[Blog Post] Peter Bakker on the VMS

[-JKP-]

in most languages, for example, no word can end in -tr

Interestingly, in Russian there are words ending with "-tr". They are all borrowed and omit the "e" present in other languages. E.g. theatre, centre, sceptre and Burgermeister all end with "-tr" in Russian.

I didn't know this, Anton, but it is helpful information.


I was also thinking, as I was reading this part of Bakker's article, that letters with a tail (such as the ones that look like r, s, m, and g) very frequently represented abbreviations in medieval scribal conventions, which calls into question assumptions about word length and whether the tail might represent missing letters (like "e" or "er" or "ius"). Bakker didn't mention this possibility.