Once again answering questions about English spelling that people were content to leave unasked, here's a new piece about why 'sugar' and 'sure' are written with an S, but sound like SH. My response involves Norman invaders, Tudor mouths and judgemental lexicographers: dannybate.com/2026/07/10/s...

The answer is that everyone reads all day long, probably at a greater pace and breath than any time in human history. They just don’t read linearly and in the same organized fashion as before. This is a transitional time, and reading practices will recalibrate.

Getting my geek on. @dannybate.com

Can we vote for the subject of your next book? Here's a vote for: "Hwaet: Keen on Kennings, a popular history of Old English" Subtitle - No, not Shakespeare You can have the title, all you have to do is write the book!

I like that Old English displays a couple of examples of the word underburh ('under-town'), most likely a direct and literal translation of a more familiar Latin word: suburbānus.

This really shouldn't need to be said, but alas, it does. Thanks to @ciol-linguists.bsky.social, the ATC and the ITI for writing this letter. Fingers crossed that someone will act on it! www.theguardian.com/education/20...

It's interesting to read how astonished explorers were to find that the Africans they encountered were equally well-travelled Barth in 1850 met Africans in Bagirmi (Chad) who had visited Basra (Iraq), kept the works of Plato, and were as inquisitive about Europe as he was about Africa

Latin sēcūrus is the origin of 'secure' and 'sure' in post-1066 English, but it was also adopted into Germanic centuries earlier. From this came German sicher and Dutch zeker 'sure'. Their Middle English cousin was siker – now lost, but it endured long enough to give Welsh a word for 'sure': sicr.

One of my fave things in York Minster: a medieval wren stalking a spider. It reminds me that history isn't only kings and battles. Someone, centuries ago, found joy in the same things we still notice today. It's a reminder of how much we have in common over our differences.

my next poolside reading hour book has arrived 🎉 #booksky #wordnerd #pooltimereading #seattlesummer 📚 @dannybate.com (recommended by @jesszafarris.com and @robwords.com) 🛍️ @powells.bsky.social 👕 @itscodes.codyshipman.com

LIVE NOW ON LEGENDS AND LECTURES The History of the Alphabet with Dr @dannybate.com youtu.be/a8nwX8DleRw?...

ahh yes, new england (medieval crimea)

Brief mention of "Goliath" as a possible form of 𐤥𐤠𐤩𐤥𐤤𐤯𐤤𐤮 <walwetes>/Alyattēs: "Lion/Lion-ness" (derived abstract noun, not feminine) 😄 In Anatolian the equivalent of *wl̥kʷós means "lion" instead of "wolf", as in other branches. There are many names derived from welkʷ-/wl̥kʷós, across IE! some:

Amazing

Great posts on all things Philistine by @dannybate.com! I would just add that the Hebrew Bible agrees with the other evidence on an Aegean origin for the Philistines, who are repeatedly said to come from Caphtor, very likely an old name for Crete (Deut 2:23; Jer 47:4; Amos 9:7).

My July article, long in the planning, discusses whether infamous Biblical baddies like Goliath shared a language with Homer and Plato. Happily, the piece runs contrary to Betteridge’s law of headlines ('any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with no'). dannybate.com/2026/07/03/d...

Learning languages through in-laws and hidden etymological parallels, plus the story of WWII codebreakers who took breaks from solving the Enigma Machine to work on the Voynich Manuscript It's a new bonus episode with deleted scenes from our interviews with @dannybate.com and @chirila.bsky.social!

‘Chez moi’ is French for “at my place”. The preposition ‘chez’ has a fascinating origin: it shares its origin with Spanish ‘casa’ (house): Latin ‘casa’. ‘Casa’ initially meant “hut”, but it became the word for "house" in Romance. What happened to the original word? My new graphic tells you more.

Feeling blessed to be in the timeline where today I can ask someone "did you catch the schism yesterday?"

great year for medievalists; first you’ve got a tyrant starting shit with the Pope and now we have a full blown schism

WELCOME TO SCHISM WATCH 2026 WITH CLAIRE

As a junior Millennial who was active on Peak Twitter™, people organically making niche memes about one's book is the highest form of honour

Reading @dannybate.com's book 'Why Q needs U' I wonder how many memes already have been inspired by it.

The word 'wilderness' visibly comprises the elements 'wild' and '-ness', but where does its middle ER come from? A third ingredient has gone into the word, namely Old English dēor 'animal' (the source of today's narrower term 'deer'), making 'wilderness' literally 'wild-animal-ness'.

@dannybate.com dennikn.sk/5418334/ked-...

Greetings from the Chalke History Festival, where this morning I put on a performance like never before and then signed and sold all stocked copies of my book. Perhaps I was only so on form because I'd spent the previous half hour chatting with the (eighth) Doctor.

Since reading this, I've been working up the courage to ask you this question, @dannybate.com , if you have the time and inclination to answer: Back on the bad place, I got into a discussion with an Anglophone linguist about whether or not English has grammatical gender...

