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Fun Facts About English #4 – Flutterby or Butterfly?

05/10/2019 by admin

Fun Facts About English 4 Kinney Brothers Publishing

The short answer is – likely not.

Firstly, why is a ‘butterfly’ called a ‘butterfly’? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, though the etymology is quite old, the reason for its name is unknown. However, two possible derivations are offered. 1) The word is from the Anglo-Saxon butterfleoge (literally, butterfly) so-called after the yellow species of Papilionoidea. 2) Butterflies were on the wing in meadows during the spring and summer butter season while the grass was growing.

If you’re a believer in the tales of old wives or fairies, there’s the notion that butterflies are witches in disguise who consume butter that is left uncovered. As for the word ‘flutterby,’ it’s been suggested that it’s simply the case of a child’s habit of transposing syllables, like ‘basketti’ for spaghetti, and ‘pillercat’ for caterpillar.

Literary references to ‘flutterby’ are very few. One example is from Nonsense, an 1867 book by American journalist, Marcus M. (Brick) Pomeroy:

Beautiful as a flutterby,
And none could compare
With my pretty little charmer
And her rich, wavy hair.

Whether butterfly or flutterby, there’s no reason both can’t be used. To those who object, you can simply state, “You’re not the boss of me.” The flying insect has also been used as a colorful metaphor and apropos descriptor for a very long time. They include:

  • Vain and gaudy attire – 1600
  • A transformation from a lowly state – 1806
  • A type of mechanical nut – 1869
  • Flitting tendencies – 1873
  • One-act play Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, New York – 1900
  • Socially extroverted female (opposite of wallflower)
  • Anxiety, nervousness – 1908
  • A swimming stroke – 1935
  • Predictability; cause and effect – 1972

Interested in more posts about peculiar words? Check out the awesome history of the word dude, why Americans prefer the word rooster, or what the word jaywalker actually means!

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Donald's English Classroom

Check out A Telling Story Productions on Youtube or Donald’s English Classroom for audio readings of some of your favorite fairy tales! They’re great for storytime, bedtime, and when traveling with kids!

Filed Under: Fun Facts About English Tagged With: audio stories, butterfly, Donald's English Classroom, esl, ESL Activities, ESL Flashcards, ESL Games, ESL teaching, esl textbooks, flutterby, fun facts about english, kinney brothers publishing

Fun Facts About English #3 – The Shortest Sentence

05/03/2019 by admin

Fun Facts About English 3 Kinney Brothers Publishing

There is a debate going on in the lingual sphere as to what defines the shortest sentence in the English language and which sentence deserves the honor. By definition, a sentence needs a subject and a predicate to make sense. With you as an understood subject, we can easily make a one-word sentence with a one-word predicate:

Go.
Think.
Eat.
Wait.

The omission of you from the sentence is known as an ellipsis and is the preferred form for the imperative mood. With this idea in mind, using two words is the shortest sentence you can make in English. However, it’s argued that “you go” by letter count is not the shortest sentence.

Therefore, the shortest non-elliptical sentence would be:

I am.

I’d be negligent to the topic if I didn’t mention a joke from the legendary comedian, George Carlin, who said, “I am is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that I do is the longest sentence?”

As for non-elliptical complete sentences, you could also make the argument, depending on how you measure sentence length, that the contraction ‘Tis is just as short or shorter than I am. Unfortunately, this word is often excluded from the competition given its archaic status.

Whether or not the single word no constitutes a complete sentence depends on how one defines a sentence. Most people understand a sentence to mean:

“…a word, clause, or phrase or a group of clauses or phrases forming a syntactic unit which expresses an assertion, a question, a command, a wish, an exclamation, or the performance of an action, that in writing usually begins with a capital letter and concludes with appropriate end punctuation, and that in speaking is distinguished by characteristic patterns of stress, pitch, and pauses.”

Yes and no, when used as answers, belong to the parts of speech known as interjections and pro-sentences. An interjection includes exclamations such as ouch and wow. A pro-sentence is a function word or expression “that substitutes for a whole sentence whose content is recoverable from the context.” In English, yes, no, and okay are common pro-sentences. It is argued that no is not a complete sentence as there is no subject or predicate.

