Fascinating. N and nn are also the negatives in Ancient Egyptian (Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphic) in which they negate the following sentence, akin to writing "it is not the case that”…
Thank you for sharing that! One of my big regrets is that I didn’t make it beyond the first two weeks of a Middle Egyptian class due to course scheduling back in university.
Very interesting. And I had always just assumed that "none" was merely a smashed together "no one".
In modern Swedish the word for "no" is nej (pronounced like hay, with an n on it), obviously similar to no in modern English. But the word for "not" is inte (an older/poetic form is icke), and for "none" it is ingen/inget (ending is noun gender dependent), used as the negating prefix in many compound words, eg. ingenting/nothing, ingenstans/nowhere, ingendera/neither, etc. In contrast to the English examples, the Swedish words for "something/somewhere" start with an "n": någonting/någonstans, whereas "someone/somebody" is just plain någon.
So much for a universal n negation. The other Scandinavian languages are very similar to Swedish in all this (Finnish is not, of course).
The Scandinavian case is super interesting!! Apparently the way the vowel-initial negative forms like ingen, icke, etc. came about was from suffixing, rather than prefixing, the form meaning no. So Old Norse has the negator eigi or engi/ekki, which is the same ‘ever’ word that gives Old English ā (for eigi) or the word einn ‘one’ (for the others) + a negative suffix -gi. The -gi is super interesting too: originally, it was a negative suffix *-gin, ending in an n… finally the n shows up! Funnily enough, this *-gin consists the same elements as Latin neque ‘not + and’, just in the opposite order.
I'm sure inte/ikke must have its own convoluted story too. And then there's "ej", another weird Scandinavian negation word, also without an "n".
I just asked Gemini for their history (if it can be trusted), and apparently it's "eigi" > "ikke" > "inte", where "eigi" is based on "ej", and can be traced to something like "aiwi", a direct ancestor of "ever", with the same meaning. The negative sense used to be provided by a separate "ne", with "ei" as an intensifier to make "not ever", but it eventually absorbed the negative meaning, and the "ne" fell through.
The same thing happened in French with "ne ... pas"; "pas" originally meant something like "one bit", as in "not one bit", but eventually took over the main negative meaning, and the "ne" is no longer there, at least in the spoken language.
Thorough work, quite right. After reading your reply I got curious and started searching Swedish etymologies (tell your children not to do this kind of stuff!). Some of these words are relatively old - icke/ikke, recognizable forms known from rune inscriptions from the 800's; ingen, recognizable forms known from rune stones from 1000's; nej, ej, inte, found in documents from the 1200's.
Not exactly ancient, but that such still exists from societies only slightly literate is noteworthy. And these languages are immediately related to English.
ikke sounds like a shortening of "nicht" in modern German, which means "not." It's fun to imagine that the "ikke" sound is so distinctive and is almost a phonaestheme (that word from the beginning of the essay, where the word sounds like what it means). In American English, you say "ick" when you have to interact with something unpleasant.
So smashing it all together "do not eat the berries" could be said, "do-ick eat the berries."
In Yorkshire and the northeast of the UK, people still say "Nay" to mean no, for obvious historical reasons, although I understand this is becoming rarer now.
Right! For anyone wondering about those historical reasons, it’s due to the Scandinavian influence. Nay is equivalent to ‘no’ in coming from ‘not + ever’, it just comes from the Old Norse version of ‘ever’ rather than the Old English version.
It is related but indirectly! Aye ‘ever’ (pronounced to rhyme with ‘say’) comes from the Old Norse version of that same word ā ‘ever.’ The interjection aye (rhyming with ‘sigh’) may also come from the same source, but the difference in pronunciation is unexpected if that is the origin.
In the church I attend, we often sing the hymn "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation," which has quite a beautiful melody. The phrase "gladly for aye we adore Him" occurs in one of its verses, and, sad to say, people who have led the singing over the years, along with an apparent majority of the congregation, tend to pronounce "aye" in the hymn exactly as they would the letter I rather than the (correct) letter A. Several times over the years I've sent emails to the congregation explaining that there are two different words "aye" that are pronounced differently and have different meanings, yet are spelled the same. (I'm reasonably sure that many of them have watched so many episodes of Star Dreck—er, *Trek*—that they have the affirmation "aye, aye, captain" echoing in their ears, and aren't dictionary-familiar enough to recognize that in the context "aye"—pronounced like A—is an adverb meaning "forever," rather than an interjection, pronounced I, indicating affirmation.) Harumph. A Grammar Nazi's work is never done.
