@yvanspijk@toot.community
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yvanspijk

@yvanspijk@toot.community

DJO-in ['ʤowɪn]

Historisch taalkundige, dialectoloog, leraar NT2, redacteur, auteur bij Onze Taal

Historical linguist, dialectologist, Dutch teacher, editor, writer

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yvanspijk, to random
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Yesterday I tooted about horse words.

"But what about 'horse', German 'Pferd', French 'cheval', Spanish 'caballo'?" people asked.

These words have their own histories. I'll summarise them below.

  1. 'Horse' stems from Proto-Germanic *hursan/*hrussan, which also became Dutch 'ros', German 'Ross', and Icelandic 'hross'. This Proto-Germanic word may stem from Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥sós (vehicle), which also became Latin 'currus' (chariot) and - via Proto-Celtic *karros - 'carrus', whence ... 1/
yvanspijk,
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2/ ... English 'car'.

  1. German 'Pferd', Dutch 'paard', Afrikaans 'perd' come from Proto-West Germanic *parafrēd, a borrowing from Latin 'paraverēdus' (extra courier horse).

This is a hybrid compound of Greek παρά (pará: "beside") and Gaulish *werēdos, from Proto-Celtic *uɸorēdos, wence 'gorwydd' in Welsh.

Old High German 'pherfrit' nicely shows an intermediate stage between reconstructed Proto-West Germanic *parafrēd and modern 'Pferd'.

The West Germanic word was borrowed into ... 2/

yvanspijk,
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3/ ... Old French, where it became 'palefrei(d)' (modern 'palefroi'). This was borrowed into English as 'palfrey'.

A last thing about Proto-Germanic: it also had *marhaz. This word doesn't have any modern descendants, but it does survive as the first part of Dutch 'maarschalk' (marshal), from West Germanic *marhaskalkaz (horse groom).

Via the Old French borrowing 'mareschal' (now 'maréchal') it became English 'marshal'.

The female counterpart, *marhijō, became English 'mare', German ... 3/

yvanspijk,
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4/ ... 'Mähre' (decripit old horse), and Dutch 'merrie' (mare).

  1. French 'cheval', Spanish 'caballo', Italian 'cavallo', Portuguese 'cavalo' etc. come from Latin 'caballus'.

In Classical Latin, this word meant "pack-horse", but in Popular Latin, it became the general word for a horse.

Its origin is not certain. It may have been borrowed from Gaulish *kaballos, which is related to Irish 'capall' and Welsh 'ceffyl'.

It may also have been a Wanderwort: a loanword that spread ... 4/

yvanspijk,
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5/ ... to many different languages through trade or the adoption of cultural practices.

The same goes for Ancient Greek καβάλλης (kabállēs: "nag").

From Latin 'caballārius' (horseman), we get French 'chevalier' (knight) and Spanish 'caballero' (gentleman), and Italian 'cavallaio' (groom; horse merchant).

Lastly: 'cavalry' stems from Italian 'cavalleria' via Middle French, and 'chivalry' from its Old French counterpart 'chevalerie' (cavalry; knighthood; nobility; chivalry).

Enough horses!

yvanspijk, (edited ) to random
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Many Latin words didn't survive in the Romance languages.

For example, 'fēlēs' (cat) was displaced by 'cattus', which became French 'chat', Italian 'gatto', and Spanish and Portuguese 'gato'.

Using the laws of sound change, I worked out what 'fēlēs' and eight other Latin words would look like in four of the daughter languages if they had survived.

The video below contains audio; the image in toot 2/2 can be zoomed in.

1/2

(Edited 30-09)

yvanspijk, to random
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Why do French 'huit' (eight) and Spanish 'huevo' (egg) have an H?

French normally only has an H where Latin or Frankish had it; Spanish where Latin had an H or an F.

But 'huit' and 'huevo' stem from 'octō' and 'ovum', words that never had an H or F.

Their H was added in the Middle Ages for a different reason: to avoid confusion, since at the time, U and V were still the same letter.

yvanspijk, to random
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Hoe zeg je 'blijf je' in jouw Brabants? Die vraag werd in het Noord-Brabant van de jaren 30 op wel 11 manieren beantwoord: van het Hollands-achtige 'blaif je' in de Westhoek via 'blèèfde' rond Tilburg tot het Limburgs-achtige 'bliefde' in het Land van Cuijk.

Hieronder zie je een bewerking van een kaart uit 1937.

yvanspijk,
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@xs4me2 Welke van de elf vormen? 😊

yvanspijk, to random
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Pronouncing 'restaurant' as 'restrant' is an example of syncope: an unstressed vowel is deleted from the interior of a word, taking its syllable with it.

The Romans did this a lot too.

'Calidus' (hot) became 'caldus' as early as the 1st c. BCE. It's 'caldus' that birthed French 'chaud' and Italian 'caldo'.

Here are more examples:

yvanspijk, to random
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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:

yvanspijk,
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2/

My favourite example of haplology is how the French city of Montferrand lost half of its name when it was merged with Clermont in 1630: 'Clermont-Ferrand'. Apparently one Mont was enough.

yvanspijk, to random
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'But' stems from Old English 'būtan', which used to mean "outside". It's related to Dutch 'buiten' (outside).

Many words for "but" in other languages, such as Spanish 'pero', Dutch 'maar', and French 'mais', are the result of significant shifts in meaning too.

Two graphics:

image/png

yvanspijk, to random
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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:

yvanspijk, to random
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'Sun', the word for the blinding nuclear fusion reactor in the sky, stems from the same Proto-Indo-European 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:

yvanspijk, to random
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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, already in spoken Latin or later in the history of its daughter languages.

In the infographic you see a number of stacked words that have an interesting history.

yvanspijk, to random
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My favourite pair on this chart I posted yesterday is 'dull' and German 'toll'. Their meanings are oppposites.

Germanic *dulaz meant "confused". In German its descendant 'toll' came to mean "crazy". It later got the additional meaning "great".

The Old English ancestor of 'dull' meant "foolish". Via "blunt" this became "boring".

yvanspijk, to random
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Dat iedere poging om strakke lijnen tussen de streektaalgebieden te zetten gedoemd is te mislukken, is geen nieuws, maar volgens dit kaartje wordt er in Tilburg Limburgsch-Frankisch gesproken.

De dialecten ten noorden en westen zijn grotendeels gelijk, maar die zijn ineens weer Brabantsch-Frankisch! Ik ben heel benieuwd naar de criteria.

Het kaartje staat in 'Taal in stad en land: Sallands, Twents en Achterhoeks' van Jan Nijen Twilhaar (2003), maar het is niet van zijn hand.

Iemand een idee?

yvanspijