UNC Linguistics

06/12/2026

I was recently talking to a friend and accidentally used the Italian word for summer (estate) in place of the Spanish one (verano), and then found myself wondering why those words were so different. Now I know!

The Spanish words ‘primavera’ (spring) and ‘verano’ (summer) both derive from Latin ‘vēr’ (spring).
Originally, ‘primavera’ was early spring, while ‘verano’ was late spring.
However, their meanings shifted to later in the year, and ‘estío’, the original word for summer, was dethroned.
That’s not the only interesting story the Romance words for the seasons have to tell. Click my new infographic to learn all about the four seasons in the five largest Romance languages.

06/08/2026

Reborrowings. You could think of them as lexical boomerangs I suppose. So many good ones! How about pocket monster (English) > Poketto Monsutā (Japanese) > Pokemon (Japanese) > Pokémon (English)?

Words that were borrowed, and then returned What we call “borrowed words” aren’t really borrowed. When English took the Japanese word “tsunami”, there was no intention to return it. They’re more like “stolen words”. Actually, since the original language keeps them, they might better ...

06/06/2026

Congratulations Lauren!

Lauren Jarvis, an associate professor of history in UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been selected for a National Humanities Center summer residency to work on an individual humanities-related research project. Jarvis received a 2021 Schwab Academic Excellence Award and a 2022- 2023 Publication Support Grant. Read more on the IAH website: https://go.unc.edu/Kn7x2

06/05/2026

It’s funny to think that English ‘dull’ and German ‘toll’ (great) are cognates, since in modern usage they are pretty much opposites!

The word ‘town’ shares its origin with German ‘Zaun’ (fence) and Dutch ‘tuin’ (garden), even though their forms and meanings are quite different. They all stem form Proto-Germanic *tūnan, whose meaning is reconstructed as “fenced area”. Over the course of 2000 years, they’ve grown apart.

My new graphic shows nine unexpected but true cognates in English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and Swedish.

In the article on my Patreon (850 words, tier 1), I explain how the meanings of these nine word groups diverged over time. Link in bio.

06/02/2026

Thanks to KPEP (Kituwah Preservation and Education Program) for these Cherokee Words of the Month for June. Click on the QR Code to hear pronunciations by Elnora Thompson.

05/30/2026

Living Dictionaries are mobile-friendly web tools that support endangered, under-represented and diasporic languages. Led by community activists around the globe, Living Dictionaries are collaborative multimedia projects that help languages survive for generations to come.

Check it out at the link in the comments ⬇️

05/29/2026

The anatomy of a wug

What’s a wug, you ask? It’s a little fictitious critter that taught us a ton about how language works! Learn more at the link in the comments ⬇️

05/25/2026

Words such as 'museum', 'formula' and 'ratio' instantly give away their Latin origin, but did you know 'wall', 'street', and 'kitchen' come from Latin too? They were borrowed during the Roman occupation of the part of Europe where Proto-West Germanic was spoken, the ancestor of English and its West Germanic sister languages.

Today’s infographic about construction terms shows six of these early borrowings and their descendants in English, Dutch, and German. Next time: food words.

How can you identify early loanwords from Latin? By analysing three aspects: stress shift, vowel reduction and certain preserved consonants. My Patreon article (750 words, tier 1) tells you all about it. Link in bio.