Fabula rasa

by Rafaël Newman The initial syllable of the English word “island”—or rather, just its very first vowel—is descended from the Proto-Germanic *awjo, meaning “an area on the water.” The element “land” was subsequently added to differentiate the word from other inflections of the Proto-Indo-European root for water, *akwa-. Our “island” is thus cognate with its…

Uncannada

by Rafaël Newman I’ve been visiting Ontario this month. Which is a wildly non-specific thing to say, since the province of Ontario, though only the second largest of Canada’s constituent divisions, boasts a surface area greater than those of Germany and Ukraine combined. But while I would normally designate as my destination the city in…