@@paulohagan3309 guess humans long for what they lack... But I've spend a whole winter in both Canada and the UK and loved every second. TBH I am sure I would miss the Sun if I had to live in an overcasted place all year round. My point is more about the importance of variety: having both sunny days and cloudy days.
Me and my friends have enjoyed your stuff ever since the Nigel Farage rap years ago, so as you can imagine this is a surreal comment to read - really glad I could return the favour! Let me know if you ever need anything, boyo xoxo
Simon is certainly one of the relatively few "Tubers" who does not surround himself with exaggerated bodily and vocal theatrics, added music and begging pleas for likes and subscribes. That alone is refreshing.
@@simonroper9218 To someone whom I greatly admire, dare I make a little correction in modern English. "My friends and I have enjoyed...etc." "I" is used when it's the subject of the sentence but Me when it's the object of the sentence... except when the verb is 'to be" which reverts to I because that verb doesn't take an object but a complement! A little repayment for all I have learned from you! Thank you.
I like to think that Simon just really wanted to show off the beech branches he'd gathered, and had to come up with a linguistic excuse to make a video that could refer to them by a similar sounding historical word.
One time we were staying with a woman on the Scottish Borders. Being Canadian, we would laugh our faces off every time she told the cat to; "Go catch a moose".
You offer information, both without being boring and without coming across as arrogant. I get the feeling that you just have a long lived passion that you have pursued to the highest and humblest standard.
Greetings from Germany. I like your calm and descriptive videos, the locations you choose and actually I like it very much that you don't have professional cuts. It's like having a break and just sitting around with you and chatting and learning about an interesting topic.
@@Leo-uu8du : Meine Großmutter (1910-1995) benutzte zwei verschiedene Versionen von ,zwei', je nachdem ob sie zwei Männer oder zwei Frauen meinte. Kann es sein, daß es dies in Österreich auch ? Ich glaube ,zwua' benutzte meine Großmutter bei Frauen.
@@brittakriep2938 Interestingly, zwoi and zwua seems to be much closer in pronunciation to Slavic 'dvojo' (something like word double) and 'dva' (two), then regular enumeration 'zwei.' Might be a remnant of some common protolanguage or totally coincident ....
@@brittakriep2938 Ja, das gibt es in Österreich noch, wird aber von jungen Leuten nur noch in konservativen Sprachgegenden verwendet. Soweit ich das sehe, ist diese Unterscheidung eher am aussterben, vermutlich aufgrund des standard-deutschen Einflusses. Ich persönlich unterscheide eher zwischen schneller und gemütlicher Aussprache, bei der Schnellen werden bei mir meist Zwielaute zu Einzellauten also z.B. Zwue zu Zwo, das gilt aber nicht nur für Zahlwörter: Hous->Hos. Generell verwende ich aber auch mehr den unbestimmten Artikel anstatt Zahlwörter: a Khue, ani Khia.
@@nodarkthings There's always a misconception on Canadian dialect. It, as it is in Britain, has regional qualities. Quebec has the French accent when speaking English, as it is the dominant language spoken. Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia still hold strong influences on their accents reminiscent of Scottish and Irish. While out west, you would be hard pressed to be able to tell exactly where they are from. Take for example, how many Hollywood actors and actresses who hail from Western Canada do you think are American? The Americans have a hard time, themselves even figuring it out. Leslie Neilsen, Lorne Greene, Tatiana Maslani, Keith Morrison, Art Linkleter are from Saskatchewan, not American; Nathan Fillion and Michael J. Fox are from Edmonton, Alberta, again not American at all.
I find Simon's videos so enjoyable and totally fascinating.. I just love the way he calmly talks to us in an articulate and modest way.. I have learnt so much.. Oh, and I love the discussions in the comment section where I learn even more!
5:10 Now that you mention that, there's a lullaby from Northumberland called "Bonny at Morn" with the line: "The sheep's in the meadow, and the kye's in the corn, Thou's o'er lang in thy bed, bonnie at morn."
Why the 's contraction on those two nouns if they represent plural ("all the sheep are" and "all the kye are", respectively)? Is that a Northumberland thing too?
@Robert True but there are more than one kye in the song ... 8p I was taught, at pains of strap, that everything is a singular so, the 'are' is replaced, sometimes, by an 's' ('is'). The exception is the west side of the Pennines which is never referred to ...
In north-western Austria Maos/Maes (exactly pronounced like the English mouse/mice) is common, in south-western Austria Mous/Muis and in eastern Austrian Moos/Möös (like the Swiss with a monophthong)
Yeah Low German (Saxon) and Swiss German (High and Highest Alemannic) funnily share such features as they did not change like e.g. central German. Time: tîd / zît, house: hûs / hûs, mouse: mûs / mûs (Low German / Swiss German) (Vocals with an ^ are just marked to be long) German is düütsch in Low German which should be also quiet close to the Swiss German word like in schwytzerdüütsch. They both did not change this to an "oi" sound (written like "eu" / "äu" in Standard German).
5:40 What's interesting is that the word for the beech tree is "Buche" in German, and "Buch" is the word for book. For some reason, that correlation between the beech tree and writing seems to be present in other Indo-Germanic languages too, for instance, the Russian word for beech is бук (buk) and letter [of an alphabet] is буква (bukva) in Russian, both descending from Proto-Slavic *buky, which in turn was borrowed from early Germanic. We can only speculate whether that semantic ambivalence of meaning (beech, writing) is something that has evolved simultaneously or if it was also borrowed into Slavic.
I am very convinced of the fact that in the future you will be considered a hero for the fact that you are finding truth in things of the past. All the powers to you and more...
I found your channel recently because of your Baldric videos. As someone who spends a decent portion of my free time learning German, your videos have been really enjoyable to watch, giving me a better appreciation for both languages and inspiring me to spend more of my time learning. Thank you!
Here in Orkney, we have one "kye" and many "kyes." (Their bedding is "strae.") Moos/mees. Can't compare the goose one as there's a whole different ornithological lexicon.
Bahasa Indonesia has what I think is the most brilliant method of pluralising a word...you simply say it twice. Utter genius. Book, 'buku', and 'buku buku' for books. It's a brilliant language, actually. Any word can become any part of speech. You have a root word that has meaning, and depending on the prefixes or suffixes that are added, or combinations thereof, that word can be a noun, pronoun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb, etc. Bloody brilliant!! Lihat, meaning 'see"; kelihatan means visible; melihatkan means look; memperlihatkan means to show. My friends and I used to 'invent' words that didn't really exist in everyday usage, but because we followed the rules of grammar we came up with all kinds of words that aren't really words per se, but they make sense.
I think you can do something similar in turkish. I'm not and don't speak it but recall Coca-Cola using it to sting together a ridiculously long yet hip adjective lol. If I find it I'll come back and post.
Your palatalisation comment got me thinking about the words “bake” and “batch” which are indeed related. Do you know if batch is a relic of an older past participle of bake?
Hmm.. never considered this before, but in German when making a noun diminutive, a chen is added-- and the proceeding vowel gets an umlaut. An example of bread and little bread (i.e. roll or Am. biscuit): Brot and Brötchen. Could Batch possibly be the diminutive of... bake? (Although Batch lacks the /k/ sound of Bake.) Any thoughts?
@@carolkd4018 In Austrian German the official diminutive is -erl, like in "Hunderl" or "Vogerl", but it doesn't lead to an umlaut. Similar behaves the Austro-Bavarian language, no umlaut with diminutives (-le, -ale, -al, -l depending on size, cuteness and the last sound of a word), e.g. little bird/fougi if cute: fougale if annoying: fougal if more annoying: fougl The umlaut mostly is not even used in plural. e.g. tree/trees -> Baam/Baamer; man/men -> Mau(nd)/Maunder, while in German it would be Baum/Bäume and Mann/Männer. Maybe the fewer amount of umlauts in Austro-Bavarian is an influence of Gothic, as the closest related language to Bavarian, namely Alemannic, uses even more umlauts than German, e.g. Bomm/Bömm, Maa/Mää, Oor/Öör (ear, ears, Ohr/Ohren)
@@Leo-uu8du I don’t think Gothic is related to Bavarian. It is an extinct branch of the Germanic languages and I doubt whether there has been any contact to speakers of „proto-Bavarian“ when the Bavarian specificities appeared.
