Huh. The explanation that I knew was that sycophants were people in Athens during the Peloponnesian War who snitched on those who exported figs and other luxury items despite there being an embargo.
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To quote a more in-depth explanation from Wikipedia:
The origin of the Ancient Greek word ÏÏ ÎșÎżÏÎŹÎœÏÎ·Ï ( sykophĂĄntÄs ) is a matter of debate, but disparages the unjustified accuser who has in some way perverted the legal system.
The original etymology of the word (sukon/sykos/ÏÏ ÎșÎżÏ fig, and phainein/fanÄs/ÏÎ±ÎœÎ·Ï to show) ârevealer of figsââhas been the subject of ⊠conjecture. Plutarch ⊠suggested that the source of the term was in laws forbidding the exportation of figs, and that those who leveled the accusation against another of illegally exporting figs were therefore called sycophants.
A different explanation ⊠was that the sycophant refers to the manner in which figs are harvested, by shaking the tree and revealing the fruit hidden among the leaves. The sycophant, by making false accusations, makes the accused yield up their fruit. The EncyclopĂŠdia Britannica ⊠[suggested] that the making of false accusations was an insult to the accused in the nature of âshowing the figâ, an âobscene gesture of phallic significanceâ or, alternatively that the false charges were often so insubstantial as to not amount to the worth of a fig.
Generally, scholars have dismissed these explanations as inventions, long after the original meaning had been lost. Danielle Allen suggests that the term was âslightly obsceneâ, connoting a kind of perversion, and may have had a web of meanings derived from the symbolism of figs in ancient Greek culture, ranging from the improper display of oneâs âfigsâ by being overly aggressive in pursuing a prosecution, the unseemly revealing of the private matters of those accused of wrongdoing, to the inappropriate timing of harvesting figs when they are unripe.
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Iâve just figured out that the first four chapters of The Jugurthine War are not, in fact, about the war but actually discuss philosophy and suchlike.
The real book begins on Chapter 5 and is much more interesting. I think its first sentence is this, which is quite long (or which reason Iâm splitting it into numbered clauses):
1. Bellum scripturus sum, 2. quod populus Romanus cum Iugurtha rege Numidarum gessit, 3. primum quia magnum et atrox varique victora fuit, 4. dehinc quia tunc primum superbiae nobilitatis obviam itum est; 5. quae contentio divina et humana cuncta permiscuit eoque vecordiae processit, 6. ut studiis civilibus bellum atque vastitas Italiae dinem faceret.
Clause 1:
nouns = bellum (war)
verb = scripturum est (about to write about)
translation = I am about to describe to you the war
Clause 2:
pronoun = quod
nouns = populus Romanus (Roman people), Iugurtha (Jugurtha), rege Numidarum (king of Numidia)
verb = gessit (s/he, it has carried / borne)
translation = which was carried out by the Roman people against Jugurtha, king of Numidia,
Clause 3:
pronoun = quia
nouns = victoria (victory) [I think _victora_ was a printing error or perhaps an alternative spelling]
adjectives = primum (first), magnum (great), atrox (bloody), varium (various)
verb = fuit (s/he, it was)
who were victorious in the first of several great and bloody conflicts;
When you see primum starting a clause that sounds like itâs about to explain something, itâs good instinct to look if the other clauses start with dehinc, tum, deinde, porro or similar things. In that case, you will have an enumeration. âFirst, because so and so, then âŠ, and further âŠâ
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Vsotvepâs comment about Japanese wigo becoming igo got me thinking about the loss of sounds in languages.
Japanese has lost the syllables ye, we , and wu.
In English we lost the ability to pronounce the k in words like knife, knight, know, and knee.
According to a linguistic friend of mine, many speakers of Classical Latin didnât pronounce h, or pronounced it inconsistently. Since h is pretty prevalent in Latin words, eg. harena (sand), it was probably in the process of being lost.
According to the same guy, Classical speakers didnât pronounce r in words like carmen and carta; since r is written, we can suspect that it was lost here in Latin. Some diphthongs were becoming rare in the transition from Old to Classical Latin, like oi, eg. oinos --> unus.
What sounds were lost in your languages?
