Why do we swear?

Why do we get upset about swear words?
The expression of profane language has been the main legal battleground of free speech for the last century. You can easily switch on your TV any night during the week and hear comedians impugning the competency of the political and religious leaders of the world without worrying about consequences they could face if they lived a few centuries before. This is a sign of great progress in the history of humanity and I must say we live, luckily, in the age of freedom of speech. Well, we do except when it comes to certain words. Why?!

Why do we want to swear?
This isn’t at all an easy question and to even approach answering it you must  know a few ways in which people tend to swear:

• Abusive swearing – used specifically to humiliate and insult somebody. Those can mostly relate to excrement such as you piece of shit, you asshole, shove it up your ass or sexuality such as motherfucker (incest) and wanker (masturbation).
• Dysphemistic swearing – an euphemism is a substitution for an expression that suggests something unpleasant to the listener whereas a dysphemism has the opposite logic and is used when the speaker wants you to think how hideous something is. Excrement is part of our lives and you like it or not, you can’t get through without having to mention it. Then again people don’t want to think of it and they make up synonyms to protect themselves. We have general terms like waste, medical like bowel movement, formal like excrement, terms we use with kids like poo and many more. What’s crucial is that you can’t use these terms interchangeably. This is why the doctor won’t say they need your poo samples and similarly you won’t ask your kids if they need to defecate.
• Reaction swearing - This is when, during a romantic evening, the topic of conversation suddenly changes to dignifying sexual activities or religion after you just spilled red wine on your new trousers and you yell shit, fuck or Jesus or combinations of the three. If you’re Polish remember that even though you exclaim kurwa  when you stub your toe you wouldn’t shout whore in English after you injured yourself or you would sound really silly!
• Habitual swearing – bizarre constructions such as what the fuck where swear words are used purely for their shock value rather than meaning, often overused by speakers.

What kind of concepts are sources of negative emotions?
Anyone who speaks a foreign language knows that the kind of things we swear about vary in different languages. If you risk translating swear words literally from language to language results can be often comical. Nevertheless, there are universal concepts – categories in which most of the world’s swear words fall into:

• Excretions and associated organs (piss, shit, ass) Those are all strong words and the reason why is that epidemiologists consider many diseases to be spread through our bodily fluids. In old English language you could curse somebody by saying a pox on you and in Polish for instance you can swear by shouting cholera.
• Sexuality and associated organs (fuck, dick, cunt) Why is it a source of negative thought if sex itself is pleasurable? It isn’t when you consider all negative aspects of sexuality such as prostitution, incest, child abuse and rape. Those are no small matter to humanity, are controversial and for that reason continue to be emotionally charged.
• Religion based (Jesus, hell, damn). Those is nowadays moderately mild way of swearing unless in more religious societies, especially Catholic societies, like where I grew up, in Poland.

What happens in the brain when you hear or say a swear word?
The answer to that question is buried deep in the neurobiology. Swearing activates the areas of our brain associated with negative emotions concentrated in the right hemisphere. A very interesting feature of the neurobiology of swearing is that swearing is processed involuntary only which means you can’t chose to ignore a certain word in terms of the inevitable arousal that is associated with it. To prove that theory saying things are processed automatically in our brain there’s a simple test to use in sociology. My former teacher tried this on the group of students, including me, and the results were rather surprising. The task was to simply name the colour in which the word on the board is printed. ‘’Don’t read it’’ – he said – ‘’Ignore what it spells but just pay attention to the colour’’. Black, green, red, blue… Even though the task requires you to ignore what the word spells, try as you might, you can’t do it after a lifetime of literacy. Our brains process words automatically. It means that swearing forces the listener to think unpleasant thoughts.

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When the same is different

If the words are pronounced the same but have different spelling and meanings we refer to them as homonyms e.g. seas - sees.

Types of homonyms:

• Homophones are words that have exactly the same pronunciations and same or different spelling and different meanings.
• Heterophones are words that are spelt the same but have different pronunciations and meanings

Types of homophones:

• Homographs- words that may sound alike and are spelt the same but have different meanings e.g. number – meaning more numb or numerical value and bear – the teddy or to carry (these are in fact also homonyms). Additionally, heteronyms are specific types of homographs with the same spelling but different pronunciations and meanings e.g. sewer (one who sews) and sewer (from sewage) or  record (noun) and record (verb).
• Heterographs – words that sound alike while spelt differently and have different meanings e.g to (preposition) and two (number), hour and our.

Synonyms are different words with the same meanings e.g. maybe and perhaps whereas a polyseme is a word with multiple meanings e.g. to get.

Craziness and oddity of the English language

It just makes no sense!
Seriously, what’s wrong with people? Why are we so clumsy with expressing our thoughts and why do we speak in such odd ways about the physical world surrounding us? Think about it: you fill the form in by filling it out! If hairs is plural of hair then why a man with hair on his head has more than a man with hairs on his head? Why is it called after dark when it’s really after light? Things we claim are under water or under ground are in fact surrounded by water or ground rather than under it. A theory of physics must be imbedded somewhere deep in our language, some indistinct and very rough concept of space in prepositions and an awkward concept of matter in nouns. Understanding this theory helps us explain not only the oddities of our language but also the mental models that we use desperately in our struggle to make sense of our lives.

Space in language
Location in language is somewhat digitised. I sense it from the simple fact that we make binary distinctions like near - far, on - off, in - out, on – under while scale is relative – we can use the same special term across about a spider walking across a window sill and a boat travelling across Pacific even if in first case the scale is centimetres, the other it’s thousands of miles. For the same reasons the interpretation of the special term there may vary. Saying the book is there I could possibly mean the book is in another room or in another country.

3 D’s
When you think of it, shape is schematic. In reality all objects take up some three-dimensional arrangements of matter but language idealises them as essentially one-dimensional, two-dimensional or three-dimensional. For example we don’t think of a CD as short cylinder, three-dimensional object, even though that’s all it is in reality. We think and talk about it as it was only two-dimensional. Well, hold on, isn’t it that in other words we choose to ignore some of the dimensions that make it up in reality concentrating on the smaller number of dimensions that sum it up in our minds? Yes, sounds about right.  It goes into some general sense of shape – We make it so much easier for ourselves by thinking simply of what shapes are similar to other shapes on the basis of comparison.

Prepositions and nouns
What’s important is that this idealised schematic geometry rules the use of our prepositions e.g. we use the preposition along in connection with one-dimensional objects only – therefore along the line is correct but along the table isn’t because we perceive table as a surface and a two-dimensional object. We can, however, say along the edge of a table and here’s another quirk about language of shape. For some reason the boundaries of objects are treated as if they were objects themselves. Edge is the one-dimensional boundary of the two dimensional table (I hope you are still with me because I think I’m close to losing it myself). For similar reasons we say something is under water when in fact all we mean that it is surrounded by water. Water can be refer to as to two-dimensional surface of a body of water so objects can be, in fact, under that two-dimensional surface.