Recently discovered these videos and I'm hooked! The are both fascinating and very addictive, lots to learn. I started off with A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Century and ended up here. Cant wait for more video's, keep them coming Simon,. not seen anything even remotely similar on TH-cam thanks!!!
Most of these are found in swedish too, and some extra. Mouse - mus/möss Goose - Gås/gäss Lice - Lus/löss Man - Man/män Father - Fader/fäder Book - Bok/böcker Foot - Fot/fötter Tooth - tand/tänder Hand - hand/händer Farmer - bonde/bönder
My wife has a mental block when it comes to learning languages, but your videos have been an absolute boon for breaking down that barrier. I don't know what it is, but the way you explain the basic aspects of various languages seems to click with her. Thanks for all the great content, and for the effort you put into your research!
Nice sideburns there, Simon! I went back to having them myself because of you lol! Thanks for your content, finally someone speaking my language (no pun intended).
Simon, you're doing such an important thing! I am a chemist (just PhD student, to be more precise), and I've got interested in linguistics only since I realized it is true science, more "scientific" than many others. In fact, it studies a living organism, very complicated, with its own flesh and blood, and so closely connected to our mind. That's beautiful. And some people still don't understand that it is a science with its laws and rules, so their view of the world sometimes can be quite ridiculous, we have several famous examples here in Russia :) So thank you for sharing your knowledge, I truly love your manner, as well as your perception of beauty - both in nature and in logical constructions. That grey sky... I know it. Sorry for my English, maybe my interest in the history of the language I'm not fluent in is kind of strange thing, but I hope on this channel it can meet some understanding :)
@@МарияЛесниченко-б4я That's because *buky or *bukъva is a borrowing from Proto-Germanic. I assume its additional meaning of 'letter' in Slavic comes from the fact that the Germanic tribes, the Slavs were in contact with, wrote on beech barks.
Not a book but the Scotts wiki does have an article on Kye, describing it as the plural of Cou so it seems it may have stuck around there? (Granted a lot of scotts wiki was graffitied by a guy who doesn't speak the language but the article does go back to 2008, several years before he started contributing)
@@instantramen_ The singular of kye in Scotland is coo. In England it was cow and kine. You will still hear kye amongst the older generation of farmers , but maybe not for much longer.
The cows/kye/kine example is an interesting one as this word is currently also undergoing regularization in Norwegian, from ku--kyr (yes, y is the 'rounded i' sound again!) to ku--kuer. The -er is the modern regular plural ending. I guess not so many of the younger generation are so familiar with farming any more, so it's a less frequently used word which no longer warrants any special treatment.
On a horrible mid-winter day when it has hardly bothered to get light, I like the sound of the wind. Interesting listening as always and no need to apologise for pressure of work.
A question that this talk makes me consider. In French, we say: "le pantalon"; "le jean" and "le short" for these items of clothing. Why do we, in English, describe these singular items of clothing as plurals, ie: "trousers"; "jeans" and "shorts".
While standard German diverges with some of these sound changes, interestingly enough, Austro-Bavarian dialects sound somewhat similar. I'll type out a few words with spelling, inspired by standard German, fore convenience sake. Maus - Meis (mouse) Gauns - Gäns (goose) Fuass - Fiass (foot) oid - öta (old, adjective) Buach - Biacha (book) Kua - Kia (cow) And many more... Also there seems to be a similar thing like the k to ch change after several vowels. In standard German and many german dialects, there's two types if ch, called ich Laut and ach Laut. Those are hard to distinguish for many learners, but could also be heard in the example "Buach - Biacha", similar to yor example of "Book - Beech". I love to find sich similarities, I never noticed before. Makes me appreciate english even more.
Book vs beech is like the difference between kch vs ch, ng vs ch, g vs ch or silent g vs g in some Austro-Bavarian dialects. E.g. I *siach* ane Baamer vs I hou ane Baamer *gseng* I *båkch* an Kuchn vs I hou an Kuchn *båcher* Kini vs Kiniglich Beri vs Berigrettung Bå vs Båchlauf
I was just reading through the original 1382 Wycliffe's Bible from the Textus Receptus lineage and started reading it as old English (best I know how). I realized I could, however, research a little and get the pronunciations correctly from these videos. If you ever want to got through the Textus Receptus lines and give a sample of the changes over time I would be thrilled to hear them! Thank you!
I live where moose are indigenous and no one says “mooses” . We all say moose and moose, singular and plural, much like fish. So: A moose, the moose, those moose (both plural).
True hahah. House didn’t undergo I-mutation because it was part of the -a stem category, which means in Old English (at least I think in West Saxon) the plural of hūs was actually...hūs. And we don’t know where the word grouse actually came from so I guess we had to just regularise it
@@BrandydocMeriabuck the plural of «hus» is still «hus» in Norwegian, except in very particular dialects where it can (probably only occasionally) be «huser».
I love these discussions, I speak English (native South Yorkshire), German and also a version of Platt-Deutsch or lower German, which is basically the language of the Angles. I don't join in so much because I usually only see the videos a few days after they're posted, but I enjoy reading the comments.
Me reading this: is kine is the plural of cow than what would swine be for......sow- OH EDIT: i don't want to spread misinformation so i looked it up, and swine actually comes from a proto germanic word *swīną, which was an adjectival version of a PIE word *sū-
As a german i heared kye, which is clearly Standard german Kühe, in my dialect ( swabian) spoken Kiah. Singular : Standard german Kuh/ swabian Kuah. In case of swine: Singular Schwein/ Plural Schweine. Sow is in german Sau ( in Standard german unwanted) , plural Säue. In my dialect : Sau and plural Sei.
@@brittakriep2938 kye/ky is cognate with german kühe, but there is another archaic english word (kine) which is a double plural according to wiktionary. It's ky+en, but now spelled kine, i suppose to reflect the pronunciation. Both of these are the plural of cow
No relationship between kine and swine. See the German words for cow and pig: die Kuh (singular) - die Kühe (plural) das Schwein (singular) - die Schweine (plural) Anyone know why English has the dual words for the same animal, swine and pig? Is pig from Old Norse or something?
@@hamsterama "Pig" is most likely of a West Germanic origin, which makes it a native Old English word, but it did not come into wide use until Middle English time, from making an occasional appearance late in the 12c. in the sense "swine young" to becoming generally synonymous with "swine" by the mid 14c. Old Norse, or any North Germanic borrowing is phonologically unlikely, although a solid etymology is largely wanting. Harper suggest the reconstructed OE form *picg, but notes that it's unattested except as part of compounds. Tangentially related: the names of farmed animals (swine, cow, calf) are native, because the animals were grown by the Old-English-speaking peasantry. The words for the meat of these same animals (pork, beef, veal), on the other hand, are borrowings, because the meat was consumed mainly by the Old-French-speaking nobility. Generally, when you see a doublet in English, consider as a possibility that it's a reflection of social stratification in the language. But that's not the case of our friend the pig, tho.
Hi Simon! Great video as always, if I may offer a potentially annoying, little footnote: "moose" is the singular and the plural (at least, here in North America where there are moose), like deer--so "one moose, many moose." Didn't know it was mooses in England! Hope you are doing well. ( 4:50 , for reference)
I'm English, and I've never heard anyone say "mooses" as a plural for "moose". The plural would always be the same as the singular, like "sheep" (many of them here in Wales!).
