OMG English language - Hearthstone

Shirastro

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I just had one of those mind-blowing moments i just had to share it with you.

First of all let me point out that English is not my first language and i just learned it in school plus music, movies, games...
I've played WoW on and off since vanilla and was familiar with the item "hearthstone" that you have in it. It is the most iconic and well known item cause it's the first one you get and you use it throughout the game.
Today we obviously have a different game borrowing the name from WoW named Hearthstone that i'm sure you are all aware of.

for the last 10+ years i was convinced that the item/game name was a constructed word from the word heart (as in blood pumping muscle) and stone.

It somehow made some weird sense in my mind since you use the item in WoW to go back to the inn you chose to be your "home", and i guess home is where your heart is......right?

Whenever i would search for Heartstone in Google i would always get the "did you mean Hearthstone" correction from it, and i would always wonder what did i write wrong, but kinda never really went too deep into it.

But suddenly i realized the the actual word is spelled Heart(h)stone. There is an "H" in between.
So i searched the word "Hearth" and to my astonishment found out that that's a completely different word and that this whole time, last 10+ years, i was wrong.

Hearth actually means the floor of a fireplace, which makes much more sense cause the Hearth-stone is a stone used to construct the floor of the fireplace.

I know this might seem obvious to many of you, if your first language is English, but am i the only one that thought that the actual name of the item/game it Heart-Stone?
 

Pseudonym

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I actually didn't know that either even though hearth sounds quite a lot like the dutch haard, which means something similar. (dutch is my first language) I do now understand why people have been pronouncing it so weirdly all the time. They weren't trying to pronounce heart, they were saying hearth. So thanks for sharing this bit of insight.

Speaking of lacking knowledge of English. I've been on holiday at some places where people clearly didn't grasp the english language at all. I've seen a billboard saying 'You have only one life, take it.' and I've seen 'free rooms,' and 'pork shops with smashed potatoes' being sold. So I don't feel too bad for not knowing an english word that refers to something most people don't even have anymore anyway.
 

SoreWristed

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I kind of figured it out since i heard someone pronounce it on his mike during a raid. I pronounced it heart-stone aswell in my head. Humblebrag, i knew the word hearth without looking it up (and english isn't my first language aswell)

But that aside, I can't play hearthstone anymore. I'm just waiting for them to use the Credit Card as a playable spell card and blizzard to own up that it's a pay to win.

* Credit card. You win, deduct $4.99 from your balance *

I mean c'mon, 4 legendary cards by a lvl 22 player?
 

Guffe

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Shirastro said:
I know this might seem obvious to many of you, if your first language is English, but am i the only one that thought that the actual name of the item/game it Heart-Stone?
o_O

Guess what OP... you just taught me something new today!
I woke up about 40 minutes ago and already I've learnt something new, two things in fact. One: The game is a heart and a stone combined, but that there's actually an "h" at the end of Hearth and 2: What the word actually means.

I've been a fan of Warcraft since Reign of Chaos and have played some WoW and some HS, but never made that connection :/

I salute you!
 

Twinrehz

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I have a theory about the phrase "home is where the heart is", that it's supposed to be hearth, not heart. Mostly just a theory, though. I could look it up, but I have serious cba-issues.
 

the doom cannon

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English is weird. For every rule we have, there are many more exceptions. The word bases are pulled from just about every single other language and then crafted to form something entirely different. At least it's not French tho, sorry to anyone who likes that godawful language.
 

Ironman126

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Apr 7, 2010
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Lol. Something in English that's obvious? I've been dealing with English all my life and I still run into new... nuances and nuisances. I have enough trouble with English as a native speaker, so I cannot imagine what it must be like for English to be a second language, even if your original language is something "similar" like Dutch or German. Or, gods, if your coming from an Asiatic or Slavic language. The horror!
 

Dimitriov

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May 24, 2010
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Well I certainly knew that myself, but I can see that it would be easy for a non-native speaker to mix that up.

For anyone who might be interested in the word itself:

hearth (n.) Old English heorĆ° "hearth, fire," in transferred use "house, home," from West Germanic *hertho "burning place" (cognates: Old Saxon and Old Frisian herth, Middle Dutch hert, Dutch haard, German Herd "floor, ground, fireplace"), from PIE *kerta-, from root *ker- "heat, fire"

So I guess any Dutch or German speakers can make that connection to the English word now, if not before.

And, on the topic of weird English words and connections, I'll just leave one more that relates to Warcraft:

gnome (n.) "dwarf-like earth-dwelling spirit," 1712, from French gnome, from Modern Latin gnomus, used 16c. in a treatise by Paracelsus, who gave the name pigmaei or gnomi to elemental earth beings, possibly from Greek *genomos "earth-dweller" (compare thalassonomos "inhabitant of the sea"). A less-likely suggestion is that Paracelsus based it on the homonym that means "intelligence" (preserved in gnomic). Popular in children's literature 19c. as a name for red-capped German and Swiss folklore dwarfs. Garden figurines first imported to England late 1860s from Germany.

