Q&A

You asked and we answered. Many of you have questions for our resident language expert and so — for paid subscribers only — please enjoy our biweekly Q&A with Columbia University linguist and Lexicon Valley host John McWhorter. Please ask questions in the comments to help make we keep him well-stocked with wonderful queries, from grammar to etymology to really anything at all that strikes you as even tangentially related to language and how we use it.

The short answer is that it didn't.
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Also, are redundancies like "also ... too" more common nowadays?
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Plus: one, two, three ... but first, second, third. Are all languages weird like that?
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Also, the existential angst of THERE.
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Also, where did the suffix -ly come from?
Also, why do some people "open" and "close" the lights?
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Also, is there a relationship between Navajo and ... Hungarian?
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