It can be either today. I work at a Best Buy and god knows every customer I talk to freezes when they try to ask where the "more than one mouse" section is
To my everlasting horror, databases have "indexes" rather than "indices". I have even surrendered the extra "me" on the end of "program". A shiver goes down my spine when I'm asked to "architect" a solution.
Kine is a word I was not familiar with, I had to look it up. But why thrice? It's not in any way an archaic word, and even I as a non-native speaker have seen and used it many times. It's such a useful word. Thank you for leading me to learn a new word by the way.
I have discovered your videos very recently and I find them fascinating. I have to admit I don't always understand all the linguistic analysis and terminology, but it doesn't matter as I always get the gist. Thanks for your enlivening contribution to my lockdown life.
In danish, "goose/geese" is "gås/gæs" which is pronounced exactly like "gōs/gēs", so same sound as old english. On the other hand "mouse/mice" is "mus/mus" not sure why there is no change between singular and plural in this case.
"muis/muizen" and "gans/ganzen" in Duits the dipthong "ui" which is /øʏ̯/ phonetically speaking doesn't change for muis when becoming plural, neither does the a (/ɑ/ phonetically) in gans when plural. It's just that s becomes z but that is in almost all cases when the singular word that ends in s, it becomes z.
4:50 idk if it's different in British English, but in most American English dialects the plural of moose is just "moose", not "mooses", since the word was loaned from an indigenous language that lacks grammatical plurals
Good that you mention it! But are you sure that the plural form is from the indigenous language, too? I thought it was due to analogy, since many animal names in English share that phenomenon: fish -> fish, deer -> deer, sheep -> sheep.
@@daisybrain9423 Remember the ancient philosopher who decided to say nothing that he did not know for sure. He was reduced to pointing silently with a finger.
In Swedish, the words meaning: beech tree and book are identical in spelling, pronunciation, and grammatical gender: a book/beech = (en bok). But the plural forms differ: books = (böcker) and beeches = (bokar).
The word actually goes all the way down to Proto Indo European. Latin "anser" should be a cognate as well. Glottal stop instead of a "g", but otherwise the same
Great video with beautiful footage, I'm so glad I got to understand everything you've explained! I suppose my english is getting truly better. Keep up with your good work!
As always, cool video. I always wonder about "house" and why it is not "hice". I often use "hice" jokingly, and, Oh, Lord, I hope no one starts using it! Do you know how "house" evolved and if it went through some type of "hice" phase?
@@Vingul . . . Yeah. It's a pet peeve of mine because I am constantly fighting the urge to spell it like that. Now I just remind myself of the word "karate." Take off the "k" and put on "sep." No confusion that way!
Very interesting, but you totally fail to mention there is a prominent MODERN Germanic language that is an exception : Dutch. Muis, Muizen. Auto, auto's. Huis, huizen. Stoel, stoelen. We are very consistent in this and just like Gothic it's very regular and predictable. I've recommended it to you before, but I'd love to be able to contribute the Dutch-context to many of your stories. You simply leap over Holland for some reason most of the time, and miss out on incredibly interesting information that would deeply enrich your conclusions and videos. Dutch seems to have gone a very different route than German. Just let me know how I can help, as I keep just biting my keyboard out of frustration for all the relevant stuff you miss out on in Dutch :))
In Dutch "randstad" accent (notably Amsterdam and The Hague, but also Rotterdam and maybe Utrecht idk) the -siz ending for plural is pretty common, just like in your proto-Germanic example! Standard Dutch would be Mouse: "muis" (singular), "muizen" (plural) Goose: "gans" (singular), "ganzen" (plural) But people with an Amsterdam accent could easily say "muisies" and "gansies" for the plural form :D
Fascinating, as always! No need for you to apologize for the wind; it adds a distinctive aural atmosphere to your videos and goes well with the grey, overcast sky here.
@@hetrodoxly1203 I would pronounce it "dew". I am joking a bit, I am German and in my perception, the German pronunciation is the closest to the written word, but that is a matter of perspective. My pronunciation would, for an English speaker, be close to "deaf", but with a v in the end instead of the f, which I think does not exist in english words.
@@guessitwasme Your pronunciation is probably closer to early English than mine, we have a very thick accent in Birmingham, i left there 30 years ago but still have the accent. This should give you some idea :) th-cam.com/video/TltSgaUR-0A/w-d-xo.html
I‘m seeing so many similarities between the languages when watching these videos. It‘s such a joy! Thank you. PIE: mūs English: mouse, mice German: maus, mäuse Swissgerman: mus, müs
I think those probably go all the way back to proto-Germanic. At any rate, there are a lot more of such nouns in modern German than there are in modern English.
@@sigridrp Yes. The Scandinavian languages are Germanic as well. The reason modern English has lost a lot of them is because of the influence of French and the massive amount of regularization of English grammar following the linguistic upheaval following the Norman invasion.
@Bj D I'm sorry you can't remember more. I'd like to read more about that theory. I remember reading a book titled _The Atoms of Language_ by Mark C. Baker, in which the author made a brief comment that English is an unusual language in that it doesn't have noun classes. (At this point, I would direct you to a Wikipedia article titled "Noun Classes.") He was referring to gender as a type of noun class. Some languages have noun classes based on very different critera than gender. The Athabascan languages classify nouns based on their shape. At the moment, I'm dipping my toe into the study of Uralic languages, and they all lack noun classes. I think there are quite a few language families out there that lack noun classes, to contradict Dr. Baker. I would argue that English does have gender, but that it is largely covert. My reason is that we have the pronouns "he," "she" and "it." If English lacked gender, we would have only one pronoun here rather than three. On the other hand, in the plural, English nouns all fall into one common gender, which is why we only have the pronoun "they." French was the first foreign language I studied, and looking back on it, I now realize how poorly it was taught. Let me compare it to English in reference to what I just said in the previous paragraph. French has the words "ils" (masculine) and "elles" (feminine) meaning "they." This could have been used as an opportunity to present the idea of the common plural in English, but it wasn't. This failure led to further misapprehensions about French grammar. I was taught that to make an adjective femine, add "-e." To make it plural, add "-s." To make a femine adjective plural, take the feminine form (which already ends in "-e") and add an "-s." This gives the impression that feminine plural adjectives in French end with two suffixes, an "-e" and an "-s." This is completely wrong. French feminine adjectives end in one suffix, "-es." Teaching it this way may be pragmatic, but it gives the impression that French is an agglutinative language rather than a fusional one.
@@chitlitlah We do, they're homophones in a lot of English dialects :) I think that diverged from the US pronunciation in the early modern period. The most conservative pronunciation is the one a lot of Welsh speakers use, as far as I know.
@@simonroper9218 I'm welsh and it's a little bit of a teller how anglicised someone is on how they say 'dew'. Contradictory as it may be, 'jew' is sometimes seen as the more English way to say it, and thus it suggests someone thinks they're posher than someone with a more 'south walian' accent. Here in Wales, if you sound like you're from Southern England with a Welsh twang, you sound posh. So the 'jew' mispronunciation (in other parts of the UK would be a colloquialism and lower class trait) is actually a 'more posh' thing to do... Weird how things turn out with dialects
That's interesting. I watch a lot of English television and TH-cam videos, but never picked up on that regionalism. I'll listen for it if I hear a Brit or Aussie say it in the near future.
Actually, Albanian has relicts of an i-umlaut too. There are some nouns that change the internal vowel bc in ancient times, the ending was an -i. It only affects maskuline nouns. so there's for example: plak > pleq (an old man) (originally plaki) dash > desh (a ram) mashkull > meshkuj (a male) lak > leqe (a sling, here with an additional -e at the end) etc.
