Metatron, here is something fairly new you seriously need to react to: "Everybody wants to rule the world cover in Classical Latin (SOFTBARDCORE)". I don't know if you can see this link, but: th-cam.com/video/Xtt78SW-mgg/w-d-xo.html
11:46 A tip from a native UK English speaker, you said “I need to take it off my chest” although I understood what you were trying to communicate, it sounds more natural and a native would say “I need to get it off my chest” Regardless, you have an excellent understanding and grasp of the English language. I really enjoy your videos and learning about the technical aspects of linguistics. I look forward to more videos in the future.
@@cestakou357 He's basic level geared towards laymen, so what? Are you saying people shouldn't start somewhere? He's great nontheless. Stop your silly whining.
@@cestakou357 It's like saying elementary school teachers all need to be PhD's in order to teach basic maths and English. And they certainly cannot be great at what they do without a PhD 😂
@@cestakou357 How did the shallowness of his linguistic knowledge manifest exactly? Can you give an example of a thing he didn’t know but should have, or a linguistic concept he misunderstood?
"Fishes" is the proper plural noun form of fish when referring to multiple whole distinct fishes. "There are 6 fishes in the pond." "Five barley loaves and two small fishes." "Fish" is the proper plural noun form of fish when referring to a commoditized quantity of fish, usually weight, or when referring to a group or groups of fish. "I need five pounds of fish," or, "the fish of lake minatonka usually keep to the shallows."
As few others have said already, Rob not only has a great channel and is very knowledgeable but he also does a lot of collabs. Which means, if you (Metatron) reach out to him to have a conversation about Latin or Roman Empire, I'm sure he'll be very open and excited about it! He's very humble and open to learn new things! DO IT! MAKE IT HAPPEN! 😂😊
2:15 The entire country of Canada is named by a similar mistake. Jacques Cartier met two indigenous youths who told him where the village was. The Huron-Iroquois word for village is "Kanata" and he mistook it for the name of the entire region. We kept adding parts and now the 2nd largest country in the world by landmass is called "Village"
That's really not uncommon to all the countries in the world. They're named after very simple and mundane things because those things have always been very important to humans. Modern people take these "simple" things for granted too much
Isn't there somewhere in North America which means 'what nice clothes you wear' because that was what the native said when they asked him where they were?
In the town I grew up there is a place called "Ochsenfurt". This is the exact German equivalent to "Oxford". It was simply the place where the farmers crossed the river with their oxen. And it is still that. A pond, a creek, and a place where you can find wild turtles (afaik) which ist not common in Switzerland anymore.
I'm pretty sure a ford is not a shape river but a shallow spot in the river where it could be crossed on foot or by horse/wagon. I spent some time in Rockford, IL and despite their several rivers over the Rock river, the turns name came from The fact that the Rock could be crossed there
Rob words is great (I think actually Rob is from Derby(!), at least Derbyshire anyway) and he also has a fantastic podcast with Jess Zafaris called Words Unravelled here on TH-cam!
Yeah, he's from Derby, but I think he lives in Germany these days. He has a really good podcast with another word expert called "Words Unravelled" which I would recommend.
Hereford - Army Ford - is interesting: The ford crossed the River Wye (Gwy in Welsh, Vaga in Latin), which means "Winding"). One early name for a warrior was "Wyeman", so the name poses the question - which came first. And just to complicate things, the city is Henffordd in Welsh (meaning Old Road), which is supposed to hsve been misheard or misread to give Hereford, which was often known as "Hereford in Wales", seat of the Bishops of Hereford and Erging. Erging was a Welsh-speaking area, basically the South Herefordshire Plateau, where many farms have Welsh names, and villages are named after Celtic saints or are mistranslations of Brythonic toponyms.
It could be the Welsh and English had different names for Hereford. It's only when you get to the Welsh Marches that you realise how complicated it all gets. I was directed to a place near Gobowen the person called Hengwid although the map said it was Hencoed. It means the same thing, but the woman was using an old form and the farther east you go, the older the forms become.
17:00 We have some regions in France where they still roll the R. And not to long ago more regions that now don't roll the R were doing it (for exemple my Grand-Father rolled his R while the next generation in the same village didn't).
Basically most of them used to roll the R except for the Parisian dialect. I for one think it makes French sound a lot better- uvular R sound like you're choking on a chicken bone...
Which reminds me of the great trivia question: Bombay is now known as Mumbai and Peking is now known as Beijing, but which has more legs: a Bombay Duck or a Peking Duck?
India has changed a lot of names over the past few decades; some minor (e.g. Bangalore to Bengaluru), others more drastic (Madras to Chennai). There's a whole wiki article: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaming_of_cities_in_India
I love RobWords. You should check out "Words Unravelled with RobWords and Jess Zafarris" where they chase down etymology of various English language words.
18:20 I believe it is mentioned in another Robwords video, when our vowels are spoken in a weak manner, they morph to a sound we represent with "e". So, it's spelled Oxford, but we pronounce it "Oxferd". I hypothesize that is also why "e" is the most used letter in our alphabet; all the evolution and morphing of the language, vowels have simplified at different points to sound as "e".
Perfect timing, now I can have something good and non-holiday related to listen to while I make dinner. I could use the reset before the Jolly resumes.
