old english

Kennings: The Metal-Crushing Metaphors of Old English

Explore the metal-crushing metaphors and poetic riddles of Old English known as Kennings. From the "whale-road" to the "bone-house", discover…

5 days ago

Why It’s ‘Feet’ Not ‘Foots’: The Logic of I-Umlaut

Why do we say "feet" instead of "foots"? It isn't a random quirk of English grammar, but the result of…

5 days ago

Wit and Git: The Lost Dual Pronouns of Old English

Old English possessed a grammatical rarity called the "dual number", using specific pronouns—*wit* (we two) and *git* (you two)—to refer…

5 days ago

Runic Roots: From the Futhorc to the Letter Thorn

While modern English relies on the Latin alphabet, our language was originally written in the angular, 33-character runic system known…

5 days ago

Frisian: The Closest Living Relative to English

Discover why linguists consider Frisian to be the closest living sibling to the English language. This article explores the Anglo-Frisian…

6 days ago

The ‘Dummy Do’: English’s Weirdest Grammar Quirk

While most European languages form questions by simply swapping the subject and verb (like the German "Trinken Sie?"), English requires…

6 days ago

Why “Ye Olde” is Actually “The Olde”: The Story of Thorn

Ever wondered why we say "Ye Olde" to sound medieval? It turns out we've been reading it wrong for centuries.…

1 week ago

From ‘Meat’ to ‘Flesh’: Semantic Narrowing

Have you ever wondered why candy is sometimes called a "sweetmeat", or why we "starve" from hunger but the word's…

1 week ago

Case Syncretism: When Grammar Gets Efficient

Ever wondered why 'you' is the same whether you're doing the action or receiving it, unlike "I" and "me"? This…

3 months ago

Grammatical Evaporation

Have you ever wondered why English grammar seems simpler than Latin or German? This phenomenon, known as grammatical evaporation, is…

3 months ago

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