The plural of moose is mȳse. Nah just joking it's moose, as in "I saw 3 moose in the forest" Anyway if you said "mooses", nobody but Grammar-Nazis would care.
My mother tongue is a Dutch dialect spoken in the southeast of The Netherlands, called Limburgish. In that dialect the distinction is still made between [mu:s] in the singular and [my:s] in the plural. There is also a tonal difference between the two: [mu:s] is pronounced with what in German is called a 'Schleifton' (Dutch: sleeptoon) and [my:s] what in German is called a 'Stoßton' (Dutch: stoottoon'). Book - books = [bo:k] - [bø:k], cow - cows = [ku] - [ky(j)] in my dialect.
only an englishman would speak so fondly of an overcast day
Or a north german dude like me.
I am Brazilian and I love overcast days. They are so rare here...
@@samanthadata1049 I taught some Brazilians in Dublin here. After a few weeks of overcast days, they were desperate for some sunlight ...
@@paulohagan3309 guess humans long for what they lack... But I've spend a whole winter in both Canada and the UK and loved every second. TBH I am sure I would miss the Sun if I had to live in an overcasted place all year round. My point is more about the importance of variety: having both sunny days and cloudy days.
As an Australian overcast days are evil and shouldbe avoided.
Simon Roper is basically the only TH-camr i watch any more
Me and my friends have enjoyed your stuff ever since the Nigel Farage rap years ago, so as you can imagine this is a surreal comment to read - really glad I could return the favour! Let me know if you ever need anything, boyo xoxo
@@simonroper9218 An olde English or a Middle English rap would be amazing...perhaps you guys should collaborate!! It would be brilliant.
Epic
Simon is certainly one of the relatively few "Tubers" who does not surround himself with exaggerated bodily and vocal theatrics, added music and begging pleas for likes and subscribes. That alone is refreshing.
@@simonroper9218
To someone whom I greatly admire, dare I make a little correction in modern English.
"My friends and I have enjoyed...etc."
"I" is used when it's the subject of the sentence but Me when it's the object of the sentence... except when the verb is 'to be" which reverts to I because that verb doesn't take an object but a complement!
A little repayment for all I have learned from you!
Thank you.
Singular form of dice should be douse.
It's actually "one die," but I didn't learn that until long after becoming an adult, so I still say "one dice."
@@bigscarysteve true, it's used a lot with board games. "A 6 sided die".
I'm glad that when I say "the meece are back in the shed again" I'm only being archaic and not just plain silly.
House-hice. Thou'rt willkommen.
@Robert It may already be (One may quarrel)
That "We live in Our hice"
Extends the royal 'We'
To Sandringham and Balmoral.
the wind was barely audible, nice ambience
the ambience of Simon's videos kind of reminds me of the film "a field in England"
@@dfpguitar
Or "Far From the Madding Crowd"...
The first one.
He’s always very concerned about background noise lol
the singular of nice should be nouse
I like to think that Simon just really wanted to show off the beech branches he'd gathered, and had to come up with a linguistic excuse to make a video that could refer to them by a similar sounding historical word.
Tell us your secrets beech branch.
This video wouldn't have been complete without mentioning moose, so I'm glad you did.
Wish he had mentioned it was learned from Abnaki, an indigenous American language
Except he's wrong about the plural. The plural is moose. Kind of like sheep. Is there a word for that? Auto-plural?
@@francesbadger3401 singularia tantum
@@louismart thanks!
One time we were staying with a woman on the Scottish Borders. Being Canadian, we would laugh our faces off every time she told the cat to; "Go catch a moose".
I love the wind-noise with the waving branches against the clouds.
pffff just stop it
@@aliveli-hq6zk Have a nap. Might cheer you up
@@aliveli-hq6zk It's still a free interwebs! Many people come on here just for the asmr
You offer information, both without being boring and without coming across as arrogant. I get the feeling that you just have a long lived passion that you have pursued to the highest and humblest standard.
We English have mastered the art of being arrogant without appearing to be arrogant :-)
Your work is so calming. Always a pleasure to see you in my sub box.
Actress/bishop
The closeup of beech bark was some A+ cinematography.
umm, it was an ash twig...
none of the branches shown is beech.
"I hates meeses to pieces." - Mr. Jinks, 1958
I'm glad someone said it :)
Yes! Jinxie always being foiled by Pixie and Dixie!
"No cheeses for us meeses" - The Muppets, 1992
"I'm Mr. Meeseeks!"
Greetings from Germany. I like your calm and descriptive videos, the locations you choose and actually I like it very much that you don't have professional cuts. It's like having a break and just sitting around with you and chatting and learning about an interesting topic.
In Western Frisian we still have that singular plural distinction for cows: one ko, many kij
Swabian Dialect ( South West Germany) : oi Kuah, zwoi Kiah .
Southern Austrian: ua khue, zwua khia
@@Leo-uu8du : Meine Großmutter (1910-1995) benutzte zwei verschiedene Versionen von ,zwei', je nachdem ob sie zwei Männer oder zwei Frauen meinte. Kann es sein, daß es dies in Österreich auch ? Ich glaube ,zwua' benutzte meine Großmutter bei Frauen.
@@brittakriep2938 Interestingly, zwoi and zwua seems to be much closer in pronunciation to Slavic 'dvojo' (something like word double) and 'dva' (two), then regular enumeration 'zwei.' Might be a remnant of some common protolanguage or totally coincident ....
@@brittakriep2938 Ja, das gibt es in Österreich noch, wird aber von jungen Leuten nur noch in konservativen Sprachgegenden verwendet. Soweit ich das sehe, ist diese Unterscheidung eher am aussterben, vermutlich aufgrund des standard-deutschen Einflusses.
Ich persönlich unterscheide eher zwischen schneller und gemütlicher Aussprache, bei der Schnellen werden bei mir meist Zwielaute zu Einzellauten also z.B. Zwue zu Zwo, das gilt aber nicht nur für Zahlwörter: Hous->Hos. Generell verwende ich aber auch mehr den unbestimmten Artikel anstatt Zahlwörter: a Khue, ani Khia.
Hoots mon! There's a moose loose aboot this hoose!
We Americans enjoy the Canadian i-umlauts!
There's a moose loose abowt the howse is the way I pronounce this and I'm Canadian.
@@susanpick2382 och aye
@@Quarton Interesting, I hadn't thought about that until I was typing those words. Yeah, very Canadian but the song is Scottish.
@@nodarkthings There's always a misconception on Canadian dialect. It, as it is in Britain, has regional qualities. Quebec has the French accent when speaking English, as it is the dominant language spoken. Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia still hold strong influences on their accents reminiscent of Scottish and Irish. While out west, you would be hard pressed to be able to tell exactly where they are from. Take for example, how many Hollywood actors and actresses who hail from Western Canada do you think are American? The Americans have a hard time, themselves even figuring it out. Leslie Neilsen, Lorne Greene, Tatiana Maslani, Keith Morrison, Art Linkleter are from Saskatchewan, not American; Nathan Fillion and Michael J. Fox are from Edmonton, Alberta, again not American at all.
I heard some guy is leaving office today, but get outta my way there’s a new Simon Roper vid! Priorities people, priorities.
I find Simon's videos so enjoyable and totally fascinating.. I just love the way he calmly talks to us in an articulate and modest way.. I have learnt so much..
Oh, and I love the discussions in the comment section where I learn even more!
Simon, you are so interesting to listen to. Thank you for your work.
5:10 Now that you mention that, there's a lullaby from Northumberland called "Bonny at Morn" with the line:
"The sheep's in the meadow, and the kye's in the corn,
Thou's o'er lang in thy bed, bonnie at morn."
I got Oxenfurt vibes from that comment
Why the 's contraction on those two nouns if they represent plural ("all the sheep are" and "all the kye are", respectively)? Is that a Northumberland thing too?
@Robert 'Appen.
