the reason the ‘&’ symbol & the number 7 are attached to the same key MIGHT JUST be because back in the 1300s, scribes would often use ‘7′ as a shorthand way of writing ‘and’. see here:
Please reblog if you are a language blog! It’s been a while since I did this and most of the language blogs I used to follow are now inactive. Need some fresh, new blogs to reblog from
The word clébard (mutt) in French is interesting because its root is from Algerian Arabic كلب (kelb, dog) and the suffix is from Frankish -(h)ard, cognate with English hard. In Contemporary French, this suffix is often used, among other things, to add a pejorative tone to the word
Regarding the root, I can’t tell if the word experienced metathesis between l and b after entering French, or if the root is actually the plural form كَلْب (klab), which would be an odd choice
How many languages could you recognize on sight? For instance, I can’t speak French, but I could recognize it if I saw it written down. Your native language counts!
this has always fascinated me. I first learned it about 25 years ago, and ever since, every time I see a capital letter A a tiny voice inside me goes “bull!”
Fun to see an actual scholarly version of this, because I first read it as explained (-ish) by one of Kipling’s “Just So Stories” a very, very long time ago…
obsessed with the idea of an 8th century greek having access to a journal and being able to write down anything they wanted to. i want to know what else they would say. theres only so much you can fit on a vase :/
Kitzinger, Rachel. “Alphabetics and Writing.” Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome. Ed. Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger. Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988. Print.