I recently started making my way through Osweald Bera, and was surprised to see a lot of use of the double negative. It really got me wondering when, how and why it dropped put of the language. It's quite acceptable in French (Piaf's "Non, je ne regette rien") and Spanish. Modern German doesn't seem to use it either.
I am looking forward to your future discussion about the double negative.
What happened to the double negative is a really interesting story! And the case of French (and how it differs from Latin) is crucial to understanding it. It’s on my “to-write” list.
> and, for reasons that are still unclear, the resulting word none eventually acquired the strange pronunciation that it has today.
I wonder if it was nɔːn > noːn > nʊn > nʌn? Given the frequency (and likely low stress?) that it had, it'd probably be subject to irregular shortening and by then the closest phoneme to [o] would be /ʊ/?
I think that’s exactly what it must have been. Here’s what the OED says:
“The usual modern English pronunciation apparently arises from shortening of the reflex of Middle English close ō, itself resulting from raising of Middle English open ō; compare English regional (midlands) pronunciation with /ɒ/ , developed more directly from Middle English open ō (see E. J. Dobson Eng. Pronunc. 1500–1700 (ed. 2, 1968) II. §§36–37).”
Of course, ‘one’ also had a strange development, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so shocked at irregular development of ‘none'.
I'd struggle to see how 'no one' could become one word. Have one o, and you get 'none', which already exists as a word and is used in the same context. With two o, it would be spelled 'noone', but the pronunciation would presumably be the same as for 'noon'.
Of course you could have two words with the same pronunciation, but it probably doesn't help in its adoption.
What about the Scots 'nae'? Is that simply a question of pronunciation or a different evolution?
I was wondering, on account of you mentioning the difficulty of distinguishing between 'can' and 'can't', which is a question of pronunciation - with an English accent, the pronunciation of "can't' is very distinct from "can'. In American, they are indeed quite similar.
German has many words of negation that begin with N also, e.g., nicht, nie, niemals, niemand, nimmermehr, nirgend, nirgendwo, etc.
BTW, in the sentence "This use of none before vowels hearkens [sic] back to the late Middle Ages" don't you mean "harks back" to the Middle Ages? (To hearken is to listen; to hark back is to refer to an earlier event.)
Right you are, although the long vowel in that Latin nē is a bit unexpected. But hardly unexplainable, given that a weak word like that in an emphatic context might be said longer.
Not the only suspicious coincidence between English and Japanese (name vs namae ‘name’ comes to mind!), but with enough words in a language you’re bound to have some chance resemblances here or there.
This was so counterintuitive to me when I started learning Ancient Greek, which has the same word for yes: ναί (naí). This actually parallels something found in Latin, a word nē ‘truly!’. Both come from a Proto-Indo-European word reconstructed as *h₁énos, which meant ‘that one!’. There, the -n- comes from an ending used to form adjectives. Interestingly, it’s the same ending that comes down into English as the past participle ending -en (as in broken, stolen, etc.).
The nān (for no-one) and the ne (for not), remind me of the Scottish dialect my grandparents in law used, as in: “nān ken do it.” No one can do it, or “I ke-ne do it.” I cannot do it.
Fascinating. N and nn are also the negatives in Ancient Egyptian (Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphic) in which they negate the following sentence, akin to writing "it is not the case that”…
Thank you for sharing that! One of my big regrets is that I didn’t make it beyond the first two weeks of a Middle Egyptian class due to course scheduling back in university.
Very interesting. And I had always just assumed that "none" was merely a smashed together "no one".
In modern Swedish the word for "no" is nej (pronounced like hay, with an n on it), obviously similar to no in modern English. But the word for "not" is inte (an older/poetic form is icke), and for "none" it is ingen/inget (ending is noun gender dependent), used as the negating prefix in many compound words, eg. ingenting/nothing, ingenstans/nowhere, ingendera/neither, etc. In contrast to the English examples, the Swedish words for "something/somewhere" start with an "n": någonting/någonstans, whereas "someone/somebody" is just plain någon.