There is a similar case in Romanian. Long story short: After different sound changes there was a complete merger of formerly distinct vowels represented by <â> and <î> since 1904 (= /ɨ/). In 1953, the Communists abolished <â> altogether and therefore, the adjective "Romanian" 1/

In the case of "México", there were attempts to change its spelling to "Méjico", mainly in SPAIN. Mexico did not particularly appreciate having its spelling altered like this, and eventually Spain threw in the towel on the spelling, maybe 20-30 years ago. www.quora.com/Are-there-an...

You can almost always find unexpected things in manuscripts. Today: an Ethiopian scribe trying his hand on a Greek note in an Arabic manuscript (Sin. ar. 506). It's not only the shape of some letters, or the use of textual dividers, but esp. the sneakily inserted word ቀሌምኮስ that gives him away.

Friends and linguonerds in the Cambridge/west Essex area: I'm en route to the unfairly gorgeous town of Saffron Walden, there to be in conversation at Hart's Books this evening. Maybe see you there? The event will offer: - linguistics - jokes - cold drinks - air-conditioning - shelter from the sun

Just finished my first reading through my copy of #WhyQNeedsU, and I'm going back to read it again. It's so rich with fascinating facts and insights into the interacting historical forces that created our language's perplexing "rules". Thank you, Danny!

Garffeld

I'm always very interested when I make a language mistake, because a lot of times it maps onto larger well-known processes in historical linguistics. Today I discovered that I misspelled "sacrilegious" as "sacreligious" -- a folk etymology with "-religious"! #Linguistics #LangSky

Today's question from a reader: why doesn't 'wool' rhyme with 'fool'? They historically haven't rhymed, and spelling used to reflect that: 'wool' goes back to Old English wull. However, as Middle English avoided hard-to-read sequences of WU, the U then got swapped for O (see also 'wolf', 'wonder').

The sun has finally shown itself on this summer solstice, and so I've set up a little solar alignment of my own

Suraj has a point.

You should read this book btw and the best chapter is chapter R (though I would also recommend chapter K, for a really good pun that will make you groan in the first two paragraphs)

The ER > AR shift is attested in French as well, but at a much earlier stage of its history and only in non-stressed position: • lat. "per" = 'through' > "par" • lat. "mercatu" > "marché" and even in • lat. "tripalium" > late Latin *trepaliu = 'instrument of torture' > "travail" = 'work'.

The cuneiform sign for 'marsh' is ambar (𒆹), which depicts water (𒀀) within the container sign lagab (𒆸). A contained body of water sounds plenty 'mere-ish'!

Noticed on this 17th-century map the spelling "mershe" for 'marsh' – this is the older spelling, before the 'ER > AR' sound change that affected 'starboard', 'darling' and the pronunciation of 'sergeant' too. The change obscures the etymology of 'marsh': as literally 'mere-ish', a lake-like thing.

The English alphabet! You're looking at it right now, but do you know where it came from? We sat down with the wonderful @dannybate.com to talk about his new book, "Why Q Needs U"! omny.fm/shows/part-t...

French ‘est’ and ‘ouest’ look a lot like ‘east’ and ‘west’. That’s because they were borrowed from Old English, along with other nautical terms, which points to naval contacts. French passed on the words for the wind directions to the other Romance languages. My new graphic tells you more: 1/

"Contemplating the feminine A and its fundamental arbitrariness are for me a path towards bumping into the bars of our caged thinking. They’re also a key for unlocking the door and stepping outside it for a while." I think I'll be thinking about this conclusion for a couple days, thank you.

In honor of Iceland’s national day today, Reynir A. Óskarson and I invite you to take the first of a series of challenges in learning Icelandic from scratch with some fun words & phrases that are a little different (& more useful? memorable?) than the typical duolingo-style ones youtu.be/ZmE9vyTQ0yA

Well, that was a fucking ride.

great etymology right here: Haitian Creole pyèv "octopus" 🐙 from French (orig. Norman) pieuvre (cf. French poulpe & Spanish pulpo!) from Latin polypus (seems to be 2nd decl., for some reason); cf. "polyp" from Greek πολύπους poly-pous "many-footed"

Six visits to Český Krumlov now, and six times that I’ve taken a photo of the same C16th memorial (left), thinking I could post/write about it. It’s an early witness to the typically Bohemian ‘ej’ sound (“VROZENEY”, “SLATINSKEY”), and as such is featured on the Wiki article for the Czech language.

Romanian forms its '-teen' numbers by means of the element -sprezece, from unsprezece (11) to nouăsprezece (19). This construction is very distinctive among Romance languages, and -sprezece may look opaque, but its origin is enjoyably simple: super decem 'above ten' in Latin.

Just finished reading @dannybate.com's marvelous book "Why Q Needs U" and felt the need use an old meme that came to mind while reading Chapters Q and Z.