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This one is tough, I canât think of many examples in Dutch in our variant of received pronunciation (I think based on the Haarlem dialect). We tend to pronounce most of the letters. Some words I could find after a bit of searching and thinking:
- erwt (meaning pea) has a silent w, we would pronounce it the same as ert
- The n is often silent when following an e without emphasis, although this really depends on dialect. Verbs, like geven are pronounced as geve, but in other areas itâs clearly geven (to give) or geevân. Itâs usually not pronounced when happening in the middle of a word, like kattenbak (litter box). Actually, the latter form is often problematic, since weâve gone through a few spelling revisions about whether to write the n or not in those kind of words.
- The ch is often silent when sandwiched between an s and an r, e.g. schrijven (to write) is often pronounced as srijven. The ch also occurs sometimes in old-fashioned names at the end after an s, such as in Den Bosch, where it is silent.
- The b is silent in ambtenaar (civil servant)
- In some accents the r (which usually rolls) is almost silent when at the end of a syllable. Most notably in very posh Dutch the r sounds similar to the English r, but in some other accents it disappears almost completely.
- Most other examples are loanwords, but Iâd like to point out notoire (notorious), which was borrowed from French, but it seems weâve ditched the i, since itâs pronounced as notoor
Historically some sounds have assimilated. There used to be a difference between ei and ij, but both are now pronounced similarly, and the g and ch used to be pronounced differently, but have become similar in most dialects (the Flemish still have a difference, where g is voiced and ch isnât). Also in Amsterdam dialect, the z is pronounced as s, and the v as f
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ă in ăăă (no) usually sounds very close to it
ăă (above) usually sounds very close to it
you can write it as ㎠, used in some foreign words in katakana
no idea
but there is letter Ń - (yo)
Đ” (ye) - very often is used in writing instead, it still should be read as (yo) if that happens
but in some words (foreign based especially) people start to forget where is ye and where is yo
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Oh, if we can talk about silent letters then thereâs a lot more to be said! Unfortunately, since I speak the global lingua franca you probably know it all already. But please humour me, so I can pretend Iâm from some small country where only a million of us speak our little common tongueâŠ
In English, as I said, the k in knight is silent. But so is every consonant before n at the start of a word, apart from s: gnome, pneuomonia. There are two exceptions: gnu in British English, because people apparently copied the pronunciation from a 1957 song in which the g was pronounced; and the name of King Cnut. gâs also silent in words like reign and feign.
P before s at the start of a word is silent (psychology).
Doubled consonants are never actually doubled. What they do is indicate a short vowel.
In the inverse, e spends a lot of its time just modifying and lengthening vowels. Originally, it was pronounced as a schwa in words like make. Sometimes itâs completely silent, like in borne.
In a lot of English dialects, you donât ever have to pronounce h. In my one (South-Eastern English), you have to pronounce them unless 1. theyâre in ph, sh, ch, th and have their own sounds; 2. theyâre after an r (rhino); 4. theyâre in the mess that is gh; 3. theyâre after a vowel, but I donât think this happens in any real English word, but rather loanwords like noh; 5. theyâre after a c in certain Latinate words like chord.
Speaking of gh, it was originally pronounced like German ch. Now, it can be /f/ (rough), a vowel modifier (fight, bought), silent (caught). Or just g in ghost.
âCome friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isnât fit for humans now,
There isnât grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!â
In my accent, we donât pronounce r in either place in torpor, itâs just a vowel modifier. And in fact, the end of torpor is a schwa. We donât say the g in ring either, it just modifies the consonant. You do pronounce if youâre heading into a non-schwa vowel: tango has a g but not singer.
The l in silent in salmon because in the 18th century, the people who mattered were big Latin fans (which is the same reason for the unnatural and false idea that to boldly go is incorrect, because Latin verbs contain the pronoun). Itâs also silent in calm.
The h is prescriptively silent in neanderthal, which is so little known that it canât even be called correct. Itâs also silent in Thailand and Thomas. And foreign words like Lhasa and Bhutan.
w is never pronounced after a vowel (cow), except which it starts a new syllable (leeway). Itâs a vowel modifier.
beaux is just /bo:/ and tsar and czar are both /za:/. but thatâs not our problem. See also words like nouveau.
Public service announcement for Americans: the vowel in Thames is e; shire in a word like Cambridgeshire uses either a schwa or a little more like er; ford in Chelmsford again has a schwa. borough in Peterborough is often just br and a schwa.
You normally wouldnât pronounce the e in every, unless youâre particularly posh perhaps.
Some dialects donât pronounce t, replacing it with a glottal stop. I should mention that both h- and t- dropping in English are viewed negatively and associated with the lower classes.
