Yoïn van Spijk
@yvanspijk
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/'dʑowɪn/ • historical linguist & dialectologist • creator of infographics & videos • See my Tumblr for all of my content:
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Just because 2 words look alike and have a similar meaning doesn't mean they're etymologically related.
There has to be a common ancestor.
For example, 'much' looks like Spanish 'mucho', yet they stem from *mekilaz and 'multum' respectively.
Here are 12 pairs of false cognates:
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The Proto-Germanic word *gahlaibōn, "someone you share your bread with", was borrowed into Latin in a special way: its parts were translated individually.
The result was 'compāniō'. This became 'copain' and 'compagnon' in French and then 'companion' in English.
Here's more:
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Over the centuries, English lost many Germanic words.
A lot of these were replaced by borrowings from French, while German, Dutch and Frisian often preserved their Germanic cognates.
What would the lost English words look like if they still existed?
Here are twelve of them:
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Standard French has a two-part negation:
'Il NE vient PAS.'
However, colloquial French often drops 'ne', thereby returning to the Old French situation: a single negation.
The same thing happened in English and other languages.
It even has a name: Jespersen's Cycle. Here's more:
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The origin of 'cat' is unknown.
There are similar words in many related languages, such as French 'chat', Welsh 'cath', Polish 'kot', but also in unrelated languages, e.g. Arabic 'qiṭṭa' and Turkish 'kedi'.
However, none of these can be identified as the source.
Here's more:
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If you dissect the French adverb 'aujourd'hui' (today) etymologically, you get five Latin words: 'ad illud diurnum dē hodiē' (on the day of today).
Many more Romance adverbs and prepositions were formed by combining words.
Here are some that have an interesting history:
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How did English sound 1100 years ago?
Of course we'll never know for sure, but linguists have been able to reconstruct the pronunciation of Old English to quite an extent.
Here's me reading an excerpt from a 10th century riddle using the reconstructed pronunciation:
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Spanish 'de donde' means "from where".
1000 years ago, in Old Spanish, this would've meant "from from from where".
Old Spanish had 'onde' (from where), but it ended up in a cycle where it was twice reinforced by 'de':
onde > donde > de donde.
Click the infographic to read why:
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'Lord' stems from Proto-Germanic *hlaibawardaz: "bread guardian".
This compound consists of two words:
- *hlaibaz, the ancestor of 'loaf'.
- *wardaz, which meant "guardian" and became English 'ward'.
Hear how over the course of 2500 years, its four syllables turned into one:
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'To think' and 'thanks' are etymologically related.
The distant ancestor of 'thanks' meant "thought".
This meaning evolved into "benevolent thought", "grateful thought", and ultimately "gratitude".
My infographic shows the Germanic relatives of 'to think', 'thanks' and more:
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Many Latin words didn't survive in the Romance languages.
For example, 'fēlēs' (cat) was displaced by 'cattus', which became 'chat', 'gato' etc.
Using the laws of sound change, I worked out what 'fēlēs' and 8 other words would look like if they had survived.
Audio below! ⏬
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Spanish 'siesta' and 'sexta' (sixth) are doublets: they both stem from Latin 'sextam' (sixth).
'Siesta' was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into Spanish.
'Sexta' was borrowed from written Latin.
Here's no. 2 in my series: Spanish.
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Latin had six noun cases, but in all Romance languages except Romanian, nouns only have one singular form and one plural form left.
What happened?
This extra large infographic tells you in 10 steps how the Latin case system collapsed – and how the accusative emerged victorious:
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'Whore' and its Germanic cognates, such as German 'Hure', Dutch 'hoer' and Swedish 'hora', stem from the same root as Latin 'cārus' and its descendants, such as French 'cher' and Spanish 'caro', which mean "dear; expensive".
Their common root meant "desired; loved".
Here's more:
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Portuguese now has numbered day names (e.g. 'terça feira', "third weekday", for Tuesday).
These were introduced by St. Martinho of Braga as he wanted to get rid of the pagan Roman names.
The Old Portuguese names were:
lũes
martes
mércores
joves
vernes
And a corrected graphic:
The names of our weekdays have a long history.
The days were named after the sun, the moon and five Germanic gods.
This system had been adapted from Latin, where it was based on a Hellenistic Greek system, which in turn was based on a Babylonian system.
Here's the whole story:
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The word 'fish' doesn't share any of its sounds with Spanish 'pez' or French 'poisson', but all these words are etymologically related.