Split infinitives

The infinitive of a verb is purely its most basic form and the one that can be found in the dictionary with no subject indicated. In English it always follows the word to e.g. to do, to play, to sing etc. A split infinitive is an infinitive in which the word to is separated from its verb by other words e.g. instead of saying I decided never to work we say I decided to never work. Traditionally spilt infinitives have been fought by linguists for centuries and considered grammatically incorrect but today most of them have agreed split infinitives are allowed in both writing and speech. Hurray! No need to go through writing some oddly shaped sentences in order to avoid the split. There was no rational basis and no justification for anyone to forbid splitting infinitives since not only in spoken language but sometimes even in written English it is so much clearer and natural to do so. Bear in mind, however, split infinitives should be avoided in formal writing unless the alternative seems too awkward. Normally we move the offending word so that it comes either before or after the infinitive.

My mum told me to quickly open the window.

My mum told me to open the window quickly.

You used to secretly message me.

You used to message me secretly.

In some cases, it is extremely odd to avoid splitting the infinitive and it’s much better to stick to the version with the split. In fact there are a few writers who have stated that in certain cases avoiding the split infinitive is impossible and that some modifiers must separate the to from the verb e.g. That was the only way to more than double his salary. 

Lost for words?

The idea of a word has been always considered to be of a great importance and has troubled linguists since the beginnings of linguistic studies. There appears to be a problem with defining a word and each definition we may come up with will be likely different to other ones we come across. After decades of quarrels and blood spills linguists agreed on distinguishing four definitions of ‘word’ and those are the ones I will try and explain today. I will also look with you at some special cases and exceptions since nothing is ever easy when it comes to linguistics.

Orthographic word We will start with those since the definition is probably the most obvious to most of us. Orthographic word a unit in writing that has a space at each end and no break in the middle. It’s very easy to pick them out in texts and they don’t exist in speech. According to this definition item such as car park consists of two orthographic words. English spelling rules often dictate where white spaces go but sometimes individual preferences differ resulting in us encountering various spelling versions of the same items. We have for instance both ice cream (two orthographic words) and ice-cream (one orthographic word).

Phonological word Unlike an orthographic word, it’s a piece of speech rather than text and is a single unit of pronunciation. In English one phonological word must contain only one stress. Look at the following sentence to see what I mean: Work is getting lighter now which leaves time to work on updating and filing system. In total the sentence consists of 15 orthographical words. The items that aren’t stressed are: which, to, on, and so the remaining 11 are phonological words that contain a stress each and those have been underlined. To complicate things more, items we stress are called content words such as nouns, principal verbs, adjectives and adverbs whereas the ones we don’t stress we refer to as function words: determiners (the, a, some), auxiliary verbs (look at my previous post Modal Verbs), prepositions (before, under, in), conjunctions (but, and, as) and pronouns (I, she, we).

Lexemes A lexeme is a simple and abstract unit of the vocabulary of a given language and that can be found in a dictionary. A lexeme is represented in speech or writing by one of the possible forms that carries grammatical marking. It basically means that two forms such as house and houses are in fact the same word where the first form indicates singularity and the latter indicates plurality. In the same way a lexeme have can be represented by various forms such as has indicating 3^rd person singular, having indicating progressive tense, had indicating past tense and so forth. No lexical item in English has more than five forms apart from the verb be with eight different forms but there are languages out there in which words can have even hundreds of forms.

Grammatical word-forms Quite straightforwardly they’re forms that are assumed by a lexeme for grammatical purposes – house (base form) and houses (inflected form) are grammatical word-forms of a lexeme house whereas have (base form), has, having and had (inflected forms) are grammatical word-forms of a lexeme have and sometimes lexemes simply won’t have numerous grammatical word-forms (e.g. health).

Style crimes

I am not a native English speaker; however, I like to think I speak English fluently. I live and work in an English speaking environment surrounded by British people and I cringe when someone tells me something and I have not the first idea what they’re talking about.

I seem to grow tired of anything that is repeated too often. Overusing phrases is certainly something the general public should notice. There was this British broadcaster, Vanessa Feltz, who tried and waged an unsuccessful hate campaign against at the end of the day in the meaning of ‘ultimately’. (There’s nothing wrong with the use of this phrase in its literal meaning). Please, take notice when I list the alternatives used to summarise and conclude presenting a point of view: ultimately, in the end, after all, when all is said and done, in the final analysis. Try using these more often to avoid sounding rather silly (check the video clip from popular British talk-show Jeremy Kyle Show and see exactly what I mean).

Among many other cliches there are some that especially make my blood boil when overused and are complete gibberish: I’m not being funny, basically, to be honest, can’t get my head round it (seriously, what a ridiculous thing to say anyway! How can you get your head round something?). Please notice that I am not having a go at people using the expressions but overusing them does seem to be a problem. It comes to the point where phrases lose their meaning appearing randomly in various parts of a sentence filling in the gaps which the speaker couldn’t have filled more efficiently due to their vocabulary limits. Language is alive and changes which I love about it and perhaps at the end of the day will eventually become an official idiom rather than an awkward cliché.

The abuses have driven John Humphrys to write a book about the growing misuse of the English language ’Lost for words’.  He describes tautology (expressing the same idea twice in different words) as the linguistic equivalent for having chips with rice. For instance, there’s no need to say general consensus since consensus is a general agreement therefore an adjective general should be, in this case, omitted. Similarly we have silly creations such as return again, future prospects, repeat again, safe asylum. Other usages to which I object are personally I feel and at this moment in time. Based on an appeal to logic, I feel makes it personal enough and there’s no need to add personally. It is proper though to use personally to mean ‘with the person being present’ as in I’ve spoken to him personally.You don’t need in time either because moments are obviously periods of time.

So yeah, you know, basically I'm finished like. At the end of the day, I'm not being funny, I personally feel I can't change how people speak...

Planet of the Apes

Why?
Learning more about the brain and linguistic theories have a big chance of becoming new aspects of my professional development. Sociology with evolution as its component is a field that complete explanation must incorporate. I’m rather omnivorous intellectually and as a teacher I used to ask myself a question raised from wondering about how the learning mechanisms work: where our learning abilities come from? The answer has to be in evolution. To really understand something you must know the mental software that implements it. You must know something about the brain and must know what gave it its structure. It is also natural to ask where that structure came from.

