Comments | nakednatalie: I challenge thee!

nakednatalie

I challenge thee!

Jan 26, 2007 00:37

Ok all you self-styled etymologists out there!

How the hell did the contraction of "will not" become "won't" anyway?

No googling the answer! I could do that myself!

public, lj, fun

Comments 13

saintgeorge January 26 2007, 06:52:27 UTC

All I can tell you is that English is a weird, totally illogical language with rules, and so many execeptions to the rule, that there might as well be no rules at all.

Why is "won't" the contraction of "will not" when logically it should be "willn't"? I don't know. I think it is one of those quirky things that was adopted from somewhere else and fell into common usage.

So what is the explanation?

nakednatalie January 27 2007, 16:14:07 UTC

Which makes one wonder why It's become the international language as opposed to something simpler.

ihave_themoon January 26 2007, 12:09:26 UTC

because willn't just sounds silly! :-p

nakednatalie January 27 2007, 16:11:13 UTC

Hee

(The comment has been removed)

bernmarx January 26 2007, 14:22:57 UTC

Lb. is different, though. "Pound" is an entirely different word ("lb." is short for "libra," the Latin; cf. lira, the erstwhile Italian monetary unit) ("pound" is the German, pre-French word; cf. German Pfund).

(The comment has been removed)

bernmarx January 26 2007, 14:37:35 UTC

Hey, the French haven't won a significant battle since 1066 (well, except the ones against themselves), give 'em some slack. ;)

Thread 5

dstasinski January 26 2007, 13:46:42 UTC

Take a handful of plain old marbles. Wash thoroughly and place in mouth. Try to say "will not". That is my best first guess at the origin of "won't".

It works for cows too. Mooooooof is the sound of a cow chewing marbles.

nakednatalie January 26 2007, 16:37:42 UTC

haha. There's this show called something like Craziest Gameshow Moments and they had this one part like this: Two girls. The first one says the name of a band and the other repeats it. Easy, right? But after each band name, the first girl puts one of those giant marshmallows in her mouth, so that by the end of it, she's basically saying, "Fuffffffff Fuuuuuuufff!

My educated guess bernmarx January 26 2007, 14:33:06 UTC

Despite what another poster has said, English is very much logical and rules-based; the rules just aren't necessarily clear to the casual observer ( ... )

Re: My educated guess nakednatalie January 26 2007, 16:45:13 UTC

Cool. I had a feeling if you were still reading, you'd have an explanation. :o)

Re: My educated guess bernmarx January 26 2007, 17:17:46 UTC

Heh. :) I just like using my Bullwinkle icon.

Re: My educated guess bernmarx January 26 2007, 17:36:02 UTC

Incidentally, it occurs to me that the i/o alteration in this case might be pretty old, since German also observes it. The infinitive "wollen" ("to want") is "will" in the first person ("Ich will" = "I want").

This is independent from the Great Vowel Shift that students of linguistics and of Western European languages might hear about, where English up and moved the so-called front long vowels (a, e, i), which is why German and Spanish (and to a lesser degree, French) spell their vowels consistently one way and we spell them fairly consistently a different way. (For example, German "katz" ["cat"] sounds like "cots"; French "bête" ["beast"] is "bet," not "beet"; Spanish "micro" ["micro"] is pronounced "MEE-cro.")

(Oh no, you've dropped a quarter in my slot!)