I am looking for a text file of a list of words (roughly the 5000-10000 most common English words) and their root word and root word language. My Google Fu only turns up single words or pages that I can type in a word to get to another page to get the etymology.
Wikipedia has some stuff, but it is sorted by language root, which is not what I am looking for.
I would like to have a long list of words in a text file so that I can manipulate it programatically. Comma separated or whatever, any format would be great.
Here is one use case:
Yoke - [list of words that have yoke in the etymological history] (Many, many many English words come from the root work for Yoke.)
All answers appreciated!
posted by Monkey0nCrack
on May 16, 2013 -
6 answers
In English, scientists customarily use the word "significant" or "statistically significant" to refer to an effect that is distinguished from zero at a p < .05 confidence level. On the other hand, the word "significant" in non-technical English carries a connotation of being meaningful, important, or substantial; this creates confusion when researchers write about "a significant effect," since the effect might be significant in the statistical sense while being so small as to be insignificant in the common-English sense.
In your native language, what word is used for "signficance" in the statistical context? Is the same word used outside the technical context, and if so, is it a word whose common meaning is something more like "detectable," more like "important," or something else entirely? In particular, does the confusion that arises in English also take place in your language?
posted by escabeche
on Apr 24, 2013 -
5 answers
How come that various forms of the verb "to be" have different degrees of similarity across German/English/Romance languages? The third person singular ist/is/est seems to have an obvious common root, whereas I don't see it jump out on me for bin/am/suis at all, and in other forms it seems like German and French are close with English the odd one out (sind/sommes/are), which I found puzzling given that I usually think of English as the bastard child of these two.
posted by themel
on Mar 31, 2013 -
6 answers
Actor Clark Gregg (our beloved Agent Coulson) has a voice that I really enjoy. One feature I like a lot is the way he says R sounds, especially in the middle or ends of words. For an example, at around 0:35 in the trailer for Much Ado About Nothing (
http://www.muchadothemovie.com/), it is especially apparent in the way he says "merry war" and "skirmish." (Also notable in the interrogation scene in "Thor" when he says "That's hurtful.") It's not a burred or rolled or flipped R, it's just sort of... liquid-sounding? I think it sounds really neat. In the past, I have noticed this in other actors and I always really like the way it sounds.
My question: is this a feature of a certain kind of regional accent? Is there an official/proper term for the sound I mean? Or is it just an individual thing that certain people have that isn't tied to anything in particular? Linguists of MeFi, help me out!
posted by oblique red
on Mar 18, 2013 -
8 answers
'Think tank' and 'thought leader' not 'thought tank' and 'think leader'. Can you help me construct a good argument for why we have settled on the first two and not the second?
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posted by stavrosthewonderchicken
on Mar 17, 2013 -
7 answers
I found some stone tablets written in a strange alphabet amongst a bunch of graves from different eras at the city museum of
Tire, Turkey. The guy working the desk at the museum didn't know what they were. Pictures in extended.
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posted by Theiform
on Mar 15, 2013 -
12 answers
I teach for a living but have a lot of linguistic baggage that I'd like to get rid of. Specifically, I have some weird pronunciation/accent issues and would like to speak "General American" or newscaster English. Is this something I can do on my own? What resources should I use?
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posted by mecran01
on Feb 27, 2013 -
7 answers
What are the best automata (formal language theory) simulators? This is mainly for teaching purposes. I have used JFLAP in past iterations of the class in question, and my google searches suggest this is still the best option, but I was wondering if there is anything newer and better that I'm not finding. Details below.
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posted by advil
on Jan 28, 2013 -
4 answers
Here's an European writing a book/thesis about storytelling in journalism. What texts (linguistics, literary theory etc – preferably *not* mass communication theory) might help in analysing contemporary changes in that field?
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posted by earthwormsleg
on Jan 24, 2013 -
2 answers
Are grammatical genders, as a rule, consistent across the Indo-European languages which use them?
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posted by obloquy
on Dec 4, 2012 -
30 answers
Which language is claimed to have shifted between language families?
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posted by Jehan
on Oct 14, 2012 -
6 answers
Can the adjective "agape" be used only to modify "mouth" or can it be used to modify other things? Like ... "The jewelry box was now agape." That's maybe not the best example as perhaps you could think of a jewelry box as having a mouth. I'm aware that it's almost unheard of in common usage for anything but a mouth to be agape, but would it be incorrect to use this adjective on something else?
posted by january
on Oct 1, 2012 -
21 answers
Is there some super-secret linguistics resource that sorts dictionaries by prescriptivism/descriptivism? Either in a binary chart or along a spectrum? Which dictionaries are known to fit these categories, and which are known to straddle them?
posted by aswego
on Aug 23, 2012 -
11 answers
Is there a word or term for not being able to understand a word of a language, but still being able to correctly
recognize it if you hear it? For example, if I hear someone speaking German, Italian, Portuguese, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian, I can probably correctly identify that they’re speaking said language they’re speaking EVEN THOUGH I can’t understand a thing they’re saying. Has this been studied before?
