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Oh. . . ONE more vaguely interesting thing to write about before sleeping. . .
This morning, as I was driving Lis to work, we were talking about the word "fish." I mentioned that I was surprised that there wasn't anything in English like "fisk" from the same root, except maybe a surname. (In Old English "sc" is pronounced as "sh" is in Modern English, so there are lots of words in English which came down as both "sh" and "sk" variations -- "shirt" and "skirt", "dish" and "disk", a "skipper" is one who runs a "ship", stuff like that. Since "fisc" is "fish" in OE, I was surprised that there isn't a "fisk" word of which I was aware).
Lis mentioned that, because of the f<-->p shift, "fisc" and "pisc" were the same word, which is neat. I don't know WHY f and p change into each other -- or b and v change into each other -- but they do. You can see it really obviously in Hebrew, but it's common among other Indo-European langages, too.
This evening, Lis looked up some of those words in the OED, and we found that "fiscal" comes from a word for a rush basket. I don't know that it has anything to do with fish.
Lis mentioned that, because of the f<-->p shift, "fisc" and "pisc" were the same word, which is neat. I don't know WHY f and p change into each other -- or b and v change into each other -- but they do. You can see it really obviously in Hebrew, but it's common among other Indo-European langages, too.
This evening, Lis looked up some of those words in the OED, and we found that "fiscal" comes from a word for a rush basket. I don't know that it has anything to do with fish.
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