One of a kind
We don’t know how many species there are on Earth. Currently fewer than 2 million are classified but the total number is estimated to range from under 5 million to more than 50 million. And here we are, humans, who rule the world. What is so special about Homo sapiens? Why are we so unusual among all of the other species? How come that we exploited an opportunity for making a living – we outsmarted other plants and animals? All species naturally evolve defence against their predators. Animals desperately run away, develop spines and hard shells or poisons whereas plants can’t defend themselves in their behaviour. Surprisingly, a cauliflower and a tomato has no more desire to be eaten than you do – hence I never understood vegetarians’ ethical arguments. Most plants are naturally full of toxic and bitter-tasting substances that aren’t tolerable for us. We often seem to forget that those we get from the supermarket have been bred for thousands of years so that the bitter substances are bread out of them. Whenever we have a defence in evolution we then have a pressure for offence next. Animals develop bigger shells, their predators develop stronger jaws and teeth and we, humans, not only always win but we are far ahead of our competitors.

Planet of the Apes
 We stood up right before our brain started to grow in size so it can’t be that we suddenly decided to walk around on two legs. Evolutionary it’s the other way round and we don't know why the sequence went the way it did. We suspect that by freeing the hands for other uses than locomotion and supporting body weight, it allowed us a new skill i.e. the overhand throw, to carry things and make tools which set up a lifestyle with tools worth having (those aren’t very useful if you’re walking around on your hands all the time). Generally freeing our hands led us to the position of the most dangerous predators Earth has ever seen. This was the crucial step. It’s not a coincidence we developed from primates. Looking at apes and especially great apes, we can see they’re social and they eat meat. Everything that an organism eats is a body part of some other plant or animal. Meat is significant not just because it fuels a hungry brain (nutrition coming from meat) but also simply because hunting or savaging requires collective intelligence that just grazing doesn’t. In other words you don’t really have to be that smart to pull a clump of grass but catching animals that run away or fight you back requires intelligence and skill. If you take two closely related species, one carnivorous and one herbivorous, usually the carnivorous one has a bigger brain and is smarter if you give the animal the equivalent of IQ test.

Cognitive niche
We’re so unique that instead of waiting to evolve to outsmart other species, we do it in real time in our heads. We wonder about how the world works, we build up the models and tools of reasoning, inference and visualisation. This is how we could figure out that before we can enjoy plants or animals we need to first set a particular trap and ambush an animal or try various things on plants like soaking them and cooking them. We are able to do that because we have unfair advantage to do all this in our heads in a matter of seconds, minutes, hours, days whereas the animals and plants can only evolve over generations. A lot of the unusual features of homo-sapiens can be understood in terms of the cognitive niche that is the ability to prosper by outsmarting our food sources.

Language
Language is not a primary factor in cognitive niche because if that was the only thing humans had we wouldn’t have a lot to talk about, however, it is very important and I like to think that language evolved as sort of a triad of adaptions, each of which support the other and makes the other two increasingly valuable. Language allows us to share our experience with other people so that we don’t have to discover everything by trial and error or sit there waiting for some stroke of genius but if someone else discovers something worth remembering their allies learn from it too. That gives us things to talk about, that is our knowledge that came from experience and various survival tricks being the second part of this triangle. And the third part is social relationships. We have to be on speaking terms with other people, we have to be willing to share our knowledge with them and we have to be part of groups that work towards common goal. All those three features are hyper-developed in Homo sapiens. We use far more tools and far more clever tools than any other species and we are the only species that really have the expression of grammatical language.

Humans or animals?
Humans do not like to think of themselves as animals. We are certainly different to all the other species thank to our collective cognition – putting our heads together in order to make life easier for ourselves. However, imagine a child born alone in separation from mankind and somehow kept alive. Once grown would possess basic skills for dealing with physical aspects of its life but would certainly not invent English, tools, letters and numbers on its own – would be no more than an animal. Of course humans are indeed animals simply appearing to be higher-order mammals with very unique features that helped them gain the top position in the animals’ classification.

I love you but I hate you.

Facebook is a social networking site which main purpose is to connect users, similarly to MySpace or Friendster. It allows you to create a profile that includes personal information about yourself, your interests, pictures and practically anything you can think of. Each of these pieces of data is now a link and after you click on it it shows all the other people who listed the same element on their profiles. Connections are also based on FB groups you can join. You gradually build networks of friends, contact them and set meetings with them. Although the very idea of the site is fantastic, I must say that not all FB profiles result in positive outcomes for the users. Creating one’s self identity or shall I say virtual identity pushes us and encourages us to discover who we are and how we relate to other people. The freedom of speech we gain once we’re on Facebook often leads downhill and just joking around comments can hurt other people who happen to be reading them.  Jealousy seems to play a big part as well – ambiguous comments, pictures and secret messages of our loved ones can drive a lot of us crazy.

 Although Facebook seems like a little private forum we administrate and have full control of, the sooner we accept the fact it’s public the better. Anything that has been ever uploaded to it belongs to it forever and there's no way back. Simple delete button won't solve the problem, however, it will help make given post or picture invisible to other users. Sadly, a lot of people on Facebook think that somehow the number of friends they have is suddenly the measure of their popularity (Facebook makes us call them friends when in fact they’re only just connections – often not even acquaintances). They’d kill for a cooler profile and pictures that in other circumstances they would surely keep away from public content (embarrassing shots, boasts about drinking or washing dirty laundry in public) but instead many of them simply lack the discretion or class (or both) and present themselves, and others, inappropriately online. They themselves spending hours and hours a day updating their statuses, joining useless groups such as “I hate Mondays”, looking at other people’s pages, taking pictures of themselves for their profiles, seeing who knows who, who goes out with who, who broke up with who… the list never ends. Then the whole thing of I don't like you and I won't accept your friend request as well as You upset me and I'm going to delete you now come on scene and ridicule Facebook even more.

I’ve tried using Facebook creatively (my wishful thinking!), staying in touch with friends, finding out and sharing information, talking to people with similar interests, joining my academic community, contacting my lecturers and basically everything that might provide new opportunities for my professional development plus networking. Unfortunately I find it unmanageable for the simple reason that all the people who are on my ‘friends’ list will be able to ruin it for me with one simple useless crap they post and I waste time looking at. Should I delete all the people who, in my opinion, contribute nothing at all, and, instead, surround myself with those of similar interests? Will this not potentially limit my exposure to new ideas and experiences? What is the solution? (Here's a brief linguistc digression - sensu stricto I can't really delete anyone - this is where Facebook takes part in word formation, along with other examples such as add sbd)

I have now deleted my old Facebook profile containing quite a bit of personal ‘dirt’ shall I call it and I’m settinp up a new account that I plan to keep public and open, however, as far as I’m concerned, the personal messages live in my Inbox and not where anyone can access it. The problem is that most of the unwanted data on my Facebook happens to be uploaded by other people and hardly ever myself which will require of me to be very strict with regular deleting all of the rubbish I don’t want on my wall. Facebook in fact allows you to block your wall from people commenting on it and this might be an option for me, however, this will mean some of them who could contribute positively will not be able to do so. Again, what’s the solution? Facebook, I love you but I hate you!