In the northern part of England you see quite a few places that end in 'by', these are named after Viking leaders (warlords?) like Normanby, Whitby, Osgodby to name but three.
Not warlords, but just landowners at some date, & not necessarily founders of the places. Whitby, Derby etc were there long before the Norse arrived, but the names were adjusted for these.
1. Liverpudlians aka scouse. 2. The story is if you are born in London within the sound of Bow bells you're cockney. Maybe before the sounds of a modern city that was true, but really it just means anyone from East end London.
Lincoln was the capital of the Kingdom of Lindsey. That's a conflation of Celtic "Lin" (modern Welsh "Llynn" meaning lake) and Early English "Ey" (meaning land that doesn't flood, cognate with "eyot" meaning island in a river). Some people from Lindsey went to Scotland where they were given a surname indicating their origin, Lindsay - which became a Christian name (mine, as it happens). The firmer kingdom became the county of Lindsey and Kesteven, named after Lincoln and... another Celtic mash-up, but with Norse (Coed = Woodland + Stefna = Meeting Place). Lindsey and Kesteven eventually became the county called Lincolnshire.
@stevefuller2933 That's from Luda (Latin, or Hlude in Old English), which is cognate with the modern English word "loud", describing the noise of the stream through the town nsmed after it.
Metatron, just to point out when you say in your mock Essex? accent " lets go out for a couple of chippy's " this doesn't make any sense. It would be like saying " lets go out for a couple of restaurants" .
It's regional. In Leicester (Lester) we wouldn't say that either, only ever "go TO the chippy", but i've definitely heard it from students and in other parts of the country. "Go for a chippy" means essentially "go for a meal from the chip shop" in some places.
@@ChinaboatmanReminds me of some comedian who in his act once talked about fish suppers (which apparently includes chips) so if you said you were having a fish supper with chips you were actually having two lots of chips!!! I think it was a Scottish comedian.
@@mattpotter8725fish supper is used in some parts of Scotland, and probably areas of the rest of the UK. You will also hear it referred to as a chippy supper or chippy tea in some areas of the north. In each case it was bought from a Fish and Chip shop, aka Fish shop, aka Chip shop, aka 18:58 Chipper etc… Regional in the English language can refer to anything from a few streets to a county, but never a whole region. Confused? You should be!
11:37 cool fact: in GNU/Linux executables don't have any extension. But I wouldn't rely on that to tell if the file is executable or not, cos lots of other stuff can have no extension. And since console applications are much more common than in Windows, double clicking would also probably not work. GNU/Linux in that way is surprisingly close to mobile operating systems, where the main method of executing things is a dedicated application menu. Apps are also installed from the "store" of your GNU/Linux distribution, just like in Android or iOS!
17:00 In fact, not so long ago, the sound R were still rolled in France among several regions of the country, among the population of the North and the South (Occitan). It's just that modern standard French comes mainly from the language of the Parisian Bourgeoisie since the Revolution, particularly in professions such as lawyers, judges, etc...in another terms, among the elite of the country.
A fact: Hongkong's name may mean "flagrant city". That can be because of the water of the Pearl River in China. Or that can because of the production of license.
Parisii was a tribe of east Yorkshire. A like named, related people of France had the City Lutitia Parisiorum. The Anglo-Saxons must have got 'Castra' from the Romano-Britons, who must have used it for defended places, not just forts. It does not apply to any place, even if fortified, that was not Roman. Isca comes from Pisces, so means 'fishy river'. Glevum is from 'glou' shiny water/river. Wich is ultimately from Latin 'vicus', but became specific to a trading place.
There are also the Pictones, a Celtic tribe whose roots strangely resemble the Picts. They were more settled in the region around the future Poitiers. However, it may be unrelated too.
About 08:30 We learned in school that 'castra' was a _plurale tantum_ (plural only) which means that a plural word is used for a single thing, like 'kalendae' or 'idūs'.
Happy Christmas Metatron. I'm an Ipswich local. And i believe we used to be called Gippeswyk. Oh and A+ on the accent. Slightly mix it with a pirate twang and even the locals couldnt tell the difference.
As an American who does a lot of narrations of stories by British people, I find British place names are often very challenging. I've given up on assuming anything about how they are pronounced and just find a youtube video by a Brit who says the name. There's no other way to know how to pronounce British place names. They do all kinds of crazy things with their pronunciations over there on that island! I mean, we Americans do some crazy pronunciations too - you'll find places in the US named Cairo that are pronounced Kay-roh, so nothing like the city in Egypt. To pick an easy example. But it's far less common than in the UK. Brits aren't pleased with any place name in the entire country until they've mangled it beyond all recognition :-P
One great pair of American place names that always sticks out is Kansas and Arkansas. Like, how tf did that happen But yeah, British names take that to the next level. There's also a great episode of map men on this topic
There's a city called Lebanon in Middle TN but nobody from Lebanon pronounces it like the country. They call it "Leb-Nun". Same with Lancaster - "Lankster". There's also Lafayette, pronounced "Luh-Fett".
Over on the channel "Lost in the Pond", being an Englishman who became a US citizen, his channel is a veritable smörgåsbord of topics comparing life in the US to life in the UK, but one of the things he covers is place names. You want to know some wacky pronunciations for US towns, go check those out! :)
Hey Metatron, I live in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. The reason we pronounce Derby, Darby is because originally it was spelled Daeoraby then Darby then after the Normans came with their French(ish) accents pronounced it and wrote it as Derby, but we locals kept the Darby pronunciation.
