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Hello, My name is Karen Boruff and I live in the USA. I was delighted with your sight, and sincerely hope you can help me with a problem. I do research into my family lines. Actually I'm third generation at. Do you know where I can get information on the word Borough or Borrough? I'm pretty sure it is the origin of my name. Of course the current pronuciation makes the end a row sound, rather than I rough sound. But since all spelling was orginally phonetic, I would guess at some time it did have the rough sound. Ruff and rough are used inter-changeably. I can take my ancestory bake to a Valentine Boruff born 1756, here. But have found Valentine Borrough's pre-dating that. Also do you know the orgin of the word Borrough. I've come across some things, that make me think it indicated land that was held by the Vikings. Any help would be greatly appreciated. After the revolution, Webster (the writer of our most popular dictionary) diliberately chose pronuciations different from the English, so what is in use today is very different from what was in use before the revolution. Thanks for your time.
P.S. I have a dyslexia, and I have a terrible time spelling, so I probably made tons of errors. Please laugh, and don't judge my inttelligence by my spelling.
KryssTal Reply: Hello to you too,
I'm glad you had a good SIGHT of my web SITE (!!). The word borough (which in the USA pronunciation rhymes with row but in the UK pronunciation rhymes with uh) is an old Saxon word burg meaning town or settlement.
The northern part of England was Danish or Viking controlled for a while but not the south. Don't worry about your spelling, it's the communication that counts.
Good luck.
Thanks so much for getting back to me. Can you tell me anything about how borrough became a last name? Also, can you tell me what the uff ending on words represents, as in huff, puff, tuff, ruff? I've found Boruff, scattered in old records in UK, but can't make heads how to connect them. Also in the USA there are some Boroughf's. Obviously they added the final f to make sure the sound they wanted was made clear. I assume about the time Webster started messing things up. And one last thing, I also find the off ending on things, do you know what that represents? I hope I'm not being a terrible bother, and thank you again. I appreciate you taking the time to answer me.
I just wanted to say Thank you again. I think writing you brought me luck. I made the connection I was looking for, thanks to the information you gave me. So with one connection, I went from my earliest known Boruff in 1756, to 1340 in England. Thank you so, much. I think language is fascinating, but probably so because I find people, and the way we have all moved over this earth "really" fascinating. We are all who we are today, because of all those that came before. Thanks again.
Hello,
I am specifically interested in how the literal language describing numbers came about...for example the numbers 1 - 12 are unique as in one, two, three etc....especially eleven and twelve. I have often wondered why eleven and twelve have their own names whereas after twelve you get into a rythm thirteen, fourteen...i.e. the "teen" following the number. Can you explain?
Thank you.
KryssTal Reply: Hi Jo,
You have asked a cultural question...
The counting system you have described appears to be a feature of some European languages.
Indian (from India) languages have different words up to 100 making the number difficult to learn. Turkish on the other hand has "ten-one", "ten-two" after ten.
1. Is fire living organism ?
2. U didn't mention Guagolic - medieval slavic alphabet.
3. [dis site best] ;)
KryssTal Reply:
1 Fire is a chemical reaction
2 The language page is an introduction only - I will try to add it later
3 Thank you.
I am an American living in the Chicago area and, like you, in the bit biz. In the course of looking for the etymology of 'Eskimo', I had the great pleasure of coming across your site. While I haven't had the time to explore it at leisure, I found a few areas where I hope I can make some contributions to it.
First, the bad news: I don't think the Cree origin of 'Eskimo' that you provide is generally accepted any more. See
Unfortunately, the Canadian Inuit believed in the pejorative character of the term 'Eskimo', with the result that their feelings were hurt very deeply and they insisted on its effective prohibition in that country. In Alaska, however, Eskimos comprise not only Inuit (or Inupiak, as they are called there) but Yupik and, some believe, Aleut, and there I am told the word is perfectly respectable. Now to more pleasant matters. I think I can at least begin to provide answers to some questions that arose in your Reader Feedback section.
1. Guttapercha (or gutta percha) was once used in the manufacture of golf balls, I believe for the exterior. There is a dim echo in my mind of a characterization of golf as something like 'chasing a helpless lump of guttapercha around the countryside and beating it with a stick'. I think it is derived from some kind of plant sap like latex and may be related to it.