Modal Verbs

I’ve been thinking about writing this article for quite some time now and, at some point, I even decided to experiment and spend a day at work listening to people speak English only just to try and catch as many modal verbs as possible. I advise you to do the same – if you don’t live or work in an English speaking environment try watching a movie or listen to the BBC radio. It’s a lot of fun and you will be surprised of how we just can’t manage without modal verbs and how they are, in fact, the most common verbs in the English language. But what are they? Modal verb is a kind of helping word and in that context helping also means auxiliary. They aren’t only common in English but also many other languages such as German.

It’s easy to recognise auxiliary verbs – they don’t really stand on their own. In a sentence I don’t like fish contraction do not does not stand on its own – it is only there to negate the actual main verb of the sentence – like.  We certainly can’t just say I don’t fish… Similarly we say Do tell! and even though we only mean tell! really, do is there to emphasise the primary verb tell.  We can find auxiliary verbs in many other examples: did in Past Simple Tense, have and had in Present Perfect and Past Perfect Tense,  be in Present progressive, was/were in past progressive etc.

There are so called nice properties that distinguish auxiliary verbs from other verbs:

1. Auxiliaries alone can be negated (He doesn’t drive, I wouldn’t go to America)

2. Auxiliaries alone can be inverted (Are we going? Is she watching TV?)

3. Auxiliaries alone exhibit the ability to allow a following verb phrase to be deleted (Will they win the match? I think they might but my dad says they can’t)

4. Auxiliaries alone can be emphasised (She does speak English)

Modal verb is a special kind of an auxiliary verb that can be used to modify the modality of a sentence. Modal verbs have only finite (tensed) forms and don’t have participles or infinitives and they never take the inflection –s in the third person singular. Modality here refers to the attitude to the action indicated by a verb that can be used to describe ideas such as intention, obligation, necessity, desirability or probability.

We have following modal verbs in English: shall, should, will, would, may, might, can, could, must plus some linguist also categorise following as modal verbs: ought to, be going to, have to, used to. However, I tend to call them non-modal constructions that have a modal function.

There’s different ways in which modal verbs can function:

1. Epistemic (belief, assumption, probability) I could write you an email.

2. Deontic (obligation or command) You must leave now.

3. Dynamic (action or ability) I can swim.

Modal verbs are certainly very different to all the normal verbs and non-native speakers of English often have to be careful when using them. For instance saying you can go now isn’t at all polite, it in fact means more or the less I have power over you and I’m now going to release you. Get lost. It’s much better to grant permission saying you may go now. In standard English usage (there might be regional differences and variations such as in Southern American English) it is incorrect to follow one modal with another for the simple reason that modal must be followed by an infinitive and doesn’t have an infinitive form itself. Modal verb can be, however, combined with non-modal constructions that has a modal function such as have to. Therefore might have to is correct whereas might must isn’t even though have to and must carry the same meaning.

Agreement between subject and verb

Listen up, it really is that simple! If a sentence has a singular subject it is followed by a singular verb and if it has a plural subject it is followed by a plural verb. Verb and subject must agree.

She likes animals. She like animals.

  They like animals.  They likes animals.

Sometimes the subject of the sentence is more complex but even then the following verb still must agree with the main noun within the subject. Look at the following example:

A few participants of the course have arrived early. A few participants of the course has arrived early.

The words there and here are never subjects themselves therefore with those constructions (expletive constructions), the subject always follows the verb and determines the number of the verb.

There are many kids in my neighbourhood.  There is many kids in my neighbourhood.

There is an apple on the table.  There are an apple on the table.

If a subject is a clause, we usually use a singular verb unless it’s a clause starting with ‘what’ as a subject, then we use a singular verb if the following main noun is singular and either a singular or plural verb if the main noun is plural (although plural is usually preferred, especially in formal texts). Look at the following examples:

What makes me happy is your smile. What makes me happy are your smile.

What is required are application forms. What is required is application forms.

Collective nouns (nouns with singular form but referring to groups such as team) can be used with either a singular or plural form of the verb., however, it is preferred to use singular verb (in academic writing anyway). Only sometimes a plural form of the verb is required and this will always depend on the context. Compare:

A group of kids have raised their hands.  A group of kids has raised its hand.

Coordinated noun is usually followed by a plural verb:

Jean and Tom are sitting at the table.  Jean and Tom is sitting at the table.

This is except when the two items are making up a single item:

Fish and chips is a British dish.  Fish and chips are a British dish.

When names and titles end in –s we refer to them as a single unit and use a singular verb.

Netherlands has granted US Military use of its islands in the Caribbean.  Netherlands have granted US Military use of its islands in the Caribbean.

A number of + noun is followed by a plural verb since the expression is used to indicate more than one of something whereas the number of + noun is followed by a singular verb because the expression is used to refer to the exact number that makes up a group.

A number of people have answered our emails. A number of people has answered our emails.

The number of answers we got was great.  The number of answers we got were great.

Morphology

What is morhology? ‘Morphology’ literally stands for ‘ the study of forms’ and was originally used in biology but since the middle of 19th century it’s been used to describe the analysis of basic elements used in a given language. Those ‘elements’ are technically referred to as morphemes. Let's take forms: talks, talker, talked, talking. They consist of one element talk and a variety of other elements (-s, -er, -ed and -ing). The latter are described as 'morphemes'.

What is a morpheme? What is a stem? Morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. For example, word reopened consists of 3 morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning open, another minimal unit of meaning re- (here meaning 'again') and a minimal unit of grammatical function -ed (past tense). Word tourists consists of 3 morphemes too: tour – ist – s. In those examples, open and tour are free morphemes and they stand by themselves as single words whereas re-, -ed, ist and -s are bound morphemes and cannot stand alone but are always attached to another form. (See 'affixes' in one of my previous post). When free morphemes are used with bound morphemes the basic word-form involved is technically known as ‘stem’. Problem and disagreement occur over the characterisation of elements such as receive or repeat (since even though re- is often a prefix, -ceive and -peat aren’t free morphemes – because they don’t stand by themselves and don't carry any meaning on their own). You may come across a variety of terms used to describe those. The simplest distinction would be here to count ceive and peat as bound stems and forms like dress in undressed or care in careless as free stems.