I’m probably just referencing speculation, but I’m sure I read somewhere that the Roman name Londinium was a latinisation of Lirsdûn meaning either castle of Lir or river of Lir. Lir was considered one of the chief gods in the Celtic religion of the region. Just as the Isle of Man is named after Mannanan Mac (son of) Lir being the Celtic god of the sea. Although I’m well aware of how messy Celtic language history can be.
To be a Cockney you need to be born in the sound range of Bow Bells (the church bells of the St. Mary-le-Bow church). And if you want to place which bells you can hear in London then you only need to remember the children's rhyme "Oranges & Lemons". It was, and still is, a mnemonic to identify the church bells around the city.
Please let me clarify the fishes thing once and for all, so nobody is confused anymore. "Fishes" doesn't refer to fish of different kinds, but to different kinds of fish. "There live 20 fishes in this lake" means that 20 species of fish inhabit this lake, not that there are a total of 20 fish of different species in the lake.
It depends on context. Certain translations of the Bible say “fishes and loaves”, as it’s probably the regular pluralization used occasionally under King James. Subsequent translations might retain that peculiar “-es” ending, when even the translators wouldn’t use that to pluralize “fish” in any other context. It sounds biblical.
Since English is stress timed (as opposed to syllable timed like Italian), words very often are reduced when not undergoing primary stress, regardless of dialect. As an American, I say fohhrd for Ford, but then Stanford, sounds like Stanfuhrd. Same thing happens with land when it becomes a suffix, as in island, mainland, highland, etc. This tiny detail often gives foreign speakers away.
I’m pretty sure schwa is the most used vowel in any dialect of English, and indeed the most common vowel across all languages, as it is the vowel that takes the least effort for a human mouth to make, the tongue being in a completely relaxed, neutral position.
14:26 - Unsurprisingly, in Australia we have a lot of place names from the UK. A few hours away from me we also have an "Ipswich". Quite a funny name, cool to know the names origins though
Oh I love RobWords! Really like you turning out reaction videos and I really respect the fact that you don't react to the whole video. That's very classy of you.
@metatron Some days ago, I commented critiquing you for your react videos. I want to apologize to you for my statements. The quality of your reacts has only increased with every video, I’m enjoying your additions of historical commentary, and I like that you don’t complete the video so as to encourage people to watch the original. You are a quality TH-camr with integrity. Respect and my apologies, merry Christmas and happy new year to you.
If you want to hear French with a rolled R, you can listen to Acadians from the southeast region of New Brunswick in Canada. That's where I'm from and I roll my R in French. My ancestors came here from France in the 1650s, and I believe they rolled their R back then, which is why some of us still do.
Rob actually makes a mistake in this video. He mentions mama being related to mammal but mama and dada/baba or some variation are universal regardless of language family. Mama doesn't have etymology as such, it's just that the bilabial nasal consonant is one of the first sounds a baby can produce and is where all the world's mamas come from. The river river phenomenon comes about because local peoples had no real need to differentiate between rivers as they'd only see one in their lives, then foreign people would come and mistake the local word for a proper noun, this also happened with lakes and mountains. Some examples are river Yangtze - river long river, Lake Michigan - lake large lake and Barrhill - flat topped hill hill. The city I live in, Bristol, takes it's name from the old English Brycgstow meaning the site of the bridge. There's also a bridge named after the city called Bristol bridge or literally the bridge at the site of the bridge.
But it IS almost certainly etymologically related to words like “mammary”, “mammal” etc, but in the opposite direction to the one you assumed he meant. In other words, “Mama” came first, likely in precisely the way you describe, and all these other words flowed from it because they pertain to motherhood and breast feeding.
1:40 in Spain the city Zaragoza went from CaesarAugusta to saraqusta (Arabic) to çaragoça in the post Andalus medieval period to finally ending up as Zaragoza or Mérida starting out as Augusta Emerita.
3:00 yeah, I do the same thing when talking about my ancestry. I am of German descent, but more specifically Prussian. The name Prussia to a few people has negative connotations. The State of Prussia was de facto abolished in 1933 by the Nazis, and de jure by the Allies in 1947.
castrorum is the genitive plural of a neuter plural castra; the genitive singular is castri. If castra was misinterpreted as an a-stem, the gentive singular would be castrae
I've been speaking english for as long as I've been able to speak. I would also dare to say my vocabulary is above average. I NEVER knew you could use the word fishes when referring to more than one species of fish.
I mean Augsburg in germany was called Augusta Vindelicum when it was founded by the romans and I'd like to think that early germans just couldn't be bothered to try to pronounce it lmao
You're very well informed about Chinese. I believe Peking is Wade-Giles transliteration while Beijing is pinyin and it's way more accurate than Wade-Giles.
This is an amazing video. I totally understand why you don't react to the whole video but surely you could revisit this one for a part two? I'd already watched the video as I was already subscribed to his channel and find the subject of place names fascinating (why is there a c in this word, I guess it's from Latin and us English are just lazy), but I loved your reaction to this video adding even more context in places and some commentary. You've got me quite hungry after mentioning the ham, I'm quite partial to some honey roasted ham. Italian cured meats are amazing, and even better in Italy (obviously), I might have to have a pre Christmas dinner sandwich (I'm guessing the wich comes from the Anglo-Saxon wic as well since sandwich comes, I believe, from Lord Sandwich who was an aristocrat who was too busy to sit down a meal and so said to his servant just fetch me some meat and put it between 2 slices of bread). Look what you've done to me!!!
