Language is a Great Mulch!

       I finished lecture #36, the final one in John McWhorter's "Great Course" The Story of Human Language on CD, my first real introduction to linguistics and a worthy one indeed.

       I'll share a couple little "food for thought" items as given in print form in the little book that accompanies and consolidates the fuller actual lectures:


       Ask traces back to an Old English word acsian, but despite how we feel about the pronunciation "aks" today, in Old English acsian was as common as ascian, casually written in formal documents.  As so often, our contemporary senses of what is "wrong" are abitrary--even literate English speakers once saw nothing amiss in the alternation between these words.

       About came from a case of the rebracketing that we saw create the word alone [originally "all one," time and use reduced it to "alone"].  At plus by plus out, pronounced together rapidly over time, became the single word about, just as God be with you became Goodbye.