Classification of morphemes

1. Free morphemes

a) Lexical morphemes

Those are a set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that carry the content of ‘message’ we convey such as monkey, stupid, read.

b) Functional morphemes

Those are functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns. We hardly ever add new functional morphemes to the language; they’re described as a ‘closed’ class of words.

2. Bound morphemes

a) Derivational morphemes Those are used to make new words of a different grammatical category from the stem. For instance derivational morpheme -ness changes the adjective good to the noun goodness and -ly changes the adjective slow to the adverb slowly. Other common derivational morphemes in English are -ish, -ly, -ment, re-, pre-, dis-, co-, un-

b) Inflectional morphemes

Those indicate aspects of the grammatical function but don’t make new words.

English has only 8 inflectional morphemes: possessive: Jim’s, plural: sisters, 3rd person: likes, present participle: singing, past tense: danced, past participle: taken, superlative: longest, comparative: shorter. They never change the grammatical category of a word (short and shorter are both adjectives). All of the above are suffixes. Note that -er can be either derivational or inflectional morpheme: teach – teacher/small – smaller. They look the same but they have different function. They are both bound morphemes. Also, whenever there are both derivational and inflectional suffix added to the word, the derivational suffix appears first: teach -er  -s (never: teach -s -er).

ProblemsWhat is the inflectional morpheme that makes sheep the plural form of sheep or mice of mouse? Why is went a past form of go? Those have not been fully resolved. On the bright side, we know that the relationship between law and legal is a reflection of historical influence of other languages (law from Old Norse and legal from Latin). There is no derivational relationship between the two.

Analogy with processes known in phonology If phones are phonetic realisations of phonemes we can propose morphs as realisations of morphemes. Cat is a single morph realising a lexical morpheme whereas cats consists of two morphs realising a lexical morpheme (cat) and an inflectional morpheme (-s plural). Just as we noted there were ‘allophones’ of a particular phoneme we can now recognise allomorphs of a particular morpheme. Lexical morpheme cat + inflectional morpheme plural = cats, lexical morpheme sheep + inflectional morpheme plural = sheep. In result the actual morphs resulting from single morpheme turn out to be different but they are all allomorphs of the same morpheme.

Avoid common mistakes in English

Some mistakes made by foreigners while speaking English are more common than other ones. I hope this might help some of you and reading it will take only a few seconds... Let’s get started.

To tell and to say

We will learn the usage of the verbs 'to tell' and 'to say'. We say: I tell you. I say to you. We do not say: I tell to you. I say you. Analogically: I told you. / I said to you. not: I told to you. / I said you. I'm telling you. / I'm saying to you. not: I'm telling to you. / I'm saying you. I was telling you. / I was saying to you. not: I was telling to you. / I was saying you. I have told you. / I have said to you. not: I have told to you. / I have said you. etc.

To lose weight and to put on weight

Now we will learn the usage of the verbs 'to lose weight' and 'to put on weight'. Please notice, that a preposition 'on' occurs only in one of two given verbs and never in the other one. It is correct to say: I lose weight. Even though a lot of my students tend to say: 'I lose on weight' or 'I put weight' - these are not correct sentences. Please, study analogical examples below: I lost weight. / I put on weight. I have lost weight. / I have put on weight. I had lost weight. / I had put on weight. I will have lost weight. / I will have put on weight. etc.

Lesson3. I would also like you to have a look at the following list of words that very often I happen to see spelled wrong: accommodation, address, beginning, coffee, curiosity, disappear, disappointed, embarrassed, forbidden, guarantee, immediately, necessary, preferred, pronunciation, recommend, ridiculous, successful, unconscious, unfortunately, writing

Prepositions in, at and on

Now we're going to have a brief look at prepositions 'in', 'at' and 'on'. Common mistake number 1: I'm good in English. The sentence written above is NOT correct. Please remember that the preposition ‘at’ is used when describing people’s abilities in different pursuits. The correct sentence: I'm good at English. Common mistake number 2: There is a cat on the picture. The sentence written above is NOT correct. Please remember that the preposition 'in' is used when indicating place and location. The correct sentence: There is a cat in the picture.

Curiosities of language - Palindromes

Have you ever noticed that the words dad, ewe, pop, sexes and redder all read exactly the same backwards? They are called 'palindromes' (Polish: palindromy). These can also be sentences or utterances (even longer pieces). Here I list a few famous examples:

Madam, I'm Adam. Was it a cat I saw? Able was I ere I saw Elba. A man, a plan, a canal - Panama. Doc, note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.

And a few Polish ones:

Zagwiżdż i w gaz, Zaradny dynda raz, Raz czart - raz czar, A to kłamał koń, okłamał kota, Ile Roman ładny dyndał na moreli?

There are also so called 2D palindromes in which every row and column reads as a word in both directions. There is a selection of 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 and 6x6 palindrome squares in English.

G	E	L
E	Y	E
L	E	G

 

Maybe you can try to create your own palindromes?

Phonetics versus Phonology

I've been asked several times already to explain shortly the difference between phonetics and phonology. If you think of it, it's easy. Pronounciation can be always studied and analysed from two different points of view: the phonetic and phonological. Phonetics concerns the way we produce (articulate), transmit and receive speech sounds while phonology concentrates on the general properties displayed by systems of languages. In other words, phonetics studies all possible sounds humans can make and phonology studies only those phonemes (I explain the term phoneme in one of my previous posts "Phones, phonemes and allophones") that bring about the differences of meaning within language.It's a bit as if (and this is a big simplification) you had a girl and first were concerned about her appearance only - this would be phonology but as soon as you find out more about her and her personality, it's phonetics.

To seperate the two approaches, phonetic and phonological, linguists use different kind of brackets when using their written representations - transcriptions. Square brackets [ ] indicate a phonetic point of view (only as sounds articulated in a particular way without taking their role into consideration), whereas slant brackets / / indicate phonological point of view (only as parts of the sound system). Generally, phonetic transcriptions are much more detailed and used when, for instance, describing the regional differences in pronounciation. However, phonemes are often satisfactory enough when presenting transcriptions.

Jak powstają nowe słowa?