RobWords is not entirely reliable. He made mistakes in his Anglish video. Langfocus's video on it is better. Please react to his video "Anglish - What if English Were 100% Germanic? ".
Fun video and good reaction. But your CASTRA fun fact doesn't quite track, or I am confused. Yes, CASTRA n. pl. understood as sg. became normal and CASTRUM sg. not used, but CASTRORUM is just the genitive of CASTRA-pl. form, sg. meaning. Were you going to talk about CASTRA, -AE coming to be treated as if it were a 1st-declension noun? That is attested, if rare, I think.
In Utah, we have some interesting place names. Some are easy to pronounce. Provo, Lehi, even Santaquin, those are pronounced how they look. But others are harder to figure out. Toole is pronounced like To ill' ah, not Too lee. Hurricane is pronounced Her' ick un. But, unless you are either born a Utahn, or you have studied Native American languages, I doubt you could figure out Oquirrh. That's pronounced Oak' er. I've actually been subscribed to Rob Words longer than you, Metatron. It's fun to watch his videos.
Rob only got two things wrong. The Old English 'feld' means open country and 'venta' is a market. I find it hard to believe Oxford is literal and guess 'ox' comes from a Celtic river name.
@@schmozzer I'm still not sure why naming somewhere after 'the place where the oxen cross the river' seems implausible (I'm guessing that's what duff means). I don't live far from Hertford and always assumed that name ment (wait for it) 'the place where the deer cross the river'... or is that actually named after an obscure celtic river name too?
Personally, I wouldn't disagree with Eilert Eckwall, who wrote the definitive "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names", who says about Oxford "Ford for oxen".
Link to the original video
th-cam.com/video/517gTjBLVy4/w-d-xo.html
canton is the province
Metatron, here is something fairly new you seriously need to react to: "Everybody wants to rule the world cover in Classical Latin (SOFTBARDCORE)". I don't know if you can see this link, but: th-cam.com/video/Xtt78SW-mgg/w-d-xo.html
11:46 A tip from a native UK English speaker, you said “I need to take it off my chest” although I understood what you were trying to communicate, it sounds more natural and a native would say “I need to get it off my chest”
Regardless, you have an excellent understanding and grasp of the English language.
I really enjoy your videos and learning about the technical aspects of linguistics.
I look forward to more videos in the future.
I’m glad you’ve discovered RobWords, he puts out great content and I’ve learnt a lot about the English language from him
The video where he invented an alternate alphabet for English was so ridiculous it showed how shallow his linguistic knowledge is.
@@cestakou357🤓
@@cestakou357 He's basic level geared towards laymen, so what? Are you saying people shouldn't start somewhere?
He's great nontheless. Stop your silly whining.
@@cestakou357 It's like saying elementary school teachers all need to be PhD's in order to teach basic maths and English. And they certainly cannot be great at what they do without a PhD 😂
@@cestakou357 How did the shallowness of his linguistic knowledge manifest exactly? Can you give an example of a thing he didn’t know but should have, or a linguistic concept he misunderstood?
"Fishes" is the proper plural noun form of fish when referring to multiple whole distinct fishes. "There are 6 fishes in the pond." "Five barley loaves and two small fishes."
"Fish" is the proper plural noun form of fish when referring to a commoditized quantity of fish, usually weight, or when referring to a group or groups of fish. "I need five pounds of fish," or, "the fish of lake minatonka usually keep to the shallows."
RobWords is such an awesome channel.
Good to know you like my hometown’s name! Greetings from an Ipswich native.
Happy Christmas fellow native.
As few others have said already, Rob not only has a great channel and is very knowledgeable but he also does a lot of collabs.
Which means, if you (Metatron) reach out to him to have a conversation about Latin or Roman Empire, I'm sure he'll be very open and excited about it!
He's very humble and open to learn new things!
DO IT! MAKE IT HAPPEN!
😂😊
*palpatine voice "dew it"
2:15 The entire country of Canada is named by a similar mistake. Jacques Cartier met two indigenous youths who told him where the village was. The Huron-Iroquois word for village is "Kanata" and he mistook it for the name of the entire region. We kept adding parts and now the 2nd largest country in the world by landmass is called "Village"
Canadian Heritage Minute commercials were awesome.
I’d say: settlement, not village
That's really not uncommon to all the countries in the world. They're named after very simple and mundane things because those things have always been very important to humans. Modern people take these "simple" things for granted too much
Isn't there somewhere in North America which means 'what nice clothes you wear' because that was what the native said when they asked him where they were?
In the town I grew up there is a place called "Ochsenfurt". This is the exact German equivalent to "Oxford". It was simply the place where the farmers crossed the river with their oxen. And it is still that. A pond, a creek, and a place where you can find wild turtles (afaik) which ist not common in Switzerland anymore.
I've been following both Robwords and you for a long time. I would love to see a collab between you too. That would be amazing.