So much for a universal n negation. The other Scandinavian languages are very similar to Swedish in all this (Finnish is not, of course).
The Scandinavian case is super interesting!! Apparently the way the vowel-initial negative forms like ingen, icke, etc. came about was from suffixing, rather than prefixing, the form meaning no. So Old Norse has the negator eigi or engi/ekki, which is the same ‘ever’ word that gives Old English ā (for eigi) or the word einn ‘one’ (for the others) + a negative suffix -gi. The -gi is super interesting too: originally, it was a negative suffix *-gin, ending in an n… finally the n shows up! Funnily enough, this *-gin consists the same elements as Latin neque ‘not + and’, just in the opposite order.
I'm sure inte/ikke must have its own convoluted story too. And then there's "ej", another weird Scandinavian negation word, also without an "n".
I just asked Gemini for their history (if it can be trusted), and apparently it's "eigi" > "ikke" > "inte", where "eigi" is based on "ej", and can be traced to something like "aiwi", a direct ancestor of "ever", with the same meaning. The negative sense used to be provided by a separate "ne", with "ei" as an intensifier to make "not ever", but it eventually absorbed the negative meaning, and the "ne" fell through.
The same thing happened in French with "ne ... pas"; "pas" originally meant something like "one bit", as in "not one bit", but eventually took over the main negative meaning, and the "ne" is no longer there, at least in the spoken language.
Thorough work, quite right. After reading your reply I got curious and started searching Swedish etymologies (tell your children not to do this kind of stuff!). Some of these words are relatively old - icke/ikke, recognizable forms known from rune inscriptions from the 800's; ingen, recognizable forms known from rune stones from 1000's; nej, ej, inte, found in documents from the 1200's.
Not exactly ancient, but that such still exists from societies only slightly literate is noteworthy. And these languages are immediately related to English.
ikke sounds like a shortening of "nicht" in modern German, which means "not." It's fun to imagine that the "ikke" sound is so distinctive and is almost a phonaestheme (that word from the beginning of the essay, where the word sounds like what it means). In American English, you say "ick" when you have to interact with something unpleasant.
So smashing it all together "do not eat the berries" could be said, "do-ick eat the berries."
In Yorkshire and the northeast of the UK, people still say "Nay" to mean no, for obvious historical reasons, although I understand this is becoming rarer now.
Right! For anyone wondering about those historical reasons, it’s due to the Scandinavian influence. Nay is equivalent to ‘no’ in coming from ‘not + ever’, it just comes from the Old Norse version of ‘ever’ rather than the Old English version.
No, nay, never, no, nay, never no more. Or maybe it is nomore, and I just never noticed! Never mind, said the Raven! :-))
Have you by any chance been a wild rover for many a year?
Gea!
"The word ā doesn’t survive into Modern English, dropping out by around 1600."
Does it bear no connection to "aye"?
It is related but indirectly! Aye ‘ever’ (pronounced to rhyme with ‘say’) comes from the Old Norse version of that same word ā ‘ever.’ The interjection aye (rhyming with ‘sigh’) may also come from the same source, but the difference in pronunciation is unexpected if that is the origin.
In the church I attend, we often sing the hymn "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation," which has quite a beautiful melody. The phrase "gladly for aye we adore Him" occurs in one of its verses, and, sad to say, people who have led the singing over the years, along with an apparent majority of the congregation, tend to pronounce "aye" in the hymn exactly as they would the letter I rather than the (correct) letter A. Several times over the years I've sent emails to the congregation explaining that there are two different words "aye" that are pronounced differently and have different meanings, yet are spelled the same. (I'm reasonably sure that many of them have watched so many episodes of Star Dreck—er, *Trek*—that they have the affirmation "aye, aye, captain" echoing in their ears, and aren't dictionary-familiar enough to recognize that in the context "aye"—pronounced like A—is an adverb meaning "forever," rather than an interjection, pronounced I, indicating affirmation.) Harumph. A Grammar Nazi's work is never done.
this was so interesting....
