4 ms·
I would have liked to see more discussion about example old fossils of language.
by dzdt 8y ago
I would have liked to see more discussion about example old fossils of language.
- eesmith 8y agoFor a bit more on how three different verbs turned into various conjugations of "to be" - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#Etymology For another intriguing hypothesis about some uses of "to do" see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-support#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-support#Origins : > This feature is rare or non-existent in other Germanic languages but common in Celtic ones like Welsh and Cornish. "Do" is also more common in Celtic Englishes than Standard English.[7] For this reason there is a hypothesis that English acquired do-support due to the influence of Celtic speakers on the spoken language.[8] For additional examples that are more recent, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnomer#Older_name_retained https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnomer#Older_name_retained We have plenty of these in software. Eg, a "terminal"/"tty" comes from "teletype terminal", "core dump" comes from when main memory was stored in magnetic cores.