Słownictwo współczesnego języka angielskiego jest rezultatem mikstury pięciu głównych wpływów językowych:

Staroangielski (anglosaski)
Francuski (po 1066)
Staronordycki (Wikingowie)
Łacina i Greka (zwłaszcza od czasów Średniowiecza)
Różnorodne słowa zapożyczone z ponad 350 języków świata

Dodatkowo, co ciekawe, nikt nie potrafi dokładnie powiedzieć, ile nowych słów pojawia się w języku angielskim każdego roku. Jedyne wymierne liczby, jakimi dysponujemy, oblicza się na podstawie ilości nowych wpisów w kolejnych edycjach słowników. (Dla przykładu edycja słownika ‘Shorter Oxford English Dictionary’ z roku 2007 zawierała ok 2,500 więcej słów niż jej poprzedniczka sprzed pięciu lat). Musimy jednak pamiętać, że istnieją słowa, które nigdzie nie zostały spisane, oraz te powstałe w natchnieniu, w przeciągu sekund, obecnie wymarłe i zwyczajnie zapomniane. Niektóre dziedziny nauki, jak komputerologia, są niezwykle bogatymi źródłami neologizmów. Jednym z moich ulubionych przykładów jest cobwebsite, termin używany do opisu opuszczonej i nieaktualizowanej strony internetowej (cobweb – pajęczyna, website – strona internetowa). Inne przykłady stanowią data smog dla opisu nadmiaru informacji w internecie (data – dane, smog – smog) oraz linkrot używany do opisu wadliwych, niedziałających linków (link – link, rot – gnić).

Jednym z najrzadszych procesów słowotwórskich w języku angielskim jest 'coinage'. W czasach nam współczesnych wszyscy ulegamy stresom i często zdarza nam się go into a rage (wściekać się). Wyobraź sobie tylko, prowadzisz samochód i wściekasz się na innych kierowców, którzy celowo blokują drogę. Mamy tu do czynienia z road rage (road – droga). Nie przejmuj się, kierowcy nie są w połowie nawet tak źli jak źli są przechodnie...Pavement rage przychodzi na myśl (pavement – chodnik). Wszyscy chyba nienawidzimy robić zakupów w przepełnionym supermarkecie, gdzie za żadne skarby świata nie można dotrzeć do tych właśnie pułek, które nas interesują bo jakoś wszyscy klienci chcą kupić dokładnie to, co my. Oto trolley rage (trolley – wózek na zakupy). Nie muszę chyba wyjaśniać spam rage (spam – spam), phone rage (phone – telefon) i tube rage (tube – metro). Polecam tutaj film ‘’Upadek’’ Joela Schumachera.

Zapożyczenie z kolei jest prawdopodobnie najbotszym źródłem nowych słów w języku angielskim. Piano (pianino) pochodzi z włoskiego, robot z czeskiego a yoghurt (jogurt) z tureckiego. Ja i inni Polacy rozmawiamy osporcie, klubie i pubie. Wyjątkowym typem zapożyczenia jest kalka – dosłowne tłumaczenie słowa na nowy język. Stąd właśnie wiemy, że superman jest kalką niemieckiego Uebermensch. Jeśli znasz niemiecki, porównaj tylko Wolkenkratzer albo Lehnwort z ich angielskimi odpowiednikami...

Najczęstszym procesem słowotwórczym jest 'derivation' (derywacja). Dla przykładu afiksy -ful, -less, -ish, un-, -in, mis-  dodawane są na końcu (sufiksy) albo na początku słowa (prefiksy) którego znaczenie zmieniają. Infiksy nie są zwykle spotykane w języku angielskim I jak nazwa wskazuje, są one afiksami położonymi pośrodku słowa. Dowcipne ale niekoniecznie poprawne absofuckinglutely nasuwa się na myśl. Fucking w tym przypadku i tak nie byłoby w zasadzie prawdziwym afiksem (stanowi bowiem słowo samo w sobie i nosi znaczenie).

Jeśli połączeniu ulegnie początek jednego słowa i koniec drugiego, do czynienia mamy z blending (od to blend – mieszać). Motor + Hotel = Motel, Breakfast + Lunch = Brunch. Przy okazji, pewnie niewielu z was wie, że słowo breakfast oznacza to break the fast (przerwać post)... Czyli znów… proces słowotwórczy! Co jeśli zamiast pełnego słowa, posługujemy się tylko jego częścią? Mamy przecież ad zamiast advertisement (reklama) i info zamiast information (informacja). Ten proces nazywany jest ‘clipping’ (od to clip – ciąć). Tak właśnie powstały twory takie jak bra (biustonosz), cab (taskówka), flu (grypa), gym (siłownia) i wiele innych, nie wspominając nawet o imionach (Sam, Liz itd).

To donate (darować) z kolei pochodzi od słowa donation (darowizna) i jest efektem backformation, nieco innego procesu słowotwórczego, działającego, podobnie jak ‘clipping’ na zasadzie redukcji. Innymi przykładami niech będą to babysit (opiekować się dzieckiem) od babysitter (opiekunka do dziecka) i telly od television (telewizja). Proces ten szczególnie często pojawia się w Brytyjskiej i Australijskiej odmianie języka angielskiego.

Niektóre słowa znane są jako akronimy i składają się z pierwszych liter krótkiej sekwencji słów. Dla przykładu CD to compact disc (dysk kompaktowy). Mamy też VCR, NASA, NATO, FBI, CIA i wiele innych. Wstyd się przyznać ale podążając za tłumem zdarza mi się użyć akronimu LOL. Jeśli rzeczownik staję się nagle również czasownikiem, mówimy o procesie zwanym konwersją. Butter (masło ale i ‘smarować masłem’) stanowi tu znakomity przykład.

Jeśli połączeniu ulegnie początek jednego słowa i koniec drugiego, do czynienia mamy z blending (od to blend – mieszać). Motor + Hotel = Motel, Breakfast + Lunch = Brunch. Przy okazji, pewnie niewielu z was wie, że słowo breakfast oznacza to break the fast (przerwać post)... Czyli znów… proces słowotwórczy! Co jeśli zamiast pełnego słowa, posługujemy się tylko jego częścią? Mamy przecież ad zamiast advertisement (reklama) i info zamiast information (informacja). Ten proces nazywany jest ‘clipping’ (od to clip – ciąć). Tak właśnie powstały twory takie jak bra (biustonosz), cab (taskówka), flu (grypa), gym (siłownia) i wiele innych, nie wspominając nawet o imionach (Sam, Liz itd).

To donate (darować) z kolei pochodzi od słowa donation (darowizna) i jest efektem backformation, nieco innego procesu słowotwórczego, działającego, podobnie jak ‘clipping’ na zasadzie redukcji. Innymi przykładami niech będą to babysit (opiekować się dzieckiem) od babysitter (opiekunka do dziecka) i telly od television (telewizja). Proces ten szczególnie często pojawia się w Brytyjskiej i Australijskiej odmianie języka angielskiego.