Examples:

Interjection:
Jenny stole the candy from her brother.
He screamed, “Noooooo!”

Pro-sentence:
Are you tired?
No. (I’m not tired.)

Nonsense:
What time is it?
No.

So, there you have it. Now you have to decide! Which word or words do you think deserves the medal for the shortest sentence in the English language? Let me know in the comments below!

You might also be interested in learning about the word with the most vowels, the longest word with no vowels, or the longest monosyllabic word!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donald's English Classroom

Teaching phonics is the cornerstone of many ESL programs. Kinney Brothers Publishing has a full range of engaging phonics textbooks that you’ll love using in class! Check out all our phonics and spelling resources available on our website at kinneybrothers.com or visit our online store, Donald’s English Classroom!

Filed Under: Fun Facts About English Tagged With: Donald's English Classroom, esl, ESL Activities, ESL Flashcards, ESL Games, ESL teaching, esl textbooks, fun facts about english, grammar, kinney brothers publishing

Fun Facts About English #1 – The Oldest Words

04/29/2019 by admin

Fun Facts About English 1 Kinney Brothers Publishing

Some of the oldest words in English have been identified. Reading University researchers claim I, we, two, and three are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years. What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins states, “Essentially all the Indo-European languages share the same first-person singular pronoun, although naturally, it has diverged in form over the millennia.” (French – je, Italian – io, Russian – ja, Greek – ego). The prehistoric German pronoun – eka became German – ich, Dutch – ik, Swedish – jag, Danish/Norwegian – jeg, and English – I.

Besides being one of the oldest words, there are two more curious facts about I. First, it is the only English pronoun that is always capitalized, unlike me, you, or we. Second, English is the only language that always capitalizes I as a pronoun. History gives us clues as to why this came to be.

During the adoption of the Latin script, lower-case letters were in development and gradually came into fuller inclusion by the 8th century. I had many spellings as it evolved from Old English into Middle and early Modern English. The Old English pronoun was ic or ih, with neither being capitalized. Around 1250, I was used in the northern and midland dialects of England and extended to the south of England in the 1700s. By the time Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s, it was common to mix upper and lower-case letters within a single word and sentence. Capitals were used to add emphasis or to indicate that a letter standing alone was intentional. As a personal pronoun, I was written slightly taller than its lowercase equivalent. As the orthography developed, the lower case i, like the lower-case j, acquired an extra jot or tittle for differentiation among other letters. Additionally, the letter I was used in Roman numerals for the number one, with J operating as a “swash” indicating the conclusion of a number, e.g., xxiij.

medieval text

As printed texts spread across Europe, different languages developed different conventions when printing. There is a belief that Germans, for example, capitalize the formal you out of respect and never capitalize the less-presuming I in deference to the reader. When comparing European texts, English, with its always-capitalized I, might appear to be more writer-centric. However, with that logic, because the Germans also capitalize their nouns, it could be said that they hold people, places, and things with more reverence than English speakers. These “ideas” are more reactionary in tone and cultural hubris rather than representing historical facts. It is more likely the use of capitals is simply part of the writing conventions of a given language, developed over time, and directly relates to their ease in being read. Nonetheless, as we moved through the centuries, these notions about printing, orthography, and how they mean in our relative cultures have frequently been the subject of… conversations.

During the development of English as a written and spoken language, England went through numerous invasions, consequent changes to the language, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, as well as the introduction of the printing press. All this greatly influenced our relationship to the written word, books as holy relics, and scientific texts outside of the Church’s domain of influence. Like a religious text, the printed book, given its content, was sometimes seen as a tool of the Devil capable of conjuring up any number of conceits and evils from its leather-bound pages. Even the capitalizing of the letter I raised accusations of blasphemous audacity. Roger Lass in The Cambridge History of the English Language tells of one folk legend about a printmaker who, convinced by the Faustian demon, Mephistopheles, began the unholy practice of capitalizing the I pronoun. In the 21st century, these same “vanities” are projected onto the language in a slightly different tone and context.