The aâs silent in death, tread and so on, and in other words itâs a vowel lengthener (beat, boat) but still not pronounced. An exception is at the end of words, eg. moa, boa when itâs pronounced as a schwa.
The u is silent in poultry, whereas in mould itâs a vowel lengthener. Famously, in British English it also appears in words like harbour and colour.
au isnât always long, sometimes itâs a short o like in fault.
ue is silent in words like rogue.
Is that it?
[Woops, the l in fault is not silent. What am I talking about⊠it is in talk though ;)]
Itâs worth noting that people were speaking like this when our spelling starting settling down⊠listen out for the way he pronounces sir, you can hear itâs just a rhotacised i. Note also that e being pronounced in determined right at the end.
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My favourite is âWorcestershire sauceâ
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Translating the mottos of British colonies from Hilarity with Heraldry (educational chit-chat, I guess)
British Virgin Islands: âVigilateâ â Be vigilant
Gibraltar, âMontis insignia Calpeâ â Flag of Gibraltar, the Rock [Calpe is the Latin name of Gibraltar]
Newfoundland, 1904-31: âTerra nova haec tibi dona feroâ â This new land, as a gift, is given to you.
British Mauritius, 1869-1906: "Stella cavisque moris indiciâ â The nature of the star and cavern have been revealed? What?
Lost since which stage? Iâll go from the point of divergence in the late middle ages (I guess?) and say thatâs we didnât outright lose sounds. Our voiceless plosives are not aspirated and our mediae arenât voiced like in Germany. Our /r/ is rolled in the western or made with the uvula in the eastern dialects, but in no dialect made id into that weird sound other Germanians do when dropping it. Instead, our dialects to the far north-east along the Rhine and Lake Konstanz turn it into an o, so /bio-biĂ«r/ âorganic beerâ sounds like [bio.bio]. Yes, this is a constant source of bad jokes.
This sound change happens in front of consonants and word-final. In the same position, /l/ is changed into [w~u] in the western dialects, not quite unlike the speaker from Bristow who even hypercorrected their cityâs name.
From PIE-stages, we lost the palatal plosives and the voiced aspirates, but developed the Ï, Ξ and the f. German lost the Ξ again in the meantime.
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@bugcat , as you are learning Latin and I saw you writing âpersayâ - Iâm quite sure itâs spelled âper seâ. 
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Argh, Iâve fallen victim to an eggcorn! Iâve been infected!
Thisâll teach me some humbleness ^^
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Whatâs an eggcorn?
American Sign Language has some interesting syntax that allows a lot of structural variations. From the Wikipedia article:
Syntax
ASL is a subjectâverbâobject (SVO) language, but various phenomena affect that basic word order.[51] Basic SVO sentences are signed without any pauses:[27]
FATHER â LOVE â CHILD
âThe father loves the child.â[27]
However, other word orders may also occur since ASL allows the topic of a sentence to be moved to sentence-initial position, a phenomenon known as topicalization.[52] In object-subject-verb (OSV) sentences, the object is topicalized, marked by a forward head-tilt and a pause:[53]
CHILD(topic), FATHER â LOVE
âThe father loves the child.â[53]
Besides, word orders can be obtained through the phenomenon of subject copy in which the subject is repeated at the end of the sentence, accompanied by head nodding for clarification or emphasis:[27]
FATHER â LOVE â CHILD â FATHER(copy)
âThe father loves the child.â[27]
ASL also allows null subject sentences whose subject is implied, rather than stated explicitly. Subjects can be copied even in a null subject sentence, and the subject is then omitted from its original position, yielding a verbâobjectâsubject (VOS) construction:[53]
LOVE â CHILD â FATHER(copy)
âThe father loves the child.â[53]
Topicalization, accompanied with a null subject and a subject copy, can produce yet another word order, objectâverbâsubject (OVS).
CHILD(topic), LOVE â FATHER(copy)
âThe father loves the child.â
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Kosumi moves: https://twitter.com/cho_kobayashi/status/1295863311502675971 (The comments are worth checking out too)
Which brought me to this good page: http://simatani.web.fc2.com/igonote/kosumi.html
So yeah, learn these names so you can show off in front of noobs.
Btw, I googled kitty names and it saddens me that they havenât come up with a better name than ăă§ăŠ for leopard. Doesnât sound cool at all.
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there are a lot of Japanese words like that
âonomatopoeiaâ - its not just copying of sounds of animals and other sounds
these words also describe ongoing action(like verb), feeling or structure of object.
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