I'm pretty sure a ford is not a shape river but a shallow spot in the river where it could be crossed on foot or by horse/wagon. I spent some time in Rockford, IL and despite their several rivers over the Rock river, the turns name came from The fact that the Rock could be crossed there
Yes a ford is a place on the riverthat is shallow enough to cross it on foot/drive across no boats/swimming required lol
Rob words is great (I think actually Rob is from Derby(!), at least Derbyshire anyway) and he also has a fantastic podcast with Jess Zafaris called Words Unravelled here on TH-cam!
I forget, he's also a news anchor for DW news?
Yeah, he's from Derby, but I think he lives in Germany these days. He has a really good podcast with another word expert called "Words Unravelled" which I would recommend.
We do have some good things that come from Derby (I’m from Derby) 😂
@@Tigerbearwolf8600 Nice cheese.
@@Tigerbearwolf8600 The engines powering many of the world's airliners, for a start.
Hereford - Army Ford - is interesting:
The ford crossed the River Wye (Gwy in Welsh, Vaga in Latin), which means "Winding"). One early name for a warrior was "Wyeman", so the name poses the question - which came first. And just to complicate things, the city is Henffordd in Welsh (meaning Old Road), which is supposed to hsve been misheard or misread to give Hereford, which was often known as "Hereford in Wales", seat of the Bishops of Hereford and Erging. Erging was a Welsh-speaking area, basically the South Herefordshire Plateau, where many farms have Welsh names, and villages are named after Celtic saints or are mistranslations of Brythonic toponyms.
It could be the Welsh and English had different names for Hereford. It's only when you get to the Welsh Marches that you realise how complicated it all gets. I was directed to a place near Gobowen the person called Hengwid although the map said it was Hencoed. It means the same thing, but the woman was using an old form and the farther east you go, the older the forms become.
Look forward to this Robs videos are always fantastic!
17:00 We have some regions in France where they still roll the R.
And not to long ago more regions that now don't roll the R were doing it (for exemple my Grand-Father rolled his R while the next generation in the same village didn't).
Basically most of them used to roll the R except for the Parisian dialect. I for one think it makes French sound a lot better- uvular R sound like you're choking on a chicken bone...
City name no longer being used while I was growing up: Peking and Bombay.
Which reminds me of the great trivia question:
Bombay is now known as Mumbai and Peking is now known as Beijing, but which has more legs: a Bombay Duck or a Peking Duck?
India has changed a lot of names over the past few decades; some minor (e.g. Bangalore to Bengaluru), others more drastic (Madras to Chennai). There's a whole wiki article: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaming_of_cities_in_India
I love RobWords. You should check out "Words Unravelled with RobWords and Jess Zafarris" where they chase down etymology of various English language words.
18:20 I believe it is mentioned in another Robwords video, when our vowels are spoken in a weak manner, they morph to a sound we represent with "e". So, it's spelled Oxford, but we pronounce it "Oxferd". I hypothesize that is also why "e" is the most used letter in our alphabet; all the evolution and morphing of the language, vowels have simplified at different points to sound as "e".
Love robwords glad you've discovered him. I think you would also enjoy words unravelled by Rob and an etymologist called Jess zafarris. So good!
Perfect timing, now I can have something good and non-holiday related to listen to while I make dinner.
I could use the reset before the Jolly resumes.
I think the cockney thing is St Mary le Bow, born in earshot of Bow’s bells.
Which in modern times due to the noise pollution is a much smaller area.
Less to do with noise pollution and more to do with the fact that people aren't born in that area of London much anymore
Correct but not the Bow district in the East End of London. This means Bow church in the Strand.
@@eddhardy1054 Audio engineers went out with recording equipment and tested it.
@@Shoomer88 Fairplay 👍
In the northern part of England you see quite a few places that end in 'by', these are named after Viking leaders (warlords?) like Normanby, Whitby, Osgodby to name but three.
Not warlords, but just landowners at some date, & not necessarily founders of the places. Whitby, Derby etc were there long before the Norse arrived, but the names were adjusted for these.
@@DanielFerguson-j9u Derby's original name was Northworthy.
By means village/town/city even in Norwegian (probably the same in Danish and Swedish)
One video of Rob Words' you might like is his one talking about anglo saxon vocabulary we should start using again as tgeir meanings are fascinating
1. Liverpudlians aka scouse.
2. The story is if you are born in London within the sound of Bow bells you're cockney. Maybe before the sounds of a modern city that was true, but really it just means anyone from East end London.
Metatron meets Rob Words! What more could I ask for?
As soon as I saw Metatron and RobWords, I clicked immediately! Another great channel featuring Rob Watts is "Words Unravelled" with Jess Zafarris.
Lincoln was the capital of the Kingdom of Lindsey. That's a conflation of Celtic "Lin" (modern Welsh "Llynn" meaning lake) and Early English "Ey" (meaning land that doesn't flood, cognate with "eyot" meaning island in a river). Some people from Lindsey went to Scotland where they were given a surname indicating their origin, Lindsay - which became a Christian name (mine, as it happens). The firmer kingdom became the county of Lindsey and Kesteven, named after Lincoln and... another Celtic mash-up, but with Norse (Coed = Woodland + Stefna = Meeting Place). Lindsey and Kesteven eventually became the county called Lincolnshire.
You forgot about the other part of Lincolnshire - Louth.
@stevefuller2933 That's from Luda (Latin, or Hlude in Old English), which is cognate with the modern English word "loud", describing the noise of the stream through the town nsmed after it.
