Grimmigirl here, I'm Minyon Fagrity and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language, writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, to celebrate the launch of the final season of the TV show Game of Thrones, I have

a meaty middle about all the fun and unusual languages that were created for the show,

and a kitchen table lingo story at the end.

But first, I have two corrections.

A couple of people pointed out that in the recent episode about the schwa, I mispronounced

the Hebrew word that's the origin of the word schwa.

I pronounced it as shiva, but that is the Hebrew word for the number seven, and is also

used to describe the first period of mourning after the death of a close relative, which

lasts seven days, hence the name.

You may have heard it in the phrase, sitting shiva.

The word that gives us schwa is spelled shva, and is properly pronounced shva.

Shva.

A listener named Bruce Eckermann describes it as meaning nothingness, or something of

no value, so it's a nothing vowel.

Thank you to Bruce and also to Katie who wrote in with her advice, which was also very

helpful.

And also in that show, I apparently misspoke calling phonics phonetics, and they are

two different things.

Neil Whitman caught that one and wrote that phonetics is the hardcore linguistic stuff

about vocal anatomy and acoustic measurements.

...