French by that time period was pronouncing them like /ʒ/, the fricative. Deaffrication, which turned /d͡ʒ, t͡ʃ, t͡s/ into /ʒ, ʃ, s/, occurred in French between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, so late medieval and early modern loans from French would bear the later sounds.
The Mario and Luigi of alphabetic history, two brothers called Avigad and Halaḥam
Happy 80th to Tim Curry, a man who knows how to overact *just* the right amount.
youtu.be/U_U59u69tys?...
Thank you! And I did write a whole book exploring this topic (it needed a whole book tool). The distinctive history of English speech and speakers have meant that the language hasn't benefitted from the same reforms that others have enjoyed.
You don't sound like a layperson! All good thinking here. What I can say is that 'allophone first' makes sense, laying the groundwork for loanwords that will then get to keep the new sound unnativised. All that said, Irish seems to have acquired /p/ primarily through loanwords...
Many of us lost loved ones to Covid and many of us struggled with the virus when we caught it.
People claiming it was a "staged event" are dangerous conspiracy theorists who don't care at all about the victims of that terrible event. The idea they're standing as representatives is horrific.
I stand by my choices
@bnuyaminim.bsky.social, is this anything?
It was easy to win at poker against people from the cities of the ancient Fertile Crescent, you could always spot their tell.
Well, it's been in use since the Middle English period, employed by writers like Spenser, Defoe and Boswell, and has parallels in Medieval Latin and French, so this may be a 'you'-problem.
A pleasure to have occasioned an article about what may well be the most recent consonant added to English – poorly provisioned in the visual domain of writing, hence some confusion, but far from unusual in speech (to be heard six times in this sentence).
dannybate.com/2026/04/16/m...
Diolch yn fawr iawn!
Os dach chi'n hoffi ieithoedd gwahanol a llyfrbryfiaeth ieithyddol, gwrandewch ar bodlediad 'A Language I Love Is...', mae'n wych.
Trying to explain St Augustine to the pope, the former head of the Augustinian order, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine, on his way back from celebrating mass at the Basilica of St Augustine in Annaba, Algeria, overlooking the site where Augustine lived is peak Adult Catholic Convert.
Thank you!
Very much enjoying @dannybate.bsky.social's podcast on this long drive without kids to complain about my interests... started catching up with the most recent one 👇
Great to see!
'Freedom of denomination' might be a better formulation (originally established only so that no one Protestant group could have the edge over the others, and later begrudgingly applied to other traditions and beliefs)
I can happily say that I'm not sure! T-forms for God are the norm, at least in Europe, but I'm sure why it should’ve endured and not kept up with the polite V-forms – beyond simple inertia? I'm puzzled
Tell me more! Adam and Eve?
Following George Walkden's (2013) paper, I'd be tempted not to treat it as an interjection at all but to treat the whole first sentence as exclamatory
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Cool, thanks!
*If you'd like...
The Lord doth with typos humble the impudent
Forgive the impudent piggybacking on someone else’s excellent article, but you'd like to read more about English’s old dual pronouns, here’s a piece of mine in which I gathered up the remnants of the dual across Indo-European, from Sanskrit to Slovenian.
dannybate.com/2024/03/27/t...
Thanks! Yes, this pinged on my phone soon after it was posted (the algorithm knows me), and I was astonished that something so deliciously nerdy might be featured on the BBC
Well said! Getting to grips with any field involves the uncomfortable thought that we might never know the answer – or, even worse, that someone might someday, but not us...
@dannybate.bsky.social's talk on alphabetical order was really great and I'm looking forward very much to reading his book.
Thank you! 🙏
I wish all the people unjustly fired from public service jobs in Hungary could now have hopes of getting them back, but we can celebrate the election outcome for the moment.