Metatron, just to point out when you say in your mock Essex? accent " lets go out for a couple of chippy's " this doesn't make any sense. It would be like saying " lets go out for a couple of restaurants" .
It's regional. In Leicester (Lester) we wouldn't say that either, only ever "go TO the chippy", but i've definitely heard it from students and in other parts of the country. "Go for a chippy" means essentially "go for a meal from the chip shop" in some places.
@@Chinaboatman it was the plural s I was pointing out.
@@ChinaboatmanReminds me of some comedian who in his act once talked about fish suppers (which apparently includes chips) so if you said you were having a fish supper with chips you were actually having two lots of chips!!! I think it was a Scottish comedian.
@@mattpotter8725fish supper is used in some parts of Scotland, and probably areas of the rest of the UK. You will also hear it referred to as a chippy supper or chippy tea in some areas of the north. In each case it was bought from a Fish and Chip shop, aka Fish shop, aka Chip shop, aka 18:58 Chipper etc…
Regional in the English language can refer to anything from a few streets to a county, but never a whole region. Confused? You should be!
It does, but only if you assume he's looking for a pair of carpenters.
You have to be born within the sound of the bow bells to be a cockney.
11:37 cool fact: in GNU/Linux executables don't have any extension. But I wouldn't rely on that to tell if the file is executable or not, cos lots of other stuff can have no extension. And since console applications are much more common than in Windows, double clicking would also probably not work. GNU/Linux in that way is surprisingly close to mobile operating systems, where the main method of executing things is a dedicated application menu. Apps are also installed from the "store" of your GNU/Linux distribution, just like in Android or iOS!
17:00 In fact, not so long ago, the sound R were still rolled in France among several regions of the country, among the population of the North and the South (Occitan). It's just that modern standard French comes mainly from the language of the Parisian Bourgeoisie since the Revolution, particularly in professions such as lawyers, judges, etc...in another terms, among the elite of the country.
A fact: Hongkong's name may mean "flagrant city". That can be because of the water of the Pearl River in China. Or that can because of the production of license.
Fragrant harbor would be more accurate
Mapmen did a video about English cities, and they explained a bit more about how a place can become a city.
Anyone who is on robs socials send him this vid. Would love a collab.
Hey Metatron, Rob is an Englishman who lives in Germany.
In English before we said Beijing, Peking was pronounced somewhere between peaking and pea king, not pecking.
Parisii was a tribe of east Yorkshire. A like named, related people of France had the City Lutitia Parisiorum. The Anglo-Saxons must have got 'Castra' from the Romano-Britons, who must have used it for defended places, not just forts. It does not apply to any place, even if fortified, that was not Roman.
Isca comes from Pisces, so means 'fishy river'. Glevum is from 'glou' shiny water/river. Wich is ultimately from Latin 'vicus', but became specific to a trading place.
There are also the Pictones, a Celtic tribe whose roots strangely resemble the Picts. They were more settled in the region around the future Poitiers. However, it may be unrelated too.
Gloucester is Caergloyw in Welsh btw.
About 08:30
We learned in school that 'castra' was a _plurale tantum_ (plural only) which means that a plural word is used for a single thing, like 'kalendae' or 'idūs'.
Lol learnt this in Latin very recently 😮 what a coincidence that this should appear just a few days later
Happy Christmas Metatron. I'm an Ipswich local. And i believe we used to be called Gippeswyk. Oh and A+ on the accent. Slightly mix it with a pirate twang and even the locals couldnt tell the difference.
As an American who does a lot of narrations of stories by British people, I find British place names are often very challenging. I've given up on assuming anything about how they are pronounced and just find a youtube video by a Brit who says the name. There's no other way to know how to pronounce British place names. They do all kinds of crazy things with their pronunciations over there on that island!
I mean, we Americans do some crazy pronunciations too - you'll find places in the US named Cairo that are pronounced Kay-roh, so nothing like the city in Egypt. To pick an easy example. But it's far less common than in the UK. Brits aren't pleased with any place name in the entire country until they've mangled it beyond all recognition :-P
One great pair of American place names that always sticks out is Kansas and Arkansas. Like, how tf did that happen
But yeah, British names take that to the next level. There's also a great episode of map men on this topic
There’s a very small town in Washington called Buena. Silly me pronounced it like it were Spanish. nope. It’s Byoo-eena.
We only do this to annoy American tourists!!! 😜
There's a city called Lebanon in Middle TN but nobody from Lebanon pronounces it like the country. They call it "Leb-Nun". Same with Lancaster - "Lankster". There's also Lafayette, pronounced "Luh-Fett".
Over on the channel "Lost in the Pond", being an Englishman who became a US citizen, his channel is a veritable smörgåsbord of topics comparing life in the US to life in the UK, but one of the things he covers is place names. You want to know some wacky pronunciations for US towns, go check those out! :)
Hey Metatron, I live in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. The reason we pronounce Derby, Darby is because originally it was spelled Daeoraby then Darby then after the Normans came with their French(ish) accents pronounced it and wrote it as Derby, but we locals kept the Darby pronunciation.