@Bj D 'Kyes' is what I'd say. The word dropped is 'are'. There should not be an apostrophe though .....
@Robert True but there are more than one kye in the song ... 8p I was taught, at pains of strap, that everything is a singular so, the 'are' is replaced, sometimes, by an 's' ('is').
The exception is the west side of the Pennines which is never referred to ...
Listening to your videos has helped me stay alive while battling bad covid lung. Thank you very much
I hope you get well soon!
@@francesgardner7070 Oh boy, I hope so too. Thanks!
Get well 😊
Hoping you recover and stay strong!
I'm very sorry to hear you're going through that. Hoping you get well very soon 💛
In swiss-german, we still say "Muus" for mouse and "Müüs" for mice. This is very interesting.
same thing in low german
Diphthongization didn't happen in Swiss German.
kristianmitk.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/die-wunderbare-welt-der-hochdeutschen-vokale/
In north-western Austria Maos/Maes (exactly pronounced like the English mouse/mice) is common, in south-western Austria Mous/Muis and in eastern Austrian Moos/Möös (like the Swiss with a monophthong)
אַריעל סוסקינד@
What do you mean by _south-western Austria?_
Yeah Low German (Saxon) and Swiss German (High and Highest Alemannic) funnily share such features as they did not change like e.g. central German.
Time: tîd / zît, house: hûs / hûs, mouse: mûs / mûs (Low German / Swiss German)
(Vocals with an ^ are just marked to be long)
German is düütsch in Low German which should be also quiet close to the Swiss German word like in schwytzerdüütsch. They both did not change this to an "oi" sound (written like "eu" / "äu" in Standard German).
5:40 What's interesting is that the word for the beech tree is "Buche" in German, and "Buch" is the word for book. For some reason, that correlation between the beech tree and writing seems to be present in other Indo-Germanic languages too, for instance, the Russian word for beech is бук (buk) and letter [of an alphabet] is буква (bukva) in Russian, both descending from Proto-Slavic *buky, which in turn was borrowed from early Germanic. We can only speculate whether that semantic ambivalence of meaning (beech, writing) is something that has evolved simultaneously or if it was also borrowed into Slavic.
I love your garden; it looks so peaceful!
I am very convinced of the fact that in the future you will be considered a hero for the fact that you are finding truth in things of the past. All the powers to you and more...
I found your channel recently because of your Baldric videos. As someone who spends a decent portion of my free time learning German, your videos have been really enjoyable to watch, giving me a better appreciation for both languages and inspiring me to spend more of my time learning. Thank you!
Here in Orkney, we have one "kye" and many "kyes." (Their bedding is "strae.") Moos/mees. Can't compare the goose one as there's a whole different ornithological lexicon.
This channel is academic gold. I am not even a linguist, but your explanations and presentations are always logical and entertaining. Thank 🙏🏻 you!
Bahasa Indonesia has what I think is the most brilliant method of pluralising a word...you simply say it twice. Utter genius. Book, 'buku', and 'buku buku' for books. It's a brilliant language, actually. Any word can become any part of speech. You have a root word that has meaning, and depending on the prefixes or suffixes that are added, or combinations thereof, that word can be a noun, pronoun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb, etc. Bloody brilliant!! Lihat, meaning 'see"; kelihatan means visible; melihatkan means look; memperlihatkan means to show. My friends and I used to 'invent' words that didn't really exist in everyday usage, but because we followed the rules of grammar we came up with all kinds of words that aren't really words per se, but they make sense.
I think you can do something similar in turkish. I'm not and don't speak it but recall Coca-Cola using it to sting together a ridiculously long yet hip adjective lol. If I find it I'll come back and post.
I love how you know so much but you just come across as normal and natural and kind, you never come off as arrogant or know it all. So refreshing!
Did you know that your mouse example still is present in Swiss German: 1 mouse is a mus, 2 mice are mys
Same in modern Icelandic - mús, mýs.
in Luxembourgish it almost sounds exactly the same: Maus (mæʊːs) -> Mais (mɑɪs) :)
Muesli is uncountable lololol
@@RobBCactive One muesli, many mysli...
Same here: 1 mus --> 2 möss
this video has the most homely comforting feel!
Your palatalisation comment got me thinking about the words “bake” and “batch” which are indeed related. Do you know if batch is a relic of an older past participle of bake?
Hmm.. never considered this before, but in German when making a noun diminutive, a chen is added-- and the proceeding vowel gets an umlaut. An example of bread and little bread (i.e. roll or Am. biscuit):
Brot and Brötchen.
Could Batch possibly be the diminutive of... bake? (Although Batch lacks the /k/ sound of Bake.) Any thoughts?
@@carolkd4018 in dutch the diminuitive is 'je' like 'kopje' or 'kleintje'
@@carolkd4018 In Austrian German the official diminutive is -erl, like in "Hunderl" or "Vogerl", but it doesn't lead to an umlaut.
Similar behaves the Austro-Bavarian language, no umlaut with diminutives (-le, -ale, -al, -l depending on size, cuteness and the last sound of a word), e.g.
little bird/fougi
if cute: fougale
if annoying: fougal
if more annoying: fougl
The umlaut mostly is not even used in plural. e.g. tree/trees -> Baam/Baamer; man/men -> Mau(nd)/Maunder, while in German it would be Baum/Bäume and Mann/Männer.
Maybe the fewer amount of umlauts in Austro-Bavarian is an influence of Gothic, as the closest related language to Bavarian, namely Alemannic, uses even more umlauts than German, e.g. Bomm/Bömm, Maa/Mää, Oor/Öör (ear, ears, Ohr/Ohren)
@@iceomistar4302 it is related to the German chen and also common in German dialects
@@Leo-uu8du I don’t think Gothic is related to Bavarian. It is an extinct branch of the Germanic languages and I doubt whether there has been any contact to speakers of „proto-Bavarian“ when the Bavarian specificities appeared.
Recently discovered these videos and I'm hooked! The are both fascinating and very addictive, lots to learn. I started off with A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Century and ended up here. Cant wait for more video's, keep them coming Simon,. not seen anything even remotely similar on TH-cam thanks!!!
Most of these are found in swedish too, and some extra.
Mouse - mus/möss
Goose - Gås/gäss
Lice - Lus/löss
Man - Man/män
Father - Fader/fäder
Book - Bok/böcker
Foot - Fot/fötter
Tooth - tand/tänder
Hand - hand/händer
Farmer - bonde/bönder
My wife has a mental block when it comes to learning languages, but your videos have been an absolute boon for breaking down that barrier. I don't know what it is, but the way you explain the basic aspects of various languages seems to click with her. Thanks for all the great content, and for the effort you put into your research!
Nice sideburns there, Simon! I went back to having them myself because of you lol! Thanks for your content, finally someone speaking my language (no pun intended).
I'm glad the sideburn trend is picking up! Thanks for the kind words about the video :)
I can't stand having sideburns because the hairs go into my ears. I also can't stand having a mustace because the hairs go up my nostrils.
One sideburn, but a brace of sidebin perhaps?
@@bigscarysteve Rogue hair in orifices is a bane our our species.
Simon, you're doing such an important thing! I am a chemist (just PhD student, to be more precise), and I've got interested in linguistics only since I realized it is true science, more "scientific" than many others. In fact, it studies a living organism, very complicated, with its own flesh and blood, and so closely connected to our mind. That's beautiful. And some people still don't understand that it is a science with its laws and rules, so their view of the world sometimes can be quite ridiculous, we have several famous examples here in Russia :) So thank you for sharing your knowledge, I truly love your manner, as well as your perception of beauty - both in nature and in logical constructions.
That grey sky... I know it.
Sorry for my English, maybe my interest in the history of the language I'm not fluent in is kind of strange thing, but I hope on this channel it can meet some understanding :)
Interestingly, the beech tree is called "Buche" in German, which is very close to the German word for book, "Buch".