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posted by huxham
on Jul 19, 2012 -
12 answers
How could I describe in a non-technical way how certain English-speakers maintain a distinction between the "w" and "wh" sound? A certain amount of technical description could help. Its for a character in a story. For example: "The beginning of his 'what' still comes from deep within his throat." I don't know if that's technically true and it sounds awesomely terrible but something like that.
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posted by pynchonesque
on Jul 13, 2012 -
19 answers
Linguistics-filter: What sort of English accent makes "brown," "sun," and "shone" all be pronounced with a similar vowel sound?
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posted by erst
on Jul 13, 2012 -
17 answers
Why is it so hard to quickly count from 1 to 100 alternating between 2 different languages on each digit? Any cognitive scientists want to explain this?
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posted by querty
on Jun 25, 2012 -
13 answers
What are some good references (papers or books) that address the difficulty of computers to understand natural language?
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posted by iconjack
on Jun 12, 2012 -
5 answers
Do we cry over spilt milk or spilled milk? My spell checker says the latter but I remember the former.
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posted by patheral
on May 9, 2012 -
31 answers
Past and current university students: Did you ever use the specific term "weeder class" during your academic career? If so, where did you study?
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posted by C^3
on Apr 25, 2012 -
65 answers
What are some recommended books for the general reader on why languages are so
different. How come languages such as Thai, Mandarin, Hebrew or the Indo-European langauges have such hugely different alphabets, let alone such vast differences in pronunciation? Given that human societies share many common characteristics, how come we ended up speaking so differently from each other. As I say, I'd prefer books aimed at the general reader, rather than, say, linguistics specialists.
posted by vac2003
on Apr 22, 2012 -
8 answers
I remember reading an interview in which Noam Chomsky made connections between his work in linguistics and his later political activism.
Can anyone locate that interview, or perhaps another good essay that connects those two components of his career?
posted by mecran01
on Mar 29, 2012 -
4 answers
Is it possible to learn college-level phonetics and phonology on one's own? Bonus: online?
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posted by jweed
on Mar 8, 2012 -
7 answers
What is the best comprehensive Spanish grammar text in a single volume? What other books are indispensable for self-teaching Spanish?
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posted by edguardo
on Feb 26, 2012 -
7 answers
Help me sort out the best way to approach language preservation, as an academic interest and as a guideline for volunteer work.
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posted by mammary16
on Feb 21, 2012 -
16 answers
Please recommend some entertaining Spanish-language YouTube videos for listening practice. I'm looking for a variety of Spanish accents, and people that are entertaining to listen to.
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posted by free hugs
on Dec 16, 2011 -
5 answers
I got hit with some pretty hard core cognitive dissonance last night. I'm looking for help arriving at mental homeostasis again. So it turns out that "derp" is
ableist (although some say
it's not). I am totally against all "isms" and so I don't enjoy feeling like I contribute. But that's not all...
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posted by rebent
on Nov 1, 2011 -
33 answers
In Korean, the words for 'mom' and 'dad', respectively, are umma and appa. In Hebrew (maybe other Semitic languages, too), they are ima and abba. Is there a link between Korean (maybe other east Asian languages?) and the Semitic languages?
posted by KingoftheWhales
on Sep 22, 2011 -
19 answers
I'm looking for academic linguistic papers and/or books on classification of sentence structures. (Should I turn on the languagehat signal?)
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posted by Mr. Bad Example
on Sep 13, 2011 -
9 answers
"American English is like a mugger in a back alley who, instead of taking your wallet, takes your pocket dictionary".
I read a quote in this vein a while ago and I'm trying to identify the actual quote and the source.
posted by chara
on Sep 12, 2011 -
4 answers
Is there any data out there relating to the relative speeds that different spoken languages can express human thought?
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posted by merocet
on Jul 20, 2011 -
18 answers
A textbook that I once read contained a passage from some famous author (possibly Mark Twain?) that attempted to illustrate the usefulness of jargon by describing how to saddle a horse, or hitch a horse to a wagon (something like that) without using any specialized terminology. It was marvelously long-winded and impossible to follow. Textbook long since discarded, Google-Fu fails; any idea what this might have been?
posted by lordcorvid
on Jul 2, 2011 -
3 answers
Lost a bookmark to an online database of "common" vocabulary from many different languages, maintained by linguists. These were not Swadesh or extended Swadesh lists, but were a similar--the vocabulary was apparently designed to describe common experiences, like body/kinship terms, natural landscape terms, etc. It was definitely a work in progress. I think it had a blue and white design, a globe logo and an acronym in the name. Ring any bells, Metafilter linguists?
posted by Kutsuwamushi
on Jul 1, 2011 -
4 answers
Is there a linguistics term for glued-together Twitter hashtags, such as
#vacationwishlist, #isawesome, and #wordsthatdescribeme? Also, is there a good way of splitting these into individual words?
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posted by jasonhong
on Jun 20, 2011 -
9 answers