I’m probably just referencing speculation, but I’m sure I read somewhere that the Roman name Londinium was a latinisation of Lirsdûn meaning either castle of Lir or river of Lir. Lir was considered one of the chief gods in the Celtic religion of the region. Just as the Isle of Man is named after Mannanan Mac (son of) Lir being the Celtic god of the sea. Although I’m well aware of how messy Celtic language history can be.
I enjoy your videos so much! Thank you.
"sleeps with the fishes" is correct, but only if there is more than one kind
I enjoy your reactions, but I like it when you find someone you like or is knowledgable. You seem to have more fun watching them.
To be a Cockney you need to be born in the sound range of Bow Bells (the church bells of the St. Mary-le-Bow church).
And if you want to place which bells you can hear in London then you only need to remember the children's rhyme "Oranges & Lemons". It was, and still is, a mnemonic to identify the church bells around the city.
Please let me clarify the fishes thing once and for all, so nobody is confused anymore. "Fishes" doesn't refer to fish of different kinds, but to different kinds of fish. "There live 20 fishes in this lake" means that 20 species of fish inhabit this lake, not that there are a total of 20 fish of different species in the lake.
It depends on context. Certain translations of the Bible say “fishes and loaves”, as it’s probably the regular pluralization used occasionally under King James. Subsequent translations might retain that peculiar “-es” ending, when even the translators wouldn’t use that to pluralize “fish” in any other context. It sounds biblical.
Since English is stress timed (as opposed to syllable timed like Italian), words very often are reduced when not undergoing primary stress, regardless of dialect. As an American, I say fohhrd for Ford, but then Stanford, sounds like Stanfuhrd. Same thing happens with land when it becomes a suffix, as in island, mainland, highland, etc. This tiny detail often gives foreign speakers away.
A collab between you two would be amazing
The respect that Metatron has for this creator is wonderful!
St Mary le bow church located between bank station and St Paul's cathedral.
I feel for your wife, she has to put alarms on your refrigerator to stop you snacking and eating all the food.
After all, the most used vowel in many British English dialects (and especially in Australian English) is schwa.
I’m pretty sure schwa is the most used vowel in any dialect of English, and indeed the most common vowel across all languages, as it is the vowel that takes the least effort for a human mouth to make, the tongue being in a completely relaxed, neutral position.
@metatronacademy To answer your question Rob comes from Derbyshire and, I think, more precisely from Derby. He now lives and works in Germany.
Clearly the correct pluralization of fish is fishies! :)
14:26 - Unsurprisingly, in Australia we have a lot of place names from the UK. A few hours away from me we also have an "Ipswich". Quite a funny name, cool to know the names origins though
On the table in front of you there are 2 salmon and 2 trout. There are 4 fish on the table. But there are 2 fishes on the table.
Oh I love RobWords! Really like you turning out reaction videos and I really respect the fact that you don't react to the whole video. That's very classy of you.
@metatron Some days ago, I commented critiquing you for your react videos. I want to apologize to you for my statements. The quality of your reacts has only increased with every video, I’m enjoying your additions of historical commentary, and I like that you don’t complete the video so as to encourage people to watch the original. You are a quality TH-camr with integrity. Respect and my apologies, merry Christmas and happy new year to you.
"Within earshot of the Bow Bells at St. Mary's"
If you want to hear French with a rolled R, you can listen to Acadians from the southeast region of New Brunswick in Canada. That's where I'm from and I roll my R in French. My ancestors came here from France in the 1650s, and I believe they rolled their R back then, which is why some of us still do.
I was born in a town whose name means Peasants Clearing. It's just down Watling Street from Priest Town.
You gotta check out his podcast/youtube series “Words Unravelled” with Jeff Zafarris! It’s super interesting and they’re a lot of fun
Rob actually makes a mistake in this video. He mentions mama being related to mammal but mama and dada/baba or some variation are universal regardless of language family. Mama doesn't have etymology as such, it's just that the bilabial nasal consonant is one of the first sounds a baby can produce and is where all the world's mamas come from.
The river river phenomenon comes about because local peoples had no real need to differentiate between rivers as they'd only see one in their lives, then foreign people would come and mistake the local word for a proper noun, this also happened with lakes and mountains. Some examples are river Yangtze - river long river, Lake Michigan - lake large lake and Barrhill - flat topped hill hill. The city I live in, Bristol, takes it's name from the old English Brycgstow meaning the site of the bridge. There's also a bridge named after the city called Bristol bridge or literally the bridge at the site of the bridge.
But it IS almost certainly etymologically related to words like “mammary”, “mammal” etc, but in the opposite direction to the one you assumed he meant. In other words, “Mama” came first, likely in precisely the way you describe, and all these other words flowed from it because they pertain to motherhood and breast feeding.
The Man in Manchester comes from 'mam' after the two breast shaped hills next to the city.
@@fromchomleystreet That's very true i didn't even consider that tbh
If your Italian, specifically sicilian, I think you're allowed to say "fishes"... especially if it follows the words "sleep with the...".
*sees Stoke, skips* I will never forget this affront to my people. justice for the potters
1:40 in Spain the city Zaragoza went from CaesarAugusta to saraqusta (Arabic) to çaragoça in the post Andalus medieval period to finally ending up as Zaragoza or Mérida starting out as Augusta Emerita.
As a native English speaker in the U.S. I do pronounce Oxford as Oxferd. I would pronounce ford by itself as ford.
3:00 yeah, I do the same thing when talking about my ancestry. I am of German descent, but more specifically Prussian.
