relationship whatsoever. ‘To seek’ comes straight from the Proto-Germanic ancestor of English, while ‘to search’ was borrowed from a French word related to ‘circle’. Searching is going around looking for something. Click my new infographic to learn all about these word families. ‘To seek’ has the highly irregular past tense ‘sought’. Why does the k become a silent gh? And why ... 1/

• Post #807636

  Vrijdag om 13.00 uur geef ik bij Bibliotheek Rijswijk een quiz-lezing over mijn boek 'Woord voor woord: de verleden tijd van taal'. Ik neem je mee in de bijzondere herkomst van alledaagse woorden. Win je de quiz, dan ga je naar huis met het boek! https://bibliotheekaandevliet.op-shop.nl/210/lezing-quiz-de-verleden-tijd-van-taal

• Post #807635

  The English word ‘rich’ is related to ‘regal’ and ‘royal’. ‘Rich’ derives from a Proto-Germanic borrowing of *rīxs, the Proto-Celtic cognate of Latin ‘rēx’, meaning “king”. The meaning “wealthy” evolved from “powerful; kingly”. Latin ‘rēx’, in turn, is the ancestor of Spanish ‘rey’ and French ‘roi’. Via French, ‘regal’ and ‘royal’ come from ‘rēgālis’, a derivative of ‘rēx’. Click my new infographic to learn more about this fascinating word family: 1/

• Post #807634

  RE: https://toot.community/@yvanspijk/116144270452431661 Je kunt nog tot zondagavond op mijn boek stemmen (en andere projecten 😉) voor de Language Industry Awards! 😋 Hieronder vind je de link:

• Post #807633

  Zojuist besefte ik dat 'zandwijk' de letterlijke Nederlandse tegenhanger is van 'sandwich'. 'Zandwijkspreid' klinkt toch een stuk confronterender dan 'sandwich spread'. Eentje in de categorie 'Giuseppe Verdi = Joop Groenen'.