So the name, Gnome, can be both "earth-dweller" and knowledgeable. Works well for the race in Warcraft. Also, the 'k' in knowledge used to be pronounced in English so you can perhaps see that it is related to the Greek derived word, gnomic, with its hard 'g'.

And yes, I know I am a pedant, but I love English and etymology.
 

Sewa_Yunga

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Nov 21, 2011
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Dimitriov said:
gnome (n.) "dwarf-like earth-dwelling spirit," 1712, from French gnome, from Modern Latin gnomus, used 16c. in a treatise by Paracelsus, who gave the name pigmaei or gnomi to elemental earth beings, possibly from Greek *genomos "earth-dweller" (compare thalassonomos "inhabitant of the sea"). A less-likely suggestion is that Paracelsus based it on the homonym that means "intelligence" (preserved in gnomic). Popular in children's literature 19c. as a name for red-capped German and Swiss folklore dwarfs. Garden figurines first imported to England late 1860s from Germany.

So the name, Gnome, can be both "earth-dweller" and knowledgeable. Works well for the race in Warcraft. Also, the 'k' in knowledge used to be pronounced in English so you can perhaps see that it is related to the Greek derived word, gnomic, with its hard 'g'.
Hey thanks, now I remember why I gave my gnome warrior a greek name! I was recently beginning to wonder how I made that connection all those years ago.
 

leberkaese

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May 16, 2014
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I didn't realize that either for a long time.

In German, the stone is called "Ruhestein" (no, not Rammstein) - roughly translated, it means stone of rest. That makes sense, because you're teleporting somewhere, where you can rest. I knew, that this thing was called hearthstone in Englisch, but I always thought it would be translated into something like rest.
 

sanquin

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Figured that out after playing for a year or two, though I've known for quite a few years now. It was indeed a slight moment of revelation for me too back then.
 

Fappy

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I don't think I ever actually knew what Hearth meant until the Heathfire DLC for Skyrim came out. I always knew Hearthstone was spelled and pronounced that way, but I didn't know what it meant.

On a similar note, Super Mario RPG is my favorite game of all time (beat it like 12 times since 1996) and it wasn't until a couple years ago that I realized the main villain's name is "Smithy" because... well... he's a blacksmith... >.>
 

sextus the crazy

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The more I think about English the less sense it makes. I was thinking about the word fortune the other day and then realized that it's pronounced "for-chin" and then thought about how weird the language is. For those of you learning English as a second language, just think of English as a language that sometimes will take the spelling and pronunciation rules from German, French, Latin, Greek, etc. and you'll be fine. /semi-sarcasm
 

JoJo

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sextus the crazy said:
The more I think about English the less sense it makes. I was thinking about the word fortune the other day and then realized that it's pronounced "for-chin" and then thought about how weird the language is. For those of you learning English as a second language, just think of English as a language that sometimes will take the spelling and pronunciation rules from German, French, Latin, Greek, etc. and you'll be fine. /semi-sarcasm
Add to that dialect differences, only last week a native English speaker on this site got confused because I used a British term in a sentence, "a fair few" to mean "many". Funnily enough that applies to the example you gave pronunciation-wise, in British English fortune is pronounced closer to it's spelling as "for-chune". Not sure how you guys got from 'une' to 'in' :p
 

Godhead

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SoreWristed said:
I kind of figured it out since i heard someone pronounce it on his mike during a raid. I pronounced it heart-stone aswell in my head. Humblebrag, i knew the word hearth without looking it up (and english isn't my first language aswell)

But that aside, I can't play hearthstone anymore. I'm just waiting for them to use the Credit Card as a playable spell card and blizzard to own up that it's a pay to win.

* Credit card. You win, deduct $4.99 from your balance *

I mean c'mon, 4 legendary cards by a lvl 22 player?
Hearthsone isn't actually pay2win as long as you're good enough to average 7 wins in arena. Doing that will ensure that you get at least your 150 gold back, along with a pack and another potential goodie. Plus, you could always play zoo.
 

DementedSheep

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To be fair hearth is hardly an everyday word. A lot of English as a first language people probably don't know what it means either. I don't where I picked up the word from, probably a fantasy book.
 

sextus the crazy

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JoJo said:
sextus the crazy said:
The more I think about English the less sense it makes. I was thinking about the word fortune the other day and then realized that it's pronounced "for-chin" and then thought about how weird the language is. For those of you learning English as a second language, just think of English as a language that sometimes will take the spelling and pronunciation rules from German, French, Latin, Greek, etc. and you'll be fine. /semi-sarcasm
Add to that dialect differences, only last week a native English speaker on this site got confused because I used a British term in a sentence, "a fair few" to mean "many". Funnily enough that applies to the example you gave pronunciation-wise, in British English fortune is pronounced closer to it's spelling as "for-chune". Not sure how you guys got from 'une' to 'in' :p
It might be a regional accent thing. There are a shitload of Accents in America due to the size of the country and displacement of the population. What I say might sound totally alien to someone from the Deep south or the rockies, for example.