Caroline Winter, in her 2008 article in The New York Times Magazine, suggests that the towering, capitalized, single-letter I that first appeared in England’s Middle Ages, signifies we English speakers as “discrete beings and connotes confidence, dominance and the ambition to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.” She continues, “The generally accepted linguistic explanation is that it could not stand alone, uncapitalized, as a single letter, which allows for the possibility that early manuscripts and typography played a major role in shaping the national character of English-speaking countries.” Ms. Winter also prefers the more humble uncapitalized i pronoun when writing personal emails; a small act of protest with a language where “even a gathering that includes God might not be addressed with a capitalized “you.” Her article amplifies a notion that today’s youth are shedding the arrogance of capitalized forms, (testified by the lack of capitals in digital correspondence) and with it, the lingually associated “capital” of “[self] importance, material wealth, assets and advantages.”

In the same New York Times Magazine article, Charles Bigelow, a type historian and designer of fonts explains, “Graphically, single letters are a problem. They look like they broke off from a word or got lost or had some other accident.” “When the word I shrunk to a single letter,” Bigelow explains, “one little letter had to represent an important word, but it was too wimpy, graphically speaking, to carry the semantic burden, so the scribes made it bigger, which means taller, which means equivalent to a capital.”

Continuing this “conversation” online, chat spaces abound with more personal grievances than factual ideas about the capitalized I pronoun. In research, and reading in general, it’s important to stay on guard to the reappearance of age-old, reactionary sentiment. With I having survived so long, it’s likely the dialogue will continue far into the future.

If you’re interested in reading more about the English language and its rich history, check out the awesome history of the word dude, the history of American spelling bees, or what the word paddywhack from the song, “This Old Man,” actually means!

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Donald's English Classroom

From Stacked Adjectives, to I Have/Who Has activities, learn more about teaching methods, flash card ideas, and more on the Kinney Brothers Publishing blog!

Filed Under: Fun Facts About English Tagged With: common words, Donald's English Classroom, esl, ESL Activities, ESL Flashcards, ESL Games, ESL teaching, esl textbooks, fun facts about english, I, kinney brothers publishing, Old English, oldest english

Fun Facts About English #2 – Girl

04/29/2019 by admin

Fun Facts About English 2 Kinney Brothers Publishing

Until the late 14th century the word girl simply meant a child of either sex. Boys, where they had to be differentiated, were referred to as knave girls and girls in the female sense were called gay girls. Equally, a boy could be a knave child and a girl a maiden child.

The word, gyrle, circa 1300, meaning “child, young person” is of unknown origin. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) leans toward the Old English gyrele, from Proto-Germanic gurwilon-, or Low German gære meaning “boy, girl.” The specific meaning of “a female child” is attested from the late 14th century and the meaning “any young unmarried woman” since the mid-15th century.

The term boy, circa 1300, is also of unknown origin and was reserved for servants or churls (person of low birth). The meaning “young man” probably derived from the latter as a pejorative term but hadn’t occurred before the 15th century.

A noticeable number of our modern English words denoting children, such as boy, girl, brat, rascal, and imp were originally colloquial nicknames, derogatory or whimsical, in part endearing, and finally commonplace. Such words, as they occur in many languages, are of the most diverse and often obscure in their origins.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder "Children's Games"
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted “Children’s Games” in 1560. The painting provides a window into amusements and recreations of some 200 children engaged in nearly 80 different 16th-century games and play activities.

Are you interested in learning more about our ever-evolving language? Check out these posts about fossilized words, who coined the first portmanteaux, and how words like awful changed their meaning!

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Donald's English Classroom

Continent Bingo is a great way to review country names and flags! Donald’s English Classroom has lots of map and flag activities! Check them out here!

Filed Under: Fun Facts About English Tagged With: boy, Donald's English Classroom, esl, ESL Activities, ESL Flashcards, ESL Games, ESL teaching, esl textbooks, fun facts about english, girl, kinney brothers publishing

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