
Hunting for fossils in the quirks of language - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/07/21/hunting-for-fossils-in-the-quirks-of-language
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dzdt
I would have liked to see more discussion about example old fossils of
language.

~~~
eesmith
For a bit more on how three different verbs turned into various conjugations
of "to be" \-
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#Etymology](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#Etymology)

For another intriguing hypothesis about some uses of "to do" see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-
support#Origins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-support#Origins) :

> This feature is rare or non-existent in other Germanic languages but common
> in Celtic ones like Welsh and Cornish. "Do" is also more common in Celtic
> Englishes than Standard English.[7] For this reason there is a hypothesis
> that English acquired do-support due to the influence of Celtic speakers on
> the spoken language.[8]

For additional examples that are more recent,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnomer#Older_name_retained](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnomer#Older_name_retained)

We have plenty of these in software. Eg, a "terminal"/"tty" comes from
"teletype terminal", "core dump" comes from when main memory was stored in
magnetic cores.