Thank you!
I recently started making my way through Osweald Bera, and was surprised to see a lot of use of the double negative. It really got me wondering when, how and why it dropped put of the language. It's quite acceptable in French (Piaf's "Non, je ne regette rien") and Spanish. Modern German doesn't seem to use it either.
I am looking forward to your future discussion about the double negative.
What happened to the double negative is a really interesting story! And the case of French (and how it differs from Latin) is crucial to understanding it. It’s on my “to-write” list.
> and, for reasons that are still unclear, the resulting word none eventually acquired the strange pronunciation that it has today.
I wonder if it was nɔːn > noːn > nʊn > nʌn? Given the frequency (and likely low stress?) that it had, it'd probably be subject to irregular shortening and by then the closest phoneme to [o] would be /ʊ/?
I think that’s exactly what it must have been. Here’s what the OED says:
“The usual modern English pronunciation apparently arises from shortening of the reflex of Middle English close ō, itself resulting from raising of Middle English open ō; compare English regional (midlands) pronunciation with /ɒ/ , developed more directly from Middle English open ō (see E. J. Dobson Eng. Pronunc. 1500–1700 (ed. 2, 1968) II. §§36–37).”
Of course, ‘one’ also had a strange development, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so shocked at irregular development of ‘none'.
I am totally wondering about the ne . . . pas, so I'm excited about that footnote.
I'd struggle to see how 'no one' could become one word. Have one o, and you get 'none', which already exists as a word and is used in the same context. With two o, it would be spelled 'noone', but the pronunciation would presumably be the same as for 'noon'.
Of course you could have two words with the same pronunciation, but it probably doesn't help in its adoption.
Absolutely fascinating as usual, thank you.
What about the Scots 'nae'? Is that simply a question of pronunciation or a different evolution?
I was wondering, on account of you mentioning the difficulty of distinguishing between 'can' and 'can't', which is a question of pronunciation - with an English accent, the pronunciation of "can't' is very distinct from "can'. In American, they are indeed quite similar.
Interesting, thanks.
A suggestion for a future piece: the prefix “a”: akin, awash, afire, aloud, adrift, afloat, ashore, … away (?)
It seems replaceable by “on” or similar preposition. Where did this come from?
Love your explanations! Thank you.
German has many words of negation that begin with N also, e.g., nicht, nie, niemals, niemand, nimmermehr, nirgend, nirgendwo, etc.
BTW, in the sentence "This use of none before vowels hearkens [sic] back to the late Middle Ages" don't you mean "harks back" to the Middle Ages? (To hearken is to listen; to hark back is to refer to an earlier event.)
*ne is perhaps most clearly present in Latin as nē, which expresses negation in a few senses (e.g. nē sīs admīrātus, do not be surprised).
Right you are, although the long vowel in that Latin nē is a bit unexpected. But hardly unexplainable, given that a weak word like that in an emphatic context might be said longer.
One of the negatory words in Japanese is "Nai", though it's far from the only way and the others all sound totally different
Not the only suspicious coincidence between English and Japanese (name vs namae ‘name’ comes to mind!), but with enough words in a language you’re bound to have some chance resemblances here or there.
Now I wonder even harder - how did the word for yes in modern Greek come to be nai?
This was so counterintuitive to me when I started learning Ancient Greek, which has the same word for yes: ναί (naí). This actually parallels something found in Latin, a word nē ‘truly!’. Both come from a Proto-Indo-European word reconstructed as *h₁énos, which meant ‘that one!’. There, the -n- comes from an ending used to form adjectives. Interestingly, it’s the same ending that comes down into English as the past participle ending -en (as in broken, stolen, etc.).
Thank you Colin - years of forlorn wondering have now been been sated!!😎
Looking forward to more etymological deep dives.
The nān (for no-one) and the ne (for not), remind me of the Scottish dialect my grandparents in law used, as in: “nān ken do it.” No one can do it, or “I ke-ne do it.” I cannot do it.
Or as I’ve heard it said about Glasgow tenements: It’s like living in Disneyland. Disnae hae heating, disnae hae water…