Author: Tord Lindberg

Top 25 English Verbs

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, these are the 25 most commonly used verbs in English: 1. be, 2. have, 3. do, 4. say, 5. get, 6. make, 7. go, 8. know, 9. take, 10. see, 11. come, 12. think, 13. look, 14. want, 15. give, 16. use, 17. find, 18. tell, 19. ask, 20. work, 21. seem, 22. feel, 23. try, 24. leave, 25. call.

All these verbs are one-syllable words; the first two-syllable verbs are become (26th) and include (27th).
Furthermore, 20 of these 25 are Old English words, and three more, get, seem, and want, entered English from Old Norse in the early medieval period. Only try and use came from Old French.

It seems that English prefers terse, ancient words to describe actions or occurrences.

Italic Peoples 500BC

The Italics were all the peoples who spoke an idiom belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages and had settled in the Italian peninsula.

As seen on the map, the Italic tribes and Italic languages were spoken on a very small area in the beginning. One of the languages, though, was Latin. The Roman conquests eventually spread it throughout the peninsula and beyond in the Roman Empire. The evolved dialects of Latin gave birth to the Romance languages; French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc. that are nowadays spoken allover the world.

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Sigynni, the Tribe I Never Knew About

The Sigynnae (Sigynni) were an obscure people of antiquity. They are variously located by ancient authors. Sigynnae — as mentioned by Herodotus — were “a people widely spread in the Danubic basin in the 5th century BC”.

The Sigynni were likely to be Iranian (Indo-Aryan) people.

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Illyrians Still on the Map

The Illyrians were a group of Indo-European tribes, who once inhabited western Balkans.

Starting from the 2nd century AD the Illyrians were gradually wiped off from the map;  and The Illyrians were mentioned for the last time in the 7th century. With the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Gothic and Hunnic tribes raided the Balkan peninsula, forcing many Illyrians to seek refuge in the highlands. With the arrival of the Slavs in the 6th century, most Illyrians were Slavicized.

Follow the link to see where the Illyrians once lived.

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The Ancient Greeks on the Map

Around 600BC Ancient Greek dialects were spoken not only in today’s Greece but also all around the shores of the Black Sea. Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD.

The language was spoken on other locations, too. Follow the link to see where.

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  • Greek tribes on the map 600BC. Be sure to switch the map base layer to ‘political boundaries’ so that you will see the Greek areas shown in light gray.

 

Germanic Tribes Allover

Today Germanic languages are spoken allover the world, mainly because the English language belongs to Germanic languages. In Europe, however, Germanic languages are spoken in Central and Northern Europe only.

But around AD 400 the Germanic tribes were on the move allover Europe, as can be seen in the map behind the link below.

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Celtic Languages in Ancient Europe

Celtic languages are those ancients with long history. They are nowadays spoken principally in Wales and on the countryside in Western Ireland.

Not so long ago (~ 2600 years ago) Celtic languages were spoken on a vast area of Central Europe, however. Follow the link to see where.

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Got vs. Gotten

For some verbs Verbix displays “(U)” in the conjugation table of an English verb. This means that the verb form is used in the United States in particular.

On of these verbs is ‘to get‘ (see the conjugation).

While the British would say ‘I have got’, the North-American would say ‘I have gotten’. But the form ‘gotten’ is not used when it means ‘to have’. So ‘I’ve gotten the answer’ is always wrong in the U.S., too.

So when the British would say: ‘I’ve got a new boat’, ‘I’ve got interested’, ‘I’ve got off the chair’, the U.S. person would say:

  • I’ve gotten a new boat. (= obtain)
  • I’ve gotten interested. (= become)
  • I’ve gotten off the chair. (= moved)

 

Anatolian Languages 1500 BC

The most ancient Indo-European texts were written in Anatolian languages in the 18th century BC. This branch of the Indo-European family spread over the territory of modern Turkey and northern Syria.

The Anatolian languages were spoken 3½ millenia ago, and the following link show some migrations of the tribes.

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