{"id":1120,"date":"2006-07-18T16:49:24","date_gmt":"2006-07-18T20:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cleek.lunarpages.com\/blogs\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2006-07-18T16:49:24","modified_gmt":"2006-07-18T20:49:24","slug":"wh-th-vs-the-amateur-linguist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=1120","title":{"rendered":"Wh Th vs. the amateur linguist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here's another little mental game I like to play. Take a look at this table:<\/p>\n<table border=1 cellpadding=5>\n<tr>\n<td>Suffix<\/td>\n<td>Wh-<\/td>\n<td>Th-<\/td>\n<td>Assumed meaning of suffix<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>-en<\/td>\n<td>Wh<b>en<\/b><\/td>\n<td>Th<b>en<\/b><\/td>\n<td>time<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>-o\/ou<\/td>\n<td>Wh<b>o<\/b><\/td>\n<td>Th<b>ou<\/b><\/td>\n<td>person<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>-ere<\/td>\n<td>Wh<b>ere<\/b><\/td>\n<td>Th<b>ere<\/b><\/td>\n<td>place<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>-ence<\/td>\n<td>Wh<b>ence<\/b><\/td>\n<td>Th<b>ence<\/b><\/td>\n<td>from a place<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>-at<\/td>\n<td>Wh<b>at<\/b><\/td>\n<td>Th<b>at<\/b><\/td>\n<td>a non-specific object<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>-ich\/is<\/td>\n<td>Wh<b>ich<\/b><\/td>\n<td>Th<b>is<\/b><\/td>\n<td>a more-specific object<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>It should be obvious that \"Wh-\" is a prefix that asks a question: \"when\" = \"what time?\", \"who\" = \"what person?\" (forgive the semi-recursive definition); and \"Th-\" is a prefix that points to an answer: \"there\" = \"that place\", \"then\" = \"that time\". So, the game is to find a pair of Wh-\/Th- words with a common suffix, and then figure out what the suffix meant in Old\/Middle English. And, of course, you don't want to use a dictionary to do this.<\/p>\n<p>So, are there any others? I've taken care of \"who\", \"what\", \"where\" and \"when\", but the other two big questions (\"why\" and \"how\") don't seem to have obvious \"th-\" complements. The \"th-\" answer to a \"how\" (\"in what manner\") question is never \"thow\", it's \"thus\". But, how do \"how\" and \"thus\" come together ? And what about \"why\" ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here's another little mental game I like to play. Take a look at this table: Suffix Wh- Th- Assumed meaning of suffix -en When Then time -o\/ou Who Thou person -ere Where There place -ence Whence Thence from a place -at What That a non-specific object -ich\/is Which This a more-specific object It should be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}