They stem from the Proto-Indo-European root *pisk-.
Here's a selection of Germanic and Romance descendants of this root:
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Many French words that now have a circumflex accent on a vowel, such as 'fête', used to have an [s] sound after the vowel.
Before the [s] disappeared, it became an [h].
The same thing is now happening in many varieties of Spanish.
What did and does that sound like?
Click here:
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English 'much' looks a lot like the Spanish word 'mucho', which means "much; a lot" too.
However, these two words are not etymologically related in any way.
Because of various sound changes, a Germanic word and a Latin word came to resemble one another.
See and listen how:
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Italian 'sì', Spanish 'sí' and many more Romance words for "yes" come from Latin 'sīc' (so, thus).
French 'oui' doesn't. It comes from Old French 'oïl', from 'o il', literally "yes, it (is/does/has etc.)".
'O' stemmed from Latin 'hoc' (this), which in Occitan became 'òc' (yes):
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The word 'world' is an old compound that used to mean "human lifetime".
'Wor-' has the same origin as the first part of 'werewolf' (man-wolf). It's related to Latin 'vir' (man).
'-ld' is 'eld', an archaic word meaning "old age; old times". It's related to 'old'.
Here's more:
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English had a great-aunt that passed away early and didn't bear surviving children: Gothic.
In the 4th century AD, bishop Wulfila commissioned the translation of the Bible into Gothic, an East-Germanic language.
Here's an excerpt, read by me in the reconstructed pronunciation:
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In Spanish and Portuguese it's 'para ti' (to you) but 'contigo' (with you), not *con ti.
Why this '-go' part?
It's a remnant of Latin 'cum', the ancestor of 'con':
it was 'tēcum' ("you-with"), not *cum tē.
This became 'tigo', but later a pleonastic 'con' was added.
Here's more:
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Spanish 'usted', Portuguese 'você' and Catalan 'vosté'
are formal ways of saying "you".
They have the same origin: they arose from an honorific meaning "your grace".
This infographic tells you everything about their etymology and about formal pronouns in French and Italian.
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'Cheese', German 'Käse' and Dutch 'kaas' were borrowed from Latin 'cāseus'. 🧀
This Latin word was inherited in many Romance daughter languages, e.g. as 'queso' in Spanish.
French 'fromage' stems from Latin 'fōrmāticum', a derivation of 'fōrma': (cheese) mould.
Here's more:
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After 2500 years, by utter coincidence, the second person plural pronoun in certain dialects of English is back at square one:
'yous' just happens to sound nearly identical to its Proto-Germanic ancestor *jūz.
Click the video to hear how after many wanderings it got there:
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Ancient Greek 'híppos', Spanish 'yegua', Irish 'each', Romanian 'iapă', and Icelandic 'jór' all mean "horse".
They're very different, yet they ultimately stem from the same Proto-Indo-European word.
They drifted apart due to the sound changes they underwent.
Here's more:
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The words 'galaxy' and 'latte' are etymologically related.
'Galaxy' stems from Ancient Greek 'Galaxíās' (Milky Way), from 'gála' (milk), which has the same ancestor as Italian 'latte' (milk).
The Milky Way was named after its milky glowing band in the night sky.
Here's more:
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French 'voir', Italian 'vedere', and Spanish 'ver' (to see) are related to German 'wissen', Swedish 'vet', and Dutch 'weten' (to know).
Their common root was a word meaning "to see". Its perfect tense took on a resultative meaning: "I have seen" became "I know".
Here's more:
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In Standard English, 'Wednesday' is pronounced without a d.
The d is there because it was pronounced in Middle English.
'Wednesday' comes from a Germanic name meaning "Odin's day".
D-less forms such as 'Wennesdai' are attested from the 14th c.
Listen to how this word evolved:
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French 'poison' and 'potion' are doublets: they both stem from Latin 'pōtiōnem' (drink).
'Poison' was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into French.
'Potion' was borrowed from written Latin in the 2nd millennium.
15 French doublets:
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Catalan 'gla' (acorn) and 'gland' (glans) are doublets: they both stem from Latin 'glandem'.
'Gla' was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into Catalan.
'Gland' was borrowed from written Latin.
Number 5 in my doublets series: Catalan!
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The meanings of words constantly change. This is called semantic drift.
Sometimes, a meaning radically changes over time.
For example, a girl used to be a child of any gender, a hussy used to be a housewife, and a knight used to be a boy.
