Some Things I learned Today...

I tend to forget things easily or talk off the ear of someone when I learn something new, so I am just going to record interesting bits of information I collect during the day (it will probably often involve things about languages):

1) Tamil is a Dravidian Language, and we borrowed the word "curry" from Tamil into English.

2) Book in Hindi is "kitab," just as it is in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Swahili (except in Swahili it's "kitabu").

3) The name Farsi is derived from the Arabic pronunciation of the original name "Parsa." This probably occurred because /p/ does not exist as a separate phoneme in Arabic, but /f/ does and the two sounds aren't so different.

4) Somali is part of the Cushitic language family.

5) The name "Amish" is derived from the name of a man named Jakob Amman. He was the leader in a separatist movement within the Anabaptist Church, which claimed that the church was becoming too secular.

Okay, I need to sleep now! Good night!