Niektóre słowa znane są jako akronimy i składają się z pierwszych liter krótkiej sekwencji słów. Dla przykładu CD to compact disc (dysk kompaktowy). Mamy też VCR, NASA, NATO, FBI, CIA i wiele innych. Wstyd się przyznać ale podążając za tłumem zdarza mi się użyć akronimu LOL. Jeśli rzeczownik staję się nagle również czasownikiem, mówimy o procesie zwanym konwersją. Butter (masło ale i ‘smarować masłem’) stanowi tu znakomity przykład.

Vowels and Consonants

There are two types of meaning associated with the words 'vowel' and 'consonant'. First, the phonological definition says that consonants are simply those segments that occur at the edges of syllables, unlike vowels which occur at the centre of syllables. Therefore in 'cat', 'book', 'mean' the sounds represented by <c, t, b, k, m, n> are consonants and the sound represented by <a, oo, ea> are all vowels.

To know what kind of sounds generally occur in those different positions in syllables we need a phonetic definition. It says that vowels are median so the air escapes over the middle of the tongue, oral so the air escapes through the mouth and never through the nose which means that the soft palate is raised but I shall talk more about the place and manner of articulation on the other occasion. The phonetic definition also says tat vowels are frictionless (thus excluding fricatives e.g. /s/) and continuant (thus excluding plosives e.g. /p/). Basically all sounds that are excluded from the phonetic definition are consonants.

However, nothing is ever easy in English because /j, w, r/ are consonants phonologically since they certainly occur at the edges of syllables but are still vowels phonetically because they are all median, oral, frictionless and continuant. For that reason we call them semi-vowels.

Another difficulty arises in words like 'little' when the final consonant /l/ (we are not taking into consideration the spelling but the prononounciation) is the syllable on it's own thus must be the centre of such syllable too even though phonetically /l/ is not a vowel. This situation ocurs for laterals (/l/) and nasals (e.g. /n/) therefore laterals and nasals are called syllabic consonants.

Cohesion

There are two ways of telling something to somebody. A long one and a short one. You can easily measure the size of it by the pause that one takes after they say to you: 'I must tell you something...'. If it's going to be a good or neutral thing - they will tell you this immediately and the pause will be short. 'I must tell you something, I watched a great movie last night'. No pause at all. If it's something bad - the pause will be long. 'I must tell you something...' A few seconds go by and you ask 'Yeah? What's that?'. 'Well, it's not easy...' - the longer it takes them to get it out, the worse it's going to be. A cat doesn't go up to a mouse and say 'I must tell you something, I'm going to eat you alive now'. That's quite bad even without a pause and this is how humans' language differs from animals'.

Now think, how do we, as language-users, interpret what other language-users try to express? This is what pragmatics is concerned about but if we ask further and try to work out why we can also make sense of what we read in texts, understand what the authors mean, often despite what they literally say, and then eventually correspond with them and take part in a conversation, that is in fact when we realise that communication is a truly complex activity. Or, even on a simple level of every day communication - why do we presume one's a pessimist if they see a glass as half empty rather than half full?

We are very special creatures that can not only differentiate between correct and incorrect form/structure/spelling/pronunciation (most of us can anyway) but also we can cope with items such as headlines in magazines. 'Plane crash, 76 die' - we automatically know that there is a relation between the two phrases without elaborating. Furthermore, even if the text we see is grammatically incorrect we still often make sense out of it so our brain does not reject the messages with mistakes in it. To see what I mean, try talking to a foreigner who doesn't speak fluent English, or read their texts, and see how even despite their mistakes you will still, most of the time, understand perfectly what they mean.

Are you ready for some more fascinating facts? We instinctively know that a sentence must have a certain structure - and now don't worry about your spelling or grammar. Even though some of you would probably write: 'Your beautiful' rather than 'You're beautiful' I highly doubt any of you would say 'Are beautiful you'. Now, we also know that some rules about the structure are surrounding texts that are consisted of sentences. These depend on quite different factors that are describes in terms of cohesion (the ties and connections in text). For example: 'My boyfriend once gave me a beautiful ring. He did it because he loved me. That gift was very special to me. We sometimes argue. However, we love each other so we always make up' - There are connections present in the use of pronouns, which maintain reference to the same people or items throughout: boyfriend-he, ring - it, my-me etc, lexical connections: beautiful ring - that gift, and finally there is also a connector 'however' which marks the relationship of what follows to what went before. Additionally we see that first sentences are in the past and create connections with those events whereas two last sentences indicate a different time. Can you see now how fast your brain works and simply sucks all this information in? So this is exactly how analysis of these cohesive links gives us slight insight into how writers form what they want to express and, what's more important, gives us crucial factors in our judgment whether something is well written or not. (Imagine that in the given text we used different connections between the sentences but ones that are difficult to interpret, for example: 'My boyfriend once gave me a ring. The bike is yellow. However, we love each other so we always make up. He did it because he loved me').

Phones, phonemes and allophones.

The terminology we will be dealing with today may strike you as really complicated. This is always the case with abstract units that you cannot see or touch. I've made every effort for the text to be simple so don't give up before you even try understanding it.

To get down to basics: A phonological analysis involve two levels of representation - a concrete/phonetic representation (on the concrete level we describe what speech sounds there are) and an abstract/underlying one (on the abstract level we recognise the differences between elements - the contrastive function).

Phone is a speech sound as it is without taking into consideration it's function in a given language. It's a representation on the phonetic level and is a phonetic unit.

Phoneme, however, is a representation of a speech sound and it's an abstractive unit. It is the smallest contrastive linguistic unit that is capable of bringing about a change of meaning. In a word ''rat'' - we have 3 phonemes (remember: representations of speech sounds): /r/, /a/, /t/. In a word ''sat' we also have 3 phonemes: /s/, /a/, /t/. There is only one phoneme difference in the words above (/r/ - /s/). This phoneme brings about the change of meaning because surely the meaning changes depending on whether we pronounce /r/ or /s/ as the first speech sound of the given word. Pairs such as 'rat' - 'sat', 'pot' - 'tot', 'car' - 'far' and many others are pairs differing in terms of only one phoneme are called 'minimal pairs' and the contrast between the two words in each pair is called 'minimal contrast'. I'm sure you can think of many examples of minimal pairs and the process of finding them is refered to as 'commutation process'.