Here are four types of semantic drift:
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French 'chez', as in 'chez nous' (at our place; with us), has the same origin as the word 'casa' (house) in languages such as Spanish and Italian.
In Old French it meant "at the house of". After centuries of widening, its array of meanings has become very broad.
Here's more:
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What were the names of our body parts 1200 years ago in Old English?
And what are their reconstructed forms in Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of all Germanic languages?
Here they are - from head to toe:
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The word 'island' and the names 'Jersey', 'Scandinavia', and 'Batavia' all contain a descendant of the same Proto-Germanic word:
*awjō: "land in or close to a body of water".
This infographic - which I had a lot of fun designing - shows how these words (and others) are related:
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The French word 'diner' (to dine) comes from Popular Latin *disjējūnāre (to stop fasting).
The word lost three of its syllables. This strong degree of erosion can be seen in many French words.
Click the video to hear how eight words eroded on their way to modern French:
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Saying 'probly' instead of 'probably' is sometimes frowned upon, but the word 'probably' itself was shortened from 'probablely' (two L's!) by the same process.
This process is called haplology. One of two consecutive similar syllables is deleted:
-le-ly
-ba-bly
More examples:
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The endings of the future tense in many Romance languages look suspiciously like forms of their verb meaning 'to have':
French 'ils finiront' & 'ils ont'
Spanish 'harás' & 'has'
Italian 'farò' & 'ho'
Well, that's actually what they are! Here's how this future tense originated:
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'Rich' stems from a Celtic word meaning "king".
This word, *rīxs, a cousin of Latin 'rēx', was first borrowed into Germanic.
Next, an adjective meaning "powerful; wealthy" was derived from it. It was this word that eventually became 'rich'.
Click the image to learn more:
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'Church' is related to the name of the prayer 'Kyrie eleison'.
This name comes from Ancient Greek 'kȳrie, eléēson' (Lord, have mercy), containing the vocative case of 'kȳrios' (Lord).
Its derivative 'kȳriakón' (house of the Lord) was borrowed into West Germanic.
Here's more:
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The Italian word 'aceto' (vinegar) looks a lot like Spanish 'aceite' (oil), but why are their meanings so different?
That's because etymologically, these words are entirely unrelated.
'Aceto' comes from Latin 'acētum', while 'aceite' comes from Arabic 'az-zayt'.
Here's more:
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French 'très' means "very", as in 'très grand' (very big).
It comes from Latin 'trāns' (beyond; across).
What happened in French was different from Spanish and Portuguese, where 'trāns' remained a preposition: 'tras' (after; behind; beyond) and 'trás' (behind).
Here's more:
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Over the centuries, English lost many Germanic words.
A lot of them were replaced by French borrowings, whereas German, Dutch and Frisian often preserved their West-Germanic cognates.
What would the English words look like if they still existed?
Here are nine revived words:
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Words such as 'formula' and 'ratio' instantly give away their Latin origin, but did you know 'wall' and 'kitchen' come from Latin too?
They were borrowed during the Roman occupation of a part of Europe that spoke the ancestor of English.
Here are 6 early borrowings from Latin:
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'Gaul', 'Gallia' and 'Gaelic' all refer to Celtic things, but etymologically they're not related in any way.
'Gaul' is related to 'Wales', 'Welsh', 'Cornwall' and 'Walloon' instead.
'Gallia' didn't become 'Gaule' in French but 'Jaille', which survives in toponyms.
Here's more:
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The French word for a werewolf is 'loup-garou'.
Etymologically, this compound is pleonastic: 'garou' means "werewolf" and 'loup' means "wolf".
It's also hybrid: 'loup' stems from Latin 'lupus' whereas 'garou' was borrowed from West Germanic *werwulf.
Click the image for more:
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The names of our weekdays have a long history.
The days were named after the sun, the moon and five Germanic gods.
This system had been adapted from Latin, where it was based on a Hellenistic Greek system, which in turn was based on a Babylonian system.
Here's the whole story:
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'Cockroach' stems from Spanish 'cucaracha'.
When 'cucaracha' was borrowed, it was opaque to English speakers. Trying to rationalise it, they associated it with the familiar words 'cock' and 'roach' and changed its pronunciation.
This is called folk etymology.
More examples:
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'Lady' stems from a compound meaning "bread kneader".
It consisted of Germanic *hlaeb (bread), the ancestor of 'loaf', and *daigijā (kneader), related to 'dough'.
In Old English it had become 'hlǣfdiġe', meaning "mistress of the household".
