Origin of words...

[thekev]

Words you say?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Nothing shows how much a language has changed like - or, such as - the invention of, and use of, slang, the use of which is often confined to specific groups and contexts, (and, equally often, it makes an appearance because it describes something that the existing language lacks vocabulary or words to describe, or is not allowed to describe), but, also, nothing dates the use of a language like slang.

 

[lizkat]

It isn't really about the origin so much, but I've mentioned several times how Thai words have this annoying (to a non native speaker at least) trait where several words are pronounced this same, but in slightly different tone, and mean wildly different things.

The other day I was introduced to another of these. One is the word for 'ride', like to ride a horse, or ride a motorbike. The other is the word to shit. Not sit. S H I T.

Thanks Thailand.

Chinese is another of those tonal languages where a slip in pronunciation can raise eyebrows from time to time. There are hundreds of tonal and/or pitch-varied languages around the world, even if some of the Asian ones are more well known. Most of them actually sprang up in Africa or the Americas.

Unintentional misuse happens in non-tonal languages more in the print realm, where words may be spelled very similarly but a transposition may lend valid but accidental meaning. Like using some form of the German "scheissen" when what was intended was a form of "schiessen / schießen". The one is about shitting and the other refers to shooting.

But also there's the matter in English at least of making a wrong choice of homonyms, words all sounding alike or close but having different meanings... typical example "petal" v "peddle" v "pedal". Even software that checks grammar will not always pick those things up depending on context.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

And in English, there is (are) also the effects of what text books refer to as The Great Vowel Shift, (which occurred - roughly - over a period of time that spanned from between the early 15th century to the beginning of the 18th century), which gave rise to significant changes in pronunciation (but not spelling), so that this divergence - so pronounced in English to the baffled and bewildered frustration of some foreign students of English - between how a word sounds and how it is spelt, developed.

 

[lizkat]

And then there are dialects in the USA that turn vowels into unusual diphthongs... the word "back" in the Rochester area of Lake Ontario region of NYS sounds almost like "bee-ack" half the time. They call it "a flat A" I think, and there are some other areas of the USA where it's common. No clue what the origin of that has been, but there was a large founding population of both Germans and Italians in that area.