The word beech is a doublet of buky in Old Church Slavic, buky also means letter OR book, quite interesting.
@@МарияЛесниченко-б4я That's because *buky or *bukъva is a borrowing from Proto-Germanic. I assume its additional meaning of 'letter' in Slavic comes from the fact that the Germanic tribes, the Slavs were in contact with, wrote on beech barks.
And both the beech tree and a book are called "bok" in Swedish.
@@holgermarklund8491 wow, crazy
I believe that beech bark was used for writing on, as an early form of paper, hence the connection.
My mom and I love watching your videos together, thanks Simon 👍🏻
Me, a Scottish intellectual: "meeses".....
That's what a childhood watching Pixie and Dixie gets you...
Looks like menses
@@rocktramp I've never heard of them.....
I prefer mousies but meeses is a good one too
As Jinx the Cat would say: "I hate meeses to pieces!"
That was some quality teaching, young man- short, sweet, and to the point. Thank you.
Can anyone recommend beech on kye?
Not a book but the Scotts wiki does have an article on Kye, describing it as the plural of Cou so it seems it may have stuck around there? (Granted a lot of scotts wiki was graffitied by a guy who doesn't speak the language but the article does go back to 2008, several years before he started contributing)
@@instantramen_ The singular of kye in Scotland is coo. In England it was cow and kine. You will still hear kye amongst the older generation of farmers , but maybe not for much longer.
Kye is Kühe in german!
The cows/kye/kine example is an interesting one as this word is currently also undergoing regularization in Norwegian, from ku--kyr (yes, y is the 'rounded i' sound again!) to ku--kuer. The -er is the modern regular plural ending. I guess not so many of the younger generation are so familiar with farming any more, so it's a less frequently used word which no longer warrants any special treatment.
@@instantramen_ Yeah, this legendary Scots wikiuser... Good intentions but, well, I just hope they will move on one day.
On a horrible mid-winter day when it has hardly bothered to get light, I like the sound of the wind. Interesting listening as always and no need to apologise for pressure of work.
A question that this talk makes me consider. In French, we say: "le pantalon"; "le jean" and "le short" for these items of clothing. Why do we, in English, describe these singular items of clothing as plurals, ie: "trousers"; "jeans" and "shorts".
because in english you’d count each leg as one item, so it’s a pair. while in french you’d count both legs as part of a whole item
I’ve heard that they used to be two separate pieces. I’m really not sure if that’s true but it’s a funny thought.
@@henryrichard7619 As in "chaps" (leg protectors)?
As a Texan I get my gloomy weather fix from Simon Roper. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Well said, Simon.
I so much enjoy listening to your pronunciations. The subject matter is fascinating as well.
While standard German diverges with some of these sound changes, interestingly enough, Austro-Bavarian dialects sound somewhat similar. I'll type out a few words with spelling, inspired by standard German, fore convenience sake.
Maus - Meis (mouse)
Gauns - Gäns (goose)
Fuass - Fiass (foot)
oid - öta (old, adjective)
Buach - Biacha (book)
Kua - Kia (cow)
And many more...
Also there seems to be a similar thing like the k to ch change after several vowels. In standard German and many german dialects, there's two types if ch, called ich Laut and ach Laut. Those are hard to distinguish for many learners, but could also be heard in the example "Buach - Biacha", similar to yor example of "Book - Beech". I love to find sich similarities, I never noticed before. Makes me appreciate english even more.
In swabian dialect rather similar. Also english : A car/one car, swabian : A Audo/ oi Audo. In Standard german both is ,ein'.
Book vs beech is like the difference between kch vs ch, ng vs ch, g vs ch or silent g vs g in some Austro-Bavarian dialects.
E.g. I *siach* ane Baamer vs I hou ane Baamer *gseng*
I *båkch* an Kuchn vs I hou an Kuchn *båcher*
Kini vs Kiniglich
Beri vs Berigrettung
Bå vs Båchlauf
I love your passion for the English language. It’s made me see it in a new light. Very interesting indeed
in my german dialect (rhinehessian) we say:
maus = mouse
mais/meis = mice
Same in Swabian.Also Gaas ( Gans) and Gees ( Gänse).
Lower Saxon (Low German):
mouse = muus, mice = müüs
house = huus, houses = hüüs
louse = luus, lice = lüüs
goose = goos, geese = göös
Same in Bavarian (Maus/Mais; Laus/Lais; Kua/Kia)
I was just reading through the original 1382 Wycliffe's Bible from the Textus Receptus lineage and started reading it as old English (best I know how). I realized I could, however, research a little and get the pronunciations correctly from these videos. If you ever want to got through the Textus Receptus lines and give a sample of the changes over time I would be thrilled to hear them! Thank you!
I live where moose are indigenous and no one says “mooses” . We all say moose and moose, singular and plural, much like fish. So: A moose, the moose, those moose (both plural).
I think it is more like the sum of something, like you call an army of 1,000 soldiers just man. I got 1,000 man.
@@SchmulKrieger no you’d say I’ve got a man (singular), or I’ve got 1000 men (plural).
@@violetgypsie no
@@SchmulKrieger" A 1000 man army."
Is correct
The plural of moose is moozoog.
I love learning from you, you are my go to for those 3am thoughts.... "Why does this mean this?".. Simon will know! Thank you
Louse and lice, but grouse and grouse, and house and houses. English has more patches, mods and DLCs than Skyrim.
Yes, our language is also about as consistent as the lore of the elder scrolls universe.
True hahah. House didn’t undergo I-mutation because it was part of the -a stem category, which means in Old English (at least I think in West Saxon) the plural of hūs was actually...hūs. And we don’t know where the word grouse actually came from so I guess we had to just regularise it
@@BrandydocMeriabuck it's a funny thought that horses could have been houses and houses could have been horses.
@@BrandydocMeriabuck the plural of «hus» is still «hus» in Norwegian, except in very particular dialects where it can (probably only occasionally) be «huser».
@@Vingul Ah that's interesting, I'd have a assumed something like that might've been widely regularised after all that time.
I love these discussions, I speak English (native South Yorkshire),
German and also a version of Platt-Deutsch or lower German, which is
basically the language of the Angles. I don't join in so much because I
usually only see the videos a few days after they're posted, but I enjoy
reading the comments.
Now I'm wondering about the old plural of cow being "kine", and I kinda wonder if there's any relation between that and "swine".
Me reading this: is kine is the plural of cow than what would swine be for......sow- OH
EDIT: i don't want to spread misinformation so i looked it up, and swine actually comes from a proto germanic word *swīną, which was an adjectival version of a PIE word *sū-
As a german i heared kye, which is clearly Standard german Kühe, in my dialect ( swabian) spoken Kiah. Singular : Standard german Kuh/ swabian Kuah. In case of swine: Singular Schwein/ Plural Schweine. Sow is in german Sau ( in Standard german unwanted) , plural Säue. In my dialect : Sau and plural Sei.
@@brittakriep2938 kye/ky is cognate with german kühe, but there is another archaic english word (kine) which is a double plural according to wiktionary. It's ky+en, but now spelled kine, i suppose to reflect the pronunciation. Both of these are the plural of cow
No relationship between kine and swine. See the German words for cow and pig:
die Kuh (singular) - die Kühe (plural)
das Schwein (singular) - die Schweine (plural)
Anyone know why English has the dual words for the same animal, swine and pig? Is pig from Old Norse or something?
@@hamsterama "Pig" is most likely of a West Germanic origin, which makes it a native Old English word, but it did not come into wide use until Middle English time, from making an occasional appearance late in the 12c. in the sense "swine young" to becoming generally synonymous with "swine" by the mid 14c. Old Norse, or any North Germanic borrowing is phonologically unlikely, although a solid etymology is largely wanting. Harper suggest the reconstructed OE form *picg, but notes that it's unattested except as part of compounds.