Hear how it changed in 2500 years:
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'Heart' is etymologically related to the prefix 'cardio-', 'courage' and Spanish 'corazón'.
Because of early Germanic sound changes, the sounds that became c and d in Latin, became h and t in the Germanic languages:
cord- vs. heart
decem vs. ten
cornū vs. horn
Here's more:
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The word 'language' stems from the same root as 'tongue'.
'Language' comes from an Old French derivation of Latin 'lingua' (tongue), which was 'dinguā' in Old Latin.
'Dinguā' was a distant cousin of the Proto-Germanic ancestor of 'tongue'.
See the graphic for more information:
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I recently tweeted about the words for '8' in the Germanic and Romance languages.
Several people asked me how Latin 'octō' turned in French 'huit'. These forms share only one sound!
In this video, you can hear and see how in the course of 2000 years, 'octō' changed into 'huit'.
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The word for "I" has many different forms in the Romance languages, such as French 'je', Italian 'io', Portuguese 'eu', Spanish 'yo'.
Yet all these forms stem from one Latin word: 'egō'.
Listen to how 'egō' step by step changed into a selection of its Romance descendants:
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The word 'fairy' is related to 'infantry' and 'professor'.
And that's not all: these words are also related to 'fate', 'fatal', 'fame', 'fable', and 'to confess'.
They all come from Latin words derived from a stem meaning "to speak".
Click the infographic to learn how:
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Spanish 'sé' (be!) comes from Latin 'sedē' (sit!).
Spanish and Portuguese 'ser' (to be) is a mix of two Latin verbs:
'esse' (to be) and 'sedēre' (to sit; to be located).
In medieval Spanish and Portuguese, these were still distinct, but they're now merged.
Here's their story:
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French 'il est' (he is) comes from a different Latin verb than 'il était' (he was).
Languages such as Spanish have two verbs for "to be":
'ser' for essences vs 'estar' for states.
Their French counterparts merged before this meaning difference could crystallise. The full story:
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'Primavera' means "spring" in Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian, but it originally meant "early spring" (literally "first spring").
Later it came to mean just "spring", pushing the earlier words for "spring", such as Spanish 'verano', to the summer.
Here's more:
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The German umlaut dots, such as in 'Männer' (men), 'hören' (to hear) and 'Füße' (feet) look like the diaeresis in 'Chloë', French 'naïf' (naive) and my name, but they have an entirely different origin.
While the latter comes from Ancient Greek, the umlaut stems from a small e:
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The Romance words for "self" and "same", such as French 'même', Spanish 'mismo', and Portuguese 'mesmo', don't come from the Classical Latin words for "self" and "same".
Instead, they stem from Popular Latin *metipsimus: "the very same", or literally "self-selfest".
Here's how:
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'Sun', the word for the blinding nuclear fusion reactor in the sky, stems from the same ancestral word as French 'soleil', Swedish 'sol', Welsh 'haul', Irish 'súil', and Ancient Greek 'hēlios', whence the prefix 'helio-'.
They grew apart by the ravages of time. Here's how:
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Why is 'laugh' written with '-ugh' while it ends with an [f] sound?
The spelling 'laugh' reflects how the word was pronounced in Late Middle English.
Click to listen to a reconstruction of how this verb evolved from 3rd-century BC Proto-Germanic to modern-day Standard English:
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The word 'to pay' stems from the same Latin word as 'peace', namely 'pāx'.
The distant ancestor of 'to pay' meant "to pacify or appease someone with money".
Speaking of 'to pacify' and 'to appease', these words are related too!
Here's more:
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'Foreign' is etymologically related to 'door'.
'Foreign' stems from Popular Latin *forānus (outsider), a derivation of Latin 'forīs' (outside).
It got its silent G because people believed it had something to do with 'reign'.
Latin 'forīs' is a cousin of 'door'. Here's more:
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A language can change a lot in the course of two millennia.
During the evolution of Latin to French, many words lost half of their syllables.
Click the video and turn on your sound to hear how eight words changed from Latin into Old French and ultimately into Modern French:
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When the Romans and the Germanic peoples met they couldn't understand each other.
Latin and Germanic descended from a common ancestor, but they had been growing apart significantly for thousands of years.
However, there were some words that were almost identical.
Some examples:
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'Grammar' and 'glamour' have the same origin: Old French 'gramaire'.
This word was borrowed into Middle English and Middle Scots. In the latter language, it became 'glamour'.
