Published on 12, July, 2020
Words fascinate me, I love them and I know so many and can even spell a few of them! I find different words give so much more texture and depth to what we say. I find the origins of words as interesting as the words themselves and the different uses for the same word although it can all get confusing when you have to work out which witch to use and weather/whether it will make a difference to waht you're saying.
Is English the only language to have so many similar words or words that change with context?
I also have a theory that that dialect words and accents follow the boundaries of the old Anglo-Saxon countries, if you look at a map of the original kingdoms pre Alfred the Great, then the variety of accents beccome more apparent. Of course i some areas such as the North East you have to factor in a large amount of Scandinavian words and accents too and along the borders of Wales.
Do you have favourite words and least favourite? I do't like the word "genre" mostly because it's hard to stop saying it and it ends up with a few extra "re-s" takcked on the end as you run out of breath whilst saying it.
I also gecome faascinated with "F" and "Ph", such as fantastic and phantasmagorical
Owl, is an interesting word, it comes from old English and is related to the sound owls make, but in Welsh a W is literally a double U sound, so I have my doubts as to it's old English origin.
English has so many loan words, you can almost travel around the world in English, skirt, is Scandinavian, algebra is Arabic, chutney is Indian. Welsh has many loan words too, which makes me think that the Romans introduced the idea of windows, (Welsh ffenetr) which is totally different to Scots Gaelic Uinneag. Nearly all our medical words are Greek, like Physician.
Q words are interesting too, some people pronounce it with K sound missing the W sound that goes with it, changing it from a KW sound to a soft K.
We have so many silent letters in English too, most languages pronounce all the letters in a word, I think the only person with really good pronunciation of the WH sound is Reeta Chakrabarti from BBC news, her pronunciation is sublime.