Tangentially related: the names of farmed animals (swine, cow, calf) are native, because the animals were grown by the Old-English-speaking peasantry. The words for the meat of these same animals (pork, beef, veal), on the other hand, are borrowings, because the meat was consumed mainly by the Old-French-speaking nobility. Generally, when you see a doublet in English, consider as a possibility that it's a reflection of social stratification in the language. But that's not the case of our friend the pig, tho.
Another nice video, so chill! And the jumper lends you a very cosy aesthetic
Hi Simon! Great video as always, if I may offer a potentially annoying, little footnote: "moose" is the singular and the plural (at least, here in North America where there are moose), like deer--so "one moose, many moose." Didn't know it was mooses in England! Hope you are doing well. ( 4:50 , for reference)
I'm English, and I've never heard anyone say "mooses" as a plural for "moose". The plural would always be the same as the singular, like "sheep" (many of them here in Wales!).
@@BadgerBotherer1 the singular of sheep should be shoop
I would also say many moose or as a joke- mooses (as an English native speaker)
Oh Tenzin's here too
Plural would be "elk". As indeed would the singular. :)
Thank you Simon , I love your videos .
Fun Fact: _Computer_ mice used to be “mouses”. They weren’t pluralized like the animal until they became mainstream.
It can be either today. I work at a Best Buy and god knows every customer I talk to freezes when they try to ask where the "more than one mouse" section is
To my everlasting horror, databases have "indexes" rather than "indices". I have even surrendered the extra "me" on the end of "program". A shiver goes down my spine when I'm asked to "architect" a solution.
@@jacobsparta1 I get around that horror by saying,"Where can I find a mouse."
And yes, a lot of thought went into it.
We should have just called them Draggyclickers and been done with it.
@@ericmueller6836 That's what I'm going to call them from now on.😉
Great job on the nasal vowels by the way. And keep your channel going, you have no idea how awesome it is!
I'm not so embarrassed now by my rural Southeast Georgia relatives that say mouses and feets.
Thank you, Simon. Really enjoying your videos, and especially your presentation style.
I had an English teacher once who didn't much like me using words like "thrice" and "kine" in my assignments. I didn't much like that "teacher".
Kine is a word I was not familiar with, I had to look it up. But why thrice? It's not in any way an archaic word, and even I as a non-native speaker have seen and used it many times. It's such a useful word. Thank you for leading me to learn a new word by the way.
One of my favorite archaic curses is "thrice be damned."
One of my current pet hates is adverts that say two times and three times instead of twice and thrice. New improved wizzo is two times better! Argh!
I’d give you 20 rupees for still using «kine». «Thrice» should of course not be considered archaic.
@@Vingul oh no! Someone left the gate open and all the kine are out again!
I have discovered your videos very recently and I find them fascinating. I have to admit I don't always understand all the linguistic analysis and terminology, but it doesn't matter as I always get the gist. Thanks for your enlivening contribution to my lockdown life.
In danish, "goose/geese" is "gås/gæs" which is pronounced exactly like "gōs/gēs", so same sound as old english. On the other hand "mouse/mice" is "mus/mus" not sure why there is no change between singular and plural in this case.
“gås/gäss” and ”mus/möss” in Swedish
in Icelandic it still mus and mys, I think Danish just lost it
It’s «mus/mus» in Norwegian as well. Our «gjess» (Eng. «geese») sounds just like the English «yes».
Swabian dialect ( South West Germany): Maus/ Meis,, Gaas/ Gees. Attention swabian Gois is Ziege in standard german and goat in english.
"muis/muizen" and "gans/ganzen" in Duits the dipthong "ui" which is /øʏ̯/ phonetically speaking doesn't change for muis when becoming plural, neither does the a (/ɑ/ phonetically) in gans when plural. It's just that s becomes z but that is in almost all cases when the singular word that ends in s, it becomes z.
The reason it’s mice’s is so Sylvester the Cat can say I hate mice’s to pieces.
4:50 idk if it's different in British English, but in most American English dialects the plural of moose is just "moose", not "mooses", since the word was loaned from an indigenous language that lacks grammatical plurals
Good that you mention it! But are you sure that the plural form is from the indigenous language, too? I thought it was due to analogy, since many animal names in English share that phenomenon: fish -> fish, deer -> deer, sheep -> sheep.
@@daisybrain9423 I'm not sure but I remember hearing somewhere that the plural was like that because of the indigenous language it was loaned from
@@AprilLVideos Okay, interesting ^^ I don't want to claim anything that I don't know for sure
@@daisybrain9423 Remember the ancient philosopher who decided to say nothing that he did not know for sure. He was reduced to pointing silently with a finger.
@@faithlesshound5621 Who was that?
Fabulous! Very simple and the vocal demonstrations help a lot!
In Swedish, the words meaning: beech tree and book are identical in spelling, pronunciation, and grammatical gender: a book/beech = (en bok). But the plural forms differ: books = (böcker) and beeches = (bokar).
@Isander Freiman Tur att du kommenterade, så jag kunde fixa felstavningen av "beach trees" haha
Interesting. I have no idea why this was in my recommended feed. I really enjoyed it. Lets go!
could the proto-germanic “*gans” be a cognate with the modern spanish “ganso”?
Wiktionary says "ganso" actually comes from Gothic, so based on that yes
We have the same word in Portuguese and I was wondering that throughout the video as well!
And most likely the English "gander" (male goose).
The word actually goes all the way down to Proto Indo European. Latin "anser" should be a cognate as well. Glottal stop instead of a "g", but otherwise the same
@@sariannach Deutsch: "der Ganter" (männliche Gans)
Great video with beautiful footage, I'm so glad I got to understand everything you've explained! I suppose my english is getting truly better. Keep up with your good work!
As always, cool video. I always wonder about "house" and why it is not "hice". I often use "hice" jokingly, and, Oh, Lord, I hope no one starts using it! Do you know how "house" evolved and if it went through some type of "hice" phase?
At least in some bavarian dialects it's haus/haisa, so that might have been the case for English too.
@@Leo-uu8du Exactly, because standard German also has Haus & Häuser so maybe English just regularized. Thanks for sharing the Bavarian !
Simon, you have 1900 likes and only one dislike. Your programs are great! Keep it up! Greetings from Poland.
I love your videos, Simon. But one thing only in them makes me a bit crazy. This is the correct spelling of "separate" (or "separately").
How does he spell it? Seperate?
@@Vingul . . . Yeah. It's a pet peeve of mine because I am constantly fighting the urge to spell it like that. Now I just remind myself of the word "karate." Take off the "k" and put on "sep." No confusion that way!
@@pricklypear7516 separate has " part " in the middle of it !
I had very little knowledge about vowels but now because of ur amazing explanation i am becoming confident day by day.
in bavarian dialect it's actually the same. The plural of maus is meis and of laus is leis like mouse/mice louse/lice in english
Not in every Bavarian dialect. In Austria it's very often also mås/mös or mous/muis for mouse/mice.
I appreciate the sounds of nature around you when you record. I never noticed the wind until you mentioned it.
Very interesting, but you totally fail to mention there is a prominent MODERN Germanic language that is an exception : Dutch. Muis, Muizen. Auto, auto's. Huis, huizen. Stoel, stoelen. We are very consistent in this and just like Gothic it's very regular and predictable. I've recommended it to you before, but I'd love to be able to contribute the Dutch-context to many of your stories. You simply leap over Holland for some reason most of the time, and miss out on incredibly interesting information that would deeply enrich your conclusions and videos. Dutch seems to have gone a very different route than German. Just let me know how I can help, as I keep just biting my keyboard out of frustration for all the relevant stuff you miss out on in Dutch :))
probably because he might not be nearly as educated in those languages. but glad to learn about this in the comments.