Its meaning evolved from "study of occult things" via "magic" and "charm" to "beauty".
Here's more:
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The word 'tooth' is a remnant of an ancient present participle meaning "biting".
It is etymologically related to French 'dent', German 'Zahn', Irish 'déad', Ancient Greek 'odṓn', and Sanskrit 'dán'.
These words all stem from the same Proto-Indo-European ancestor.
Here's more:
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Why does 'water' have an -r in English and its West Germanic sisters, while it has an -n in Swedish 'vatten' and its North Germanic sisters?
In Proto-Germanic, some case forms had the -r stem, others the -n stem.
The daughter languages generalised one of these.
Here's more:
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French 'trop' means "too (much)", as in 'trop grand' (too big) or 'il mange trop' (he eats too much).
It was borrowed from Germanic *þrop (crowd; cluster; village), a variant of *þorp, which became German 'Dorf', Dutch 'dorp' and archaic English 'thorp': "village".
Here's more:
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The ancestor of 'thing' and its cognates 'ding', 'ting' etc. meant "folk assembly".
The ancestor of French 'chose', Spanish and Italian 'cosa' etc. meant "legal case".
Both words underwent a series of meaning shifts that resulted in the meanings "matter; thing".
Here's how:
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In French, you make adverbs by adding '-ment' to the feminine form of an adjective:
claire + -ment = clairement (clearly)
Why the feminine form?
'-Ment' stems from a Latin feminine noun meaning 'mind'. The adjective agreed with it:
clārā mente (with a clear mind)
Here's more:
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English is part of a large language family that includes French, Welsh, Polish, Persian, Greek, and Albanian.
They stem from a common ancestor reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European.
The cardinal numerals from 1 to 10 illustrate their relationship well. Click for a selection:
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'Sad' is etymologically related to German 'satt' (full; done; fed up) and Dutch 'zat' (drunk; fed up; plenty).
Their original meanings were "full; sated".
These words are also related to Latin 'satis' (enough) and its derivations 'to satisfy' and French 'assez'.
Here's more:
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'Very' comes from Old French 'verai', which became 'vrai' (true; real) in French.
These words ultimately stem from Latin 'vērus', which has the same ancestor as German 'wahr' and Dutch 'waar' (true; real).
Had it survived, their Old English cognate 'wǣr' would've become *wair.
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Am, are, is, was, were, been
- how can the verb 'to be' have so many different forms?
'To be' is actually a mix of four different verbs. Over time, they came to constitute one verb.
Here's how 'to be' and its sister verbs in other Germanic languages evolved from Proto-Germanic:
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The Romance languages borrowed many words from Germanic.
Word-initial [w] from Germanic became [ɡw] in most Romance languages. For example, *werra became 'guerra' in Italian.
Spanish and Portuguese then reduced [ɡw] to [ɡ] before [i] and [e], French everywhere.
More examples:
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The words 'year', 'hour' and 'horoscope' all derive from the same root.
'Year' was inherited from a Proto-Germanic word that came from the same Proto-Indo-European root as Ancient Greek 'hōrā' (year; time; hour).
Via Latin and Old French, 'hōrā' became 'hour'.
The whole story:
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'Cipher' and 'zero' are etymological doublets:
they both stem from Arabic 'ṣifr', which means "empty, 0".
'Ṣifr' was borrowed into Medieval Latin two times:
as 'cifra' and 'zephirum'.
The descendants of 'cifra' later lost the meaning "0" to those of 'zephirum'.
Here's how:
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Why is 1/60 of a minute called a 'second', just like the ordinal number that goes with 'two'?
It's because a second is the second subdivision of an hour, a minute being the first.
The word 'minute' in turn simply comes from the Latin word for "small (part)".
Here's more:
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Portuguese 'chão' (floor) and 'plano' (plan) are doublets: they both stem from Latin 'plānum'.
'Chão' was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into Portuguese.
'Plano' was borrowed from written Latin.
Number 4 in my series, Portuguese:
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Why does Italian have 'FORmaggio' while in French it's 'FROmage'?
In French, the O and R switched places.
This process is called metathesis.
Metathesis also caused Latin 'paRaboLa' to become 'paLabRa' in Spanish.
Here are more examples from some of the Romance languages:
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'Butter' has the same origin as French 'beurre' but it wasn't borrowed from French.
It comes from a West Germanic borrowing of the Latin word that became French 'beurre'.
The Latin word itself came from Ancient Greek 'βούτῡρον' (boútūron), literally "cow cheese".
