Monthly Archives: June 2020

La Joie de Joret

A Quick Guide to the Joret Line What is the Joret line? And why should I care about it? So, to begin, a definition: isogloss noun /ˈaɪsəɡlɒs/ /ˈaɪsəɡlɑːs/ (linguistics)​a line on a map that separates places where a particular feature of a language is different The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Named after the French historian and linguistContinue reading “La Joie de Joret”

Rhotacism and How It Can Help Your Latin

If you have studied a little Latin, you may have come across an important, yet rather annoying group of nouns. They belong to the third declension, are neuter in gender and end in -us in the nominative singular. They include words like tempus ‘time’, corpus ‘body’ and pectus ‘chest’. They look like nice second-declension nouns,Continue reading “Rhotacism and How It Can Help Your Latin”

The Economic Sandwiches of York

The Adventures of Proto-Indo-European *weiḱ- What links sandwiches to Vikings, and York to Czech villages? Why, etymology of course! One reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word has enjoyed enormous success in its subsequent, post-PIE life, in part thanks to its useful meaning, in part to the prestige of the languages that inherited it. This word is *weiḱ– andContinue reading “The Economic Sandwiches of York”

The Neuter Gender – A Very Useful Rule!

A Bit of Background The Indo-European family is a big group of languages that are spoken all over the world. There’s a good chance that, if you are learning a foreign language at the moment, it belongs to this family. Indo-European languages are united in their descent from a single, prehistoric language, which we callContinue reading “The Neuter Gender – A Very Useful Rule!”