2. Regarding the young woman in the, to you, mysterious 'eighth grade': the U.S. primary and secondary school system consists of twelve grades of (if all goes well) one year each, generally preceded by a year of kindergarten. Those grades have been divided up in various ways at various times and in various jurisdictions, in a way that is sometimes difficult to follow even for one to the manner born. When I was attending those grades, in the fifties and early sixties, the first six grades were 'grade school', followed by three years of 'junior high school', followed by three years of 'high school', in three successive buildings. (Although to make things interesting, the last year of junior high school was considered the first, or 'freshman', year of high school, the subsequent years referred to as 'sophomore', 'junior', and 'senior', just as in college, or 'at university' as I think you would say). I think my parents' generation generally went to two physical schools: primary or grade school through eight grade, and then (money permitting - that was the Depression) up to four years of high school. Now there is something called a 'middle school' in some areas, which I think replaces the 'junior high school' of my day. So an eight grader is typically about fourteen or fifteen years old.
A note about kindergarten, which you may or may not be acquainted with: it derives from the German 'child garden', and was introduced in the United States in 1856 by Margarethe Shurz, wife of the then Secretary of State of my home state of Wisconsin, Carl Schurz. (The Secretary of State of an American state is not the equivalent of your Foreign Minister, as is the case at the national level; instead, he or she handles such matters as vehicular and driver licensing, incorporation of businesses, and similar administrative activities). It offered play, music, and other group activities as a structured outlet for young children's energies in order to guide them gently toward the habits and attitudes necessary for formal schooling.
KryssTal Reply: I'll never get the hang of this.
3. The use of 'Caucasian' (or Caucasoid) in a racial sense - along with 'Mongoloid' and 'Negroid' - goes back to the anthropologists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During the period of the 'Jim Crow' laws in the American South, it had a legal significance, and was basically synonymous with 'white' or 'of European origin' - actually, in the South, 'of British origin'. In current anthropological usage - where it is considered a useful concept in the context of mapping the migrations of various peoples, and for forensic purposes - it includes people of European, North African, Middle Eastern, and Pakistani/Indian origin, all of whom are obviously not of a paleness of skin that would permit them to enter the 'Caucasian' part of a bus in Selma, Alabama in 1950. But there, I think, 'Caucasoid' has completely displaced 'Caucasian' in formal scientific usage.
KryssTal Reply: Thanks for that. The only famous Caucasian I know is Cher - isn't she Armenian?
Finally, I have a few additions to your UK / USA 'One Word - Two Meanings' section. (Parenthetically, it seems to me that there is so much more contact between Britons and Americans than in the past that many of the entries, including my own, have developed as secondary meanings the primary meanings on the other side of the pond. From my perspective, 'Asian', 'bill', 'hamper', 'Indian', 'presently', 'queen', 'spunk', and 'tramp' are all in that category).
1. I remember a story from an American woman who studied at St. Andrews that illustrates one of the words with double meanings. She had dinner with a very attractive Scotsman, and as it was a large dinner and she was a very small woman she had more than enough to eat. At the end, she used the standard American expression for that kind of satiation and said that she was 'stuffed'. At that point, the Scotsman raised an eyebrow and demurred, 'Not yet, lassie'.
KryssTal Reply: Nice one !
2. In Britain, when you call on someone you 'knock him or her up'. In the United States, only a female can be the object of the verb phrase because here it means (unambiguously, as far as I know) 'impregnate'.
3. I read an article about a product - from Yorkshire, I believe - called 'Mr. Brain's Faggots'. It was apparently some kind of sausage. In the US, 'faggot', or as you already know its truncated form 'fag', means 'male homosexual'. (Incidentally, don't you also use 'fag' to refer to an underclassman at a public school who acts as a servant or 'gofer' for an upperclassman)?
KryssTal Reply: Yes, we use fag for a cigarette and for the "gofer" at college.
4. In the United States, one might refer to a feline (or, more often, a person with a very agreeable disposition) as a 'pussycat', but never as a 'pussy'. The latter term is reserved for the pudenda of the human female, or for a man who backs down in a confrontation with another man under circumstances that cast doubt on his manhood.
5. You already have an entry for 'suspenders', meaning what we would call 'garters' (which means something different to you also, does it not?), but not for 'braces', which an American orthodontist installs to straighten his or her patient's teeth.
6. There is one other 'one word - two meanings' entry that I am not sure of. I read somewhere - in a book of Charles Berlitz's, as I recall - that the verb 'table', used in the context of, say, a committee, has opposite meanings for us. In the United States, we use it in the sense of 'defer consideration', and especially 'defer consideration until it has been forgotten'. The book I was reading said that the British usage was 'bring to an immediate vote', or figuratively 'place on the table for immediate consideration'. But there is an Englishman working near me who says that he understands 'table' in the American sense. Is it possible that he has consumed too much of what passes for beer in this country or has otherwise suffered some kind of memory loss?