The name Prussia to a few people has negative connotations.
The State of Prussia was de facto abolished in 1933 by the Nazis, and de jure by the Allies in 1947.
3:50 I believe he was born in Derby (he's a Derby county fan) but he has a southern accent, so I guess he was raised elsewhere
castrorum is the genitive plural of a neuter plural castra; the genitive singular is castri. If castra was misinterpreted as an a-stem, the gentive singular would be castrae
He said "Even in American accent, not that I can even do it well," Then proceeded to say "Ox ferd" with a perfect American accent. 😆😂
I highly recommend the Mapmen covering the same subject on the Jay Foreman channel
I'd love to see you two collaborate on some videos, it could be fun!
I die a little inside whenever you put on an English accent 😂
Megatron, cockneys don’t live in the east London anymore, they’ve moved out to Essex for the most part
I've been speaking english for as long as I've been able to speak.
I would also dare to say my vocabulary is above average.
I NEVER knew you could use the word fishes when referring to more than one species of fish.
Rob's from Derby, he mentions so in his full video.
Exe is an executable, good one
I mean Augsburg in germany was called Augusta Vindelicum when it was founded by the romans and I'd like to think that early germans just couldn't be bothered to try to pronounce it lmao
Love the comment about fish vs fishes. “We have 7 fishes for Christmas Eve dinner”. If you do that the whole house has food in it. 🥰
"Northwich" is a market town on the other side of the country in my home county of Cheshire.
"This is a terrible helmet" LOL
If you think everyone pronounces Derby wrong think what they do with Grundisburgh.
Rob gives big Brian Cox energy
You're very well informed about Chinese. I believe Peking is Wade-Giles transliteration while Beijing is pinyin and it's way more accurate than Wade-Giles.
I wanna see metatron react to tagalog i cant lie it's similar to english and Spanish in ways i wanna see how many words he can understand
This is an amazing video. I totally understand why you don't react to the whole video but surely you could revisit this one for a part two? I'd already watched the video as I was already subscribed to his channel and find the subject of place names fascinating (why is there a c in this word, I guess it's from Latin and us English are just lazy), but I loved your reaction to this video adding even more context in places and some commentary. You've got me quite hungry after mentioning the ham, I'm quite partial to some honey roasted ham. Italian cured meats are amazing, and even better in Italy (obviously), I might have to have a pre Christmas dinner sandwich (I'm guessing the wich comes from the Anglo-Saxon wic as well since sandwich comes, I believe, from Lord Sandwich who was an aristocrat who was too busy to sit down a meal and so said to his servant just fetch me some meat and put it between 2 slices of bread). Look what you've done to me!!!
Please can we have a part 2 (after everyone has had enough time to go and watch the whole video of course).
Oh, and Happy Christmas to you and all the Metatron clan!!!
How about Mr Metatron do a similar video about Italian cities. That'd be quite interesting...
Another good video of his is 'How anyone (including you) can read German'.
RobWords is not entirely reliable. He made mistakes in his Anglish video. Langfocus's video on it is better. Please react to his video "Anglish - What if English Were 100% Germanic? ".
Fun video and good reaction. But your CASTRA fun fact doesn't quite track, or I am confused. Yes, CASTRA n. pl. understood as sg. became normal and CASTRUM sg. not used, but CASTRORUM is just the genitive of CASTRA-pl. form, sg. meaning. Were you going to talk about CASTRA, -AE coming to be treated as if it were a 1st-declension noun? That is attested, if rare, I think.
I bet he has genuine Italian Gabagol in his fridge
*Capocollo
He isn't italian-american
Here in Germany we also have a place called Ochsenfurt (Oxford).
6:08 at least they didn't pul la French and turn Augustus into "Août"
I love that it's not the video that triggers you but fish and ham. Very Italian 😂
In English it was called Pee-king not peck-ing.
I was voted 'Pee King' after all the beer on Christmas day.
I am from Chichester and we now simply call it Chi "chai"
Bow bells….they have not rang for a long time
In Utah, we have some interesting place names. Some are easy to pronounce. Provo, Lehi, even Santaquin, those are pronounced how they look. But others are harder to figure out. Toole is pronounced like To ill' ah, not Too lee. Hurricane is pronounced Her' ick un. But, unless you are either born a Utahn, or you have studied Native American languages, I doubt you could figure out Oquirrh. That's pronounced Oak' er.
I've actually been subscribed to Rob Words longer than you, Metatron. It's fun to watch his videos.
Swimming with the fishes..
Rob only got two things wrong. The Old English 'feld' means open country and 'venta' is a market. I find it hard to believe Oxford is literal and guess 'ox' comes from a Celtic river name.
Sorry but just because you find the second part 'hard to believe' well it doesn't mean Rob's wrong now does it?
@@eddhardy1054 No, it doesn't but it does sound duff. That's why I am only making a suggestion.
@@schmozzer I'm still not sure why naming somewhere after 'the place where the oxen cross the river' seems implausible (I'm guessing that's what duff means). I don't live far from Hertford and always assumed that name ment (wait for it) 'the place where the deer cross the river'... or is that actually named after an obscure celtic river name too?
Personally, I wouldn't disagree with Eilert Eckwall, who wrote the definitive "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names", who says about Oxford "Ford for oxen".