Here's more:
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When the Romans and Germanic-speaking peoples first met, they couldn't understand each other.
Their languages had the same ancestor, but millennia of changes had driven them apart.
However, certain words had changed relatively little.
These might've been mutually understood:
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'Knight' sounds like 'night' but it's written with a K.
That's because it used to start with a [k] sound, just like German 'Knecht', which has the same origin.
The letters GH used to be pronounced as well.
Here's the evolution from Proto-Germanic to Southern British English:
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Over the last century, Dutch has borrowed a lot of words from English, but in the past, a decent number of words went in the other direction.
Here's a selection of eighteen words that English borrowed from Dutch:
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'Nigh', 'near' and 'next' are related in the same way as for example 'big', 'bigger' and 'biggest'.
Just like in English, in the other West Germanic languages, the words that are etymologically related to 'nigh', 'near', 'next' gained meanings that obscured their relationship:
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'Eleven' and 'twelve' are ancient compound words.
The first elements are the words for 'one' and 'two',
the second element is related to 'to leave'.
The Proto-Germanic ancestor of 'eleven' literally meant "one left (to count after ten)", i.e. "one past ten".
Here's more:
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There are many words for women in the Germanic languages.
In their history, some underwent amelioration: their meaning became more positive. The ancestor of 'queen' just meant "wife".
Others underwent pejoration. Calling someone a 'wijf' in Dutch is now an insult.
Here's more:
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Italian 'giorno' (day) and 'diurno' (diurnal) are doublets: they both stem from Latin 'diurnum'.
'Giorno' was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into Italian.
'Diurno' was borrowed from written Latin.
Number 3 in my series: Italian.
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Beside singular and plural pronouns, the Germanic languages used to have dual pronouns.
For example, in Old English you could say:
'Hē seah unc' (He saw the two of us)
'Wit sāwon hine' (We two saw him)
My new infographic tells you all about these Germanic dual pronouns:
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English '(he/she) eats', Welsh 'ysa', Ancient Greek 'édei', Sanskrit 'átti', and Polish 'je' all stem from the same Indo-European verb.
Over time, words change beyond recognition, undergoing regular sound changes and irregular alterations.
Here's the family of 'eats':
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German 'gegessen' and Dutch 'gegeten', meaning "eaten", are quite peculiar.
German and Dutch past participles normally get the prefix 'ge-', but these words contain a doubled form.
As 'ge-' had been obscured in earlier 'gessen' and 'geten', it was added once more.
Here's more:
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The words 'yard', 'garden' and 'garth' all stem from the same Germanic word.
'Yard' is native, 'garden' took a detour via Old French, 'garth' via Old Norse.
They're also distantly related to Latin 'hortus' (garden), Russian 'górod' (city) and Irish 'gort' (field).
Here's more:
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'Dish', 'disc', 'disk', 'desk', 'dais', 'disco', and 'discus' all stem from one and the same word:
Ancient Greek δίσκος.
Each entered English in its own way at its own time.
They're an example of etymological doublets: coexisting words in one language that share their ancestor.
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'Shirt' and 'skirt' are doublets: they both stem from Proto-Germanic *skurtijōn.
'Shirt' was inherited. It underwent the sound changes that turned Proto-Germanic into English.
'Skirt' was borrowed from another Germanic language: Old Norse.
Germanic doublets in English:
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Sometimes, words were saved from death because they were borrowed.
The descendants of *uzgōlīn (pride) became extinct in Germanic, but borrowings live on in Romance: e.g. French 'orgueil'.
*Haifstiz (conflict) was even brought back to Germanic thanks to Old French 'haste':
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@darthsidius1985
If the etymological dictionaries written by historical linguists don't know, ChatGPT, which is based on such sources, can't give a better answer.
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In the science of etymology, you can't rely on resemblances.
Borrowings must be substantiated. Words are not pollen that flies around.
For words to be genetically related, there must be systematic correspondences. McColl Millar nicely illustrates this with Greek and Hawaiian:
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While I wouldn't say it's a good thing Dutch high schools spend 80% of German classes on combining prepositions with the correct case forms, there are certain mistakes you'd rather not make when speaking German:
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'Enough' has the same origin as German 'genug' and Dutch 'genoeg'.
However, 'enough' doesn't start with a g-. Moreover, contrary to what its spelling suggests, it ends with an /f/.
When did these changes happen?
Listen to how this word evolved over the past 2300 years:
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