KryssTal Reply: You're correct. To table means to consider it now (i.e to put it on the table).
Actually, there is another entry for you:
Word: beer
UK Usage: An alcoholic beverage produced by the action of yeast on malted barley and flavored with hops
US Usage: The product of the bladder of a diabetic horse
Best regards.
KryssTal Reply: Thank you for writing.
Hi Kryss,
You mentioned in your response to James Kirchner on [your feedback] page that
"We NEVER say 'downtown'. In London, either term is meaningless since there is no real centre (sorry 'center'). We make our money in The City, spend it in the West End and get governed from Westminster!"
Although "town" and "town centre" are rather more common in my experience, I believe I do occasionally hear folk talk of "going downtown" in the part of the country where I'm currently based (Ipswich); and when I lived in Chelmsford, I seem to recall people sometimes saying they were "going uptown" too in reference to its shopping district!
KryssTal Reply: Interesting - does it mean "going into the city"?
I suppose you could say that if you define "the city" as the central part of the town where most of its main shops normally are, but I didn't get the feeling while I was living in Chelmsford that people there who I heard use this term meant it in the same way an American does when they speak of "going uptown". I'll have to ask some old friends of mine who I still know from my Chelmsford days and see (as well as paying more attention to observe if anyone in Ipswich says "uptown" or "downtown" when they mean the town centre!).
I noticed you made the point that in the north east of England we call a child a "bairn" which is quite true. I was interested to find that this came from Scandinavia. Speaking as a native of the north east, I would be interested to know if there are other "Geordie" words which originate from Scandinavia. We have a whole vocabulary of our own up here some of which, sadly, is not really in common usage any more. eg:
cracket = small (usually home made) stool
our Lass (in Newcastle Wor Lass) = my wife / female partner
haway (hah way) - come along
haddyway - get away with you (as in incredulity)
gannin yame - going home
My particular favorite is from the book "Larn yersel Geordie":
"Who seems to have broken the fruit machine" = "We's buggered the bandit"
Hope I've provided a bit of amusement. Loved the comparisons between English and Amercian English. Must remember when visiting the States never to say that I'm choking for a fag!!
Regards
KryssTal Reply: Ooops.
You wrote to me three years ago and I flagged your email but then promptly forgot about it. I will add your comments to my feedback page as they are excellent.
Take care
Dear Kryss,
As an Englishman in the US, I was just about to embark on compiling a list of differences between US & UK English, when I discovered your site had done the work for me!
However, I was further wondering about the history of some of these differences: e.g. how did "trousers" get to be called "pants" in the US, and why did a "lift" become an "elevator"? I'm sure there must be some fascinating insights into the language in the history of these word pairs. Do you know of anybody who has researched this?
Thanks again for the site!
KryssTal Reply: Try Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue". And thanks for the comments...
Let me start out by saying that this website is incredible! I love to browse around, and I've learned so much!
You mentioned a few words that appeared from nowhere in the English language:
Words Created From Nothing
Examples of words that have just appeared in the language out of nothing are byte, dog (replacing the earlier hund), jam, quasar, and yuppy. But 'quasar' comes from quasi-stellar object, and isn't 'yuppy' from young urban professional?
Just thought you might like to know. :-)
KryssTal Reply: Yes of course you are correct - but what I meant was that they have not migrated from other sources. They were created (correctly as you describe!) and entered the language: one day they were not there, the next day they were.
Thank you for your kind comments and suggestions.
hi,
I just saw your page about the "30 most spoken languages of the world", and somes figures are wrong. Do you really think that only 72 millions people speaks French! You have more than that number with France+Belgium+Switzerland. There are no "official" figures about "francophonie" (french speaking in the world), but something between 200 are 250 millions people seems to be correct. Dont forget that even Lance Armstrong and John Kerry speaks French...
Excuse my (very) bad English, but this is not my first language.
You have a very interesting set of language web pages. It will take a while to peruse them all. I came by way of the Writing page and noticed that you have the "western" alphabets descending from Ugaritic cuneiform. I have always understood that our alphabets descend from Egyptian hieroglyphics. On what do you base the Ugaritic theory?
KryssTal Reply: Hello, thank you.
Both Egypt and Ugarit (and others) had picture writing (cuneiform or hieroglyphs). The Ugarit people made the change of using symbols for SOUNDS. This is the development of the alphabet. The Ugarit people developed the alphabet and it then spread (both eastwards and westwards).
Check out some of the books listed on my pages.