Sometimes we find various realisations of the same phoneme and these are called allophones. For example there are two types of /l/ in English. One is the dark 'l' and the other is the light /l/. The light /l/ always occurs at the begining of a word and the dark /l/ can be found in the middle or at the end of the word. They differ slightly in terms the way we pronounce them so we are surely dealing here with the different values of consonants but they are not different phonemes because they do never bring a change of meaning. In the word 'lull' for instance we have both - the light /l/ is first and the dark /l/ is second. If we pronounce them the other way round, the word may sound odd to a native English speaker, but will be still understood as 'lull' - no change of meaning takes place. Allophones occur consistently in different words or in different positions in a word. They are in 'complementary distribution' - they don't contrast with each other. In the case of phonemes we are dealing with 'parallel distribution' - they may contrast in one place in a word.

To sum up: If we concentrate on the underlying representation of a speech sound - it is a phoneme, but on the phonetic level - a phone. When a speech sound has been classified as realisation of a given phoneme we refer to it as an allophone of this phoneme.

Politically correct language

For the last couple of years we have been becoming more and more sensitive so as not to offend women, poor people and various minority groups. Nowadays we feel so easily insulted that we speak cautiously in a politically correct manner.

You wouldn't say 'poor' but 'financially underprivileged', not 'drug addict' but 'substance abuser', not 'unemployed' but 'non wage-earner', not 'foreign tourist' but 'overseas visitor', not 'prison convict' but 'guest of the correctional system'. My personal favourites (meaning the ones that made me giggle): not 'short person' but 'vertically challenged', analogically not 'fat person' but 'horizontally challenged' and not 'bald' but 'follically challenged'. Feminists seemed to have picked up on the idea and made things even more complicated (or shall I say ridiculous) making up words such as: 'shero' for 'hero' and 'personkind' for 'mankind'.

Although the idiocy of the situation occurs far less frequently in Polish there are some words which have only recently appeared in the language. We still aren't afraid to call somebody fat if they truly are fat, however, due to pressure from Western countries, there are certain words, usually of a racial or sexual nature, which are provided as substitutes for the ones that we have successfully used until recently. Example: Poles should no longer call people gay but we say they are 'loving differently'.

Time for personal reflection and a few tips:

If you're white and you're a male too, you are pretty much doomed. You just must feel guilty. Your ancestors are responsible for practically every injustice in this world... slavery, war, genocide, killing of animals... It's time to redress the balance. It's simple - you must be careful what you say, what you think and what you do. Since it's all too easy to insult somebody these days - I recommend you keep your mouth shut on most occasions. Being offensive is destructive and will not make the world a complete harmony of utopia, as in the John Lennon song "Imagine". Pay attention to the cosmetics you use - they can't be tested on animals. Try to find at least sixty different ways of using water - while you are taking a shower try brushing your teeth at the same time, don't let the water just flow away but use it afterwards for irrigating the lawn. An even better solution is to replace the lawn with a vegetable garden because from now on you will be forbidden to eat meat. Cows are animals and humans are animals. This means they both have certain rights - you eat meat - you eat humans. Analogically humans are cows. Subscribe to National Geographic and after reading, use the paper as an alternative source of fuel (or as toilet paper so that you don't have to buy any)

How baby words are made.

Modern English vocabulary is the result of the mixture of five major linguistic influences: 

1. Old English (Anglo-Saxon)

2. French (after 1066)

3. Norse (Vikings)

4. Latin and Greek (mostly from the late Middle Ages onwards)

5. Miscellaneous words borrowed from over 350 languages around the world

Additionally, nobody knows for sure how many new words appear in English each year. The only concrete figures are the words that dictionary makers add to the new editions of their dictionaries. (For example the 2007 edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary added about 2,500 new words to the edition published five years previously). However, we must remember that there are words not recorded anywhere or those invented on the spur of the moment, never used again and simply forgotten. Some areas of human activity such as computing are rich sources of new words. Here I would like to share with you a rather witty term, one of my favourites in this field, 'cobwebsite' which describes a website that hasn't been updated for a long time. Other ones include 'data smog' - the overwhelming amount and excess of the information on the Internet and 'linkrot' - situation when links on a given website don't work or lead you nowhere. One of the least common processes of word formation in English is coinage.

These days we are all stressed and we often go into a rage over anything. While driving we are irritated by other motorists who deliberately slow us down, triggering road rage. Don't feel bad about yourself though - if you think motorists are bad this means you never walk anywhere - pavement rage is probably worse... We all hate trolley rage when we just can't get through to the shelf we need in a supermarket because everybody else seems to need exactly what we need too. Not to mention spam rage, phone rage or tube rage. The movie 'Falling down' springs to mind.

Contrastingly, borrowing is probably one of the most common sources of new words in English, that is the adoption of words from other languages - 'piano' is Italian, 'robot' is Czech and ''yoghurt' is Turkish. Me and my fellow Poles talk about 'sport', 'klub', 'pub' and many others. A special type of borrowing is calque - direct translation of the elements of a word. Here, the English word 'superman' is a loan translation of the German 'Uebermensch' - I hope you speak German and if you do please compare words 'Woklenkratzer' or 'Lehnwort' with their English versions...

The most common word - formation process is derivation. Affixes such as '-ful', '-less', '-ish', 'un-'. 'in-', 'mis-' etc are added to the end (suffixes) or beggining of words (prefixes) and change their meaning. Infixes are not normally to be found in English and as a name suggests it's an affix likely to be located in the middle of the word. The witty but rather vulgar 'Absofuckinglutely' might ring a bell. 'Fucking' in that case isn't strictly speaking an affix, I only just gave this example because I thought it was funny.

If you are to take only the beginning of one word and the ending of the other, then connect them and use as a word with a new meaning - this is called blending. Motor + Hotel = Motel. Breakfast + Lunch = Brunch. (By the way, not many of you might know that word brekfast means to break the fast... again - word formation. Crazy, isn't it?) If you feel like shortening a word and instead of saying 'advertisement' you go for 'ad' this means you are clipping words. This is exactly why we talk about 'bra', 'cab', 'flu', 'gym' and many others, not to mention names such as Sam, Al, Liz etc.

Now, 'donate' comes from 'donation' and is an effect of backformation, the slightly different type of reduction process. Other examples include: 'babysit' from 'babysitter' and 'opt' from 'option'.

Hypocorisms are those words with '-y' or '-ie' in the end such as 'barbie' for 'barbeque' and 'telly' for 'television' (I dislike that one as it sounds rather pretentious). This is especially typical for British and Australian English.

Some words are known as acronyms and consist of the initial letters from a sequence of words. CD is a 'compact disc'. We also have VCR, NASA, NATO, FBI, CIA and many others. I'm ashamed to admit but I tend to follow the crowd and overuse the word 'LOL'. If a noun comes to be used as a verb we talk about conversion.

'Paper', 'butter', 'bottle' and many others are nouns which can be used as verbs. "Have you buttered your toast yet?'.