Yeah do your own channel from the Dutch perspective!
And everyone leaps over Frysk (Frisian) so... 🙄🤷
(Boosting this comment because that is really interesting and relevant!)
@@quinterbeck (and I boost your boosting attempt)
A cute guy discussing one of my favorite topics ever - linguistics. That's all I needed for today.
Mr Jinks says "I hate meeces to pieces!" About Pixie and Dixie.
As does Thomas in Tom & Jerry.
Another good one, Simon. Thanks.
In Dutch "randstad" accent (notably Amsterdam and The Hague, but also Rotterdam and maybe Utrecht idk) the -siz ending for plural is pretty common, just like in your proto-Germanic example!
Standard Dutch would be
Mouse: "muis" (singular), "muizen" (plural)
Goose: "gans" (singular), "ganzen" (plural)
But people with an Amsterdam accent could easily say "muisies" and "gansies" for the plural form :D
I don't think this has anything to do with the subject.
It's about umlauts not plurals.
I thought it should be gans genses.
@@bcvanrijswijk it's about plurals, so I guess you didn't understand what Simon was talking about.
Fascinating, as always! No need for you to apologize for the wind; it adds a distinctive aural atmosphere to your videos and goes well with the grey, overcast sky here.
In reference to the “moose” and “mooses” claim, I have never heard anyone append an -s to denote the plural. To me it is like sheep and sheep
what, you mean sheeps?
We'll use Scots rules and say sheepen.
Right, I refer to many moose that way and not as mooses. American with moose occasionally in my cousin's backyards.
Yes, I was even taught in (Canadian) school that the plural of moose is moose.
@@marymcfarlane5108 That was also my experience. Canadian English seems to pluralize moose as moose.
I am 100% biased when I say this-you look great with the facial hair. Keep it up!
I pronounce 'dew' as it's spelt, i don't know if this is a Birmingham thing.
That is a funny thing to say as I would probably sound completely differently pronouncing it as it's spelled ;-)
@@guessitwasme How do you pronounce it and are you from Birmingham?
@@hetrodoxly1203 I would pronounce it "dew".
I am joking a bit, I am German and in my perception, the German pronunciation is the closest to the written word, but that is a matter of perspective. My pronunciation would, for an English speaker, be close to "deaf", but with a v in the end instead of the f, which I think does not exist in english words.
@@guessitwasme Your pronunciation is probably closer to early English than mine, we have a very thick accent in Birmingham, i left there 30 years ago but still have the accent. This should give you some idea :)
th-cam.com/video/TltSgaUR-0A/w-d-xo.html
So you pronounce it as /dew/? Hahahahaha
I‘m seeing so many similarities between the languages when watching these videos. It‘s such a joy! Thank you.
PIE: mūs
English: mouse, mice
German: maus, mäuse
Swissgerman: mus, müs
what about the words where there is no change between plural and singular?
I think those probably go all the way back to proto-Germanic. At any rate, there are a lot more of such nouns in modern German than there are in modern English.
@@bigscarysteve Lots of them in Scandinavian languages, too
@@sigridrp Yes. The Scandinavian languages are Germanic as well. The reason modern English has lost a lot of them is because of the influence of French and the massive amount of regularization of English grammar following the linguistic upheaval following the Norman invasion.
@Bj D I'm sorry you can't remember more. I'd like to read more about that theory.
I remember reading a book titled _The Atoms of Language_ by Mark C. Baker, in which the author made a brief comment that English is an unusual language in that it doesn't have noun classes. (At this point, I would direct you to a Wikipedia article titled "Noun Classes.") He was referring to gender as a type of noun class. Some languages have noun classes based on very different critera than gender. The Athabascan languages classify nouns based on their shape. At the moment, I'm dipping my toe into the study of Uralic languages, and they all lack noun classes. I think there are quite a few language families out there that lack noun classes, to contradict Dr. Baker.
I would argue that English does have gender, but that it is largely covert. My reason is that we have the pronouns "he," "she" and "it." If English lacked gender, we would have only one pronoun here rather than three. On the other hand, in the plural, English nouns all fall into one common gender, which is why we only have the pronoun "they."
French was the first foreign language I studied, and looking back on it, I now realize how poorly it was taught. Let me compare it to English in reference to what I just said in the previous paragraph. French has the words "ils" (masculine) and "elles" (feminine) meaning "they." This could have been used as an opportunity to present the idea of the common plural in English, but it wasn't. This failure led to further misapprehensions about French grammar. I was taught that to make an adjective femine, add "-e." To make it plural, add "-s." To make a femine adjective plural, take the feminine form (which already ends in "-e") and add an "-s." This gives the impression that feminine plural adjectives in French end with two suffixes, an "-e" and an "-s." This is completely wrong. French feminine adjectives end in one suffix, "-es." Teaching it this way may be pragmatic, but it gives the impression that French is an agglutinative language rather than a fusional one.
Excellent video again. I'm an English trainer and your videos help a lot with questions my students have.
Und dem plural auf "spouse", oder "spouse mit umlaut", gibt uns "SPICE"!
Ausgezeichnet !! ( :-D))))
Nice job on /y/, I rarely hear an english speaker pronouncing it as properly as you!
So nice to hear a TH-cam say ‘I’ll talk to you soon’ instead of the usual but nonsensical ‘I’ll see you soon’!
a TH-cam
I really enjoy your videos. Greetings from the USA.
3:33 "So dew has become Jew"
Me: Oh, of course, elementary
That part threw me off for a moment. So the English pronounce dew like jew?
@@chitlitlah We do, they're homophones in a lot of English dialects :) I think that diverged from the US pronunciation in the early modern period. The most conservative pronunciation is the one a lot of Welsh speakers use, as far as I know.
@@simonroper9218 I'm welsh and it's a little bit of a teller how anglicised someone is on how they say 'dew'. Contradictory as it may be, 'jew' is sometimes seen as the more English way to say it, and thus it suggests someone thinks they're posher than someone with a more 'south walian' accent. Here in Wales, if you sound like you're from Southern England with a Welsh twang, you sound posh. So the 'jew' mispronunciation (in other parts of the UK would be a colloquialism and lower class trait) is actually a 'more posh' thing to do... Weird how things turn out with dialects
@@chitlitlah Australians do as well
That's interesting. I watch a lot of English television and TH-cam videos, but never picked up on that regionalism. I'll listen for it if I hear a Brit or Aussie say it in the near future.
love your video's please keep them rolling in (huge fan) of your hard work and, thank you
Actually, Albanian has relicts of an i-umlaut too. There are some nouns that change the internal vowel bc in ancient times, the ending was an -i. It only affects maskuline nouns.
so there's for example:
plak > pleq (an old man) (originally plaki)
dash > desh (a ram)
mashkull > meshkuj (a male)
lak > leqe (a sling, here with an additional -e at the end)
etc.
Genuinely enjoy your videos.
But IS it Mooses? I thought it was 1 moose 3moose..
The plural of moose is mȳse.
Nah just joking it's moose, as in "I saw 3 moose in the forest"
Anyway if you said "mooses", nobody but Grammar-Nazis would care.
The plural of moose is moozoog.
@@kierancommanda1075 Thanx for straightening that out! I can't believe I've been saying it wrong for 50 yrs!😂✌
My mother tongue is a Dutch dialect spoken in the southeast of The Netherlands, called Limburgish. In that dialect the distinction is still made between [mu:s] in the singular and [my:s] in the plural. There is also a tonal difference between the two: [mu:s] is pronounced with what in German is called a 'Schleifton' (Dutch: sleeptoon) and [my:s] what in German is called a 'Stoßton' (Dutch: stoottoon'). Book - books = [bo:k] - [bø:k], cow - cows = [ku] - [ky(j)] in my dialect.