Dear Expert

[Tante Shvester]

The sport known the whole world over as football is called soccer in the US.  Anyone know why?

[BlackBlade]

Soccer is short for "Association Football." It was known as soccer for awhile in Great Britain, but like the imperial system and Fahrenheit, Great Britain decided to hand those things off to us, switch, and then act like we're a bunch of squares along with all their other cool kid metric loving European football buddies.

[Jonathon]

So "ain't" is a contraction of "am not" but how? Other contractions like "don't" "isn't" and "can't" all make sense. But how do you get 'am' from 'ai'? Same question for won't how did we get 'wo' from 'will'?

I meant to answer this when I had a little more free time, but I just realized that I had completely forgotten about it. I'll try to get to it soon, hopefully when my head is a little less fuzzy.

[BlackBlade]

I'm glad it's not that you won't answer it.

[Jonathon]

Dear Expert,

When did Dad and Daddy surpass Pop and Papa?  The latter seem more old fashioned to me.  Was it after WWII?  Is it a baby boomer thing?  Why would it change?

It looks like it wasn't until about 1970 or so (at least according to Google Books) that dad and daddy surpassed papa. The data for pop isn't reliable, because most of the hits for "pop" are for soda pop or pop music or culture. As for why it would change, beats me.

[rivka]

Weren't you the one who linked me to that awesome study on changing words for parents in various languages a while back?

[Jonathon]

Probably. I bet it's around here somewhere.

[Jonathon]

"Where do mama/papa words come from?"

"Why 'Mama' and 'Papa'?" (page 538)

[rivka]

That first one is the one I was thinking of.

[sweet clementine]

my friend texted me this morning to ask me why he can say "take me home" but not "take me Salt Lake".  Besides making an inappropriate joke about the meaning of the second sentence without the preposition, I couldn't really give him a good answer as to why the first sentence didn't need the preposition beyond convention.  Can you give me a better explanation?

[Jonathon]

The short answer is that home can be an adverb as well as a noun, while Salt Lake is just a noun. The slightly longer answer is that in Old English, you could use the accusative or dative form of the word for home (ham, with a long a as in father) without a preposition to mean to home or at home, respectively. It's from these uses that the modern adverbial arose.

[sweet clementine]

thank you!

[Annie Subjunctive]

Soccer is short for "Association Football." It was known as soccer for awhile in Great Britain, but like the imperial system and Fahrenheit, Great Britain decided to hand those things off to us, switch, and then act like we're a bunch of squares along with all their other cool kid metric loving European football buddies.

[Jonathon]

So "ain't" is a contraction of "am not" but how? Other contractions like "don't" "isn't" and "can't" all make sense. But how do you get 'am' from 'ai'? Same question for won't how did we get 'wo' from 'will'?

Amn't dates to 1618, and after a little while it was shortened to an't. In non-rhotic dialects (that is, dialects that drop /r/ after vowels), an't was also used for are not (though I assume they were pronounced a little differently). Meanwhile, in't and even en't were sometimes used for isn't, and then an't began to be used for all three. It's not clear to me how or why the vowel changed to the long a sound in ain't, but presumably it was spelled this way to reflect that change.

A similar change happened with hasn't > han't > hain't. Then, since some English dialects drop initial /h/, it became homophonous with ain't, so now ain't also covers has not. Some dialects even have cain't for can't, so there must be something that explains the vowel change in all three. I'm just not sure what it is.

I'll get to won't and other weird contractions tomorrow.

[BlackBlade]

[Annie Subjunctive]

Interesting stuff, init?

[rivka]

New question, if that's ok.

This is from a long debate elsewhere (in which I am a bystander, not a participant), most of which has zero to do with this point. But someone claimed that (details have been changed, but hopefully in ways that don't matter):

'Plumber' is a gender-neutral noun. Thus, any pronouns that refer back to it must be gender-neutral as well. Which is the reason for the use of 'him/her' or 's/he' or even 'one' in some sentences. And although it seems wrong, use of the singular 'they' is another common alternative.

Is that true? Is there anything wrong with the following sentence?

A plumber should really be more delicate when clearing clogged drains, especially when her tools are so fragile.

[Annie Subjunctive]

I could maybe buy that argument if we had gendered forms of "plumber" but otherwise no way.

[Jonathon]

But how do you get 'am' from 'ai'? Same question for won't how did we get 'wo' from 'will'?

Okay, here it is, finally: the short answer is that we don't. Will comes from a highly irregular verb, and will and woll existed side by side for centuries. (Modern German has will as the singular present-tense stem and woll as the plural present-tense stem.) Won't is a contraction of the earlier wonnot, which is a contraction of woll not. Somehow it managed to survive and make it into modern standard English while the other forms disappeared.

I was also going to try to answer why we have /doʊnt/ rather than /dunt/ (with the same vowel as do) for don't, but I can't find any explanation.

[BlackBlade]

*fist bump*

[pooka]

New question, if that's ok.

This is from a long debate elsewhere (in which I am a bystander, not a participant), most of which has zero to do with this point. But someone claimed that (details have been changed, but hopefully in ways that don't matter):

'Plumber' is a gender-neutral noun. Thus, any pronouns that refer back to it must be gender-neutral as well. Which is the reason for the use of 'him/her' or 's/he' or even 'one' in some sentences. And although it seems wrong, use of the singular 'they' is another common alternative.

Is that true? Is there anything wrong with the following sentence?

A plumber should really be more delicate when clearing clogged drains, especially when her tools are so fragile.

The writer admits "they" might seem wrong, but "s/he" doesn't?  That's just weird.  I mean, plumber comes from plumbum which is neuter (in Latin) but if that were the argument, "it" would be perfectly serviceable.  I don't know why people pursuing gender neutrality in pronouns are so hung up on the implication of sentience.  I guess it's because people only do that in the pursuit of sensitivity.  Whatevs.

[Jonathon]

New question, if that's ok.

This is from a long debate elsewhere (in which I am a bystander, not a participant), most of which has zero to do with this point. But someone claimed that (details have been changed, but hopefully in ways that don't matter):

'Plumber' is a gender-neutral noun. Thus, any pronouns that refer back to it must be gender-neutral as well. Which is the reason for the use of 'him/her' or 's/he' or even 'one' in some sentences. And although it seems wrong, use of the singular 'they' is another common alternative.

Is that true? Is there anything wrong with the following sentence?

A plumber should really be more delicate when clearing clogged drains, especially when her tools are so fragile.

It depends on what you mean by "wrong". Grammatically, it's okay. English does not have grammatical gender except for personal pronouns, so there's no rule—at least not a grammatical one—requiring a neuter pronoun after a neuter noun. But plumber is only notionally neuter, not grammatically neuter. That is, it's only neuter in the sense that it could refer to a person of either gender. (Note the contrast between this and the German Mädchen, a neuter noun meaning 'little girl' which requires the neuter pronoun es, meaning 'it'.) Using "she" with "plumber" is mostly only wrong in a discourse-pragmatic sense, because it violates the expectation that plumbers are male.  You could also say it's wrong in the sense that our society values being gender-neutral, and using a gendered pronoun doesn't fit with that value. (And going along with that, using "he" would be wrong in the sense that it reinforces stereotypes that we'd like to avoid. It's for these reasons rather than grammatical ones that people use "he/she", "one", or "they".

[rivka]

In this particular case, the plumber (actually another job-specific noun) is a specific person known to be female.

[Jonathon]

Huh. But "a plumber" is indefinite, which normally means that it's talking about a hypothetical or general case, not a specific person known to be female. As Wikipedia puts it, "An indefinite article indicates that its noun is not a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener."

[rivka]

But it's a common rhetorical device, no? Suppose it were in the following context:

Sue, you seem to have poured several bottle of Drano down this drain before even trying your plumber's snake. A plumber should really be more delicate when clearing clogged drains, especially when her tools are so fragile.