- why German maidens are neuter but German turnips are female
- how words manage to accomplish a complete U-turn in their meaning over a relatively short time-like the word "resent," which, in the seventeenth century, meant "appreciate" or "feel grateful for"
- why Islam, Muslim, and Solomon are all variations on one Semitic root, s-l-m ("be at peace")
- how the design of Sumerian (the language spoken 5,000 years ago by the people who kick-started history) is so sophisticated that even a pause in the middle of a word can convey specific information
- why we have feet and not foots
- how the French came to say "on the day of this day" when they mean "today"
- why most of the world's languages don't have a verb for "have"-and how one goes about expressing the notion of possession without it
- why human intuition-as evidenced by all human languages-discovered the connection between space and time thousands of years before Einstein
Continues...
Excerpted from The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher Copyright © 2006 by Guy Deutscher. Excerpted by permission.
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