iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I've been writing these posts for over six years now, so I'd need to return to the archives to find you more... In the meantime, make sure you're watching/listening to Words Unravelled with @jesszafarris.com and @robwords.com!

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*S*ancte *I*ohannes says the history, although that bit breaks the ascending pattern of the overall hymn, so probably wasn't included in the original technique

Oh no, I'm late to the posting party 😥

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And why 'ut'? Why any of the syllables in 'do re mi'? In the case of 'ut', it's originally the Latin word meaning 'so that'. It came first in the hymn to John the Baptist 'Ut queant laxis', while the rest were the first syllables of each half-line – the technique of Guido of Arezzo in the C11th.

Modern arrangement of Ut queant laxis, from Wikimedia

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Giovanni Battista Doni - Wikipedia

Apparently thanks to this Florentine... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovann...

en.wikipedia.org

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That singing nun in Salzburg would've had a much harder time if 'ut' had not been replaced with a homophone for a female deer...

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Before people learned music with 'do re mi', the sequence once began with 'ut' as the lowest note. The absolute lowest note recognised in medieval music was 'Γ ut', with the Greek letter gamma, and 'Γ ut' came to refer to the full range of possible notes. This is behind the phrase 'run the gamut'.

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No one on God's green earth should or does want mathematical thoughts from me

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There lurk the weird letters, but weird in a good way. Thank you!

Adrian Clark @mradrianclark.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

I'm reading this at the moment, and it's fascinating. Highly recommended (assuming nothing goes horribly wrong between R and Z...)

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Thank you, David! Your support isn't forgotten!

Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

Exciting new finds on the English immigrants living in early 10th-c. Rome.

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Recollections from an Author’s First Year Though it pains me somewhat to acknowledge the fact, my début book, Why Q Needs U, was released into the wild one year ago. I’m certainly keen to celebrate…

Stuck a candle in a muffin to celebrate the first birthday of the most emotionally loaded object in my life. This mixture of memories, reflections and a message for new authors rightly ends with thanks for the innumerable people who've supported WQNU. dannybate.com/2026/10/01/w...

dannybate.com

‘Why Q Needs U’ Turns 1!

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

On National Poetry Day, the greatest poem I have ever read

A printed poem which reads:

I hav for breakfast Weetabix

I hav for lunch some meat

I have for tea 2 sosajis and thats enuf to eat

Peter Hazel, 5

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

James @feelieking.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

@susiedentwords.bsky.social @jesszafarris.com @robwords.com @dannybate.com As I know you all love an eggcorn, I became aware today that some people refer to a really deluxe product as having "all the Belgian whistles"

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Fabulous fragment of an ancient Egyptian wall relief with three bears and an oil jar. The paint has survived some 4,500 years! Limestone relief from the Pyramid Temple of Sahure, Old Kingdom, 5th Dynasty, c. 2496-2483 BC. Neues Museum, Berlin 📷 by me #ReliefWednesday #Archaeology

My photo shows a circa 4,500-year-old limestone relief with some well-preserved paint in places, from the funerary temple of Sahure at Abusir, measuring 39 × 35 × 8.5 cm. It shows three bears (partial view only) and a tall one-handled pottery vessel, across two registers. The upper register at left, shows the two leds and hindquarters of a bear, and at right, a bear’s lowered head, chest, and foreleg, painted mid-brown. The lower register at left shows a tall, dark-reddish-brown pottery vessel with a long neck and single handle, and at right, the lowered head, neck, shoulder, and top of foreleg of a dark-brown bear. The bears wear collars tethered by ropes to looped fixtures in the ground. The fragment comes from a wall scene depicting tributes from the Levant. Bears were not native to Egypt. The bears represented are Syrian brown bears (Ursus arctos syriacus), which were quite common in Levantine mountain regions in antiquity. They were kept as exotic animals in enclosures by Egyptian kings, and also hunted.

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

andrew phillips @herfst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Chameleon, from the Greek χαμαί ‘on the earth’ and λέων ‘lion’, was calqued from Akkadian nēš(u ša) qaqqari lit. ‘lion of the ground’, a figure attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh (line 314 ᴜʀ.ᴍᴀʜ šá qaq‐qa‐ri). The term is paralleled in lexical tablets from Ebla (ca. 2300 BCE) as na‐iš qar‐qá‐rí‐m.

Neo-Assyrian cuneiform clay tablet with a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh, heavily fragmented.

Line art of cuneiform tablet. The term ‘lion of the ground’ is highlighted.

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

Karthik @karmalli.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My favorite example is how old Slavic words for "world", derived from Proto Slavic světъ "light" influenced Romanian lume "world", a word clearly from Latin lūmen. It's the only major Romance language where "world" comes from "light", thanks to Slavophone Orthodox Christianity.

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Dr Danny Bate @dannybate.com · 29/09/2026

That's the stuff (svět/světlo where I am)

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

Linguistic Discovery @linguisticdiscovery.com · 27/09/2026

In some languages, the vowels in prefixes or suffixes have to be similar to the vowels of the root or stem, a phenomenon called *vowel harmony* 🎶

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Dr Danny Bate @dannybate.com · 29/09/2026

"A few European languages" is technically true, although this may only apply to Baltic and Slavic...

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Dr Danny Bate @dannybate.com · 29/09/2026

There are a few European languages in which the word for 'world' comes from words and roots to do with light – the world being the place lit by the sun. Lithuanian pasaulis 'world' is especially etymologically nice, as literally the under-sun (pa-saulė).

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Woah!! Slavic nasal vowels, Franks, Lotharingia – ticking all the right boxes

Very much so, love the strong Slovene link

It's never too early to geek out about West Slavic phonology

NeverFadingWood 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇵🇱🇪🇺 @avantgardening.pl · 28/09/2026

Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

This is a brilliant piece. Worth every minute of reading.

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

Word Family Friday @wordfamilyfriday.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"The disputed word at the heart of this byzantine maze" I see what you did there 😄 lab.aidanem.com/wordfamily/w...

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You can still hear me talking about Wenceslaus on Prague's central Wenceslas Square, which is extremely Wenceslaus-y of me, but not as much as seeing his skull today.

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And now, greetings from the basilica in Stará Boleslav, where they're queuing out the door to see the richly adorned skull of sainted Wencelaus, closely supervised by religious knights and castle guards. I tell you, the Czechs are so bad at the whole atheism thing.

Interior of a Baroque church with a high, white ceiling, with a queue of people heading towards a crypt

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Mikołaj Kirschke @mikolajkirschke.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Thanks for the thanks! I'm guessing that rând means 'row, order'?

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Reposted by Dr Danny Bate

Lovely post, as always. I would add one thing - although in Polish Wacław now has no nasality in it (possibly due to re-adoption from Czech), the nasal vowel has survived in some surnames derived from the given name: Węcławek, Węcławski, Więcławski etc. :)

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Every September 28th, thanks to a brutal fratricide over a thousand years ago, the Czech Republic gives itself a day off. The victim of that crime was Wenceslaus, ruler of Bohemia from 921 to maybe…

Greetings from the path from Prague to Stará Boleslav, where Czechs (and at least one Englishman) are gathering in honour of that "good king" from the carol. For the day that's in it, here's a new piece about why his name in English has an N, but not so in Czech. dannybate.com/2026/09/28/g...

dannybate.com

Good King Václav

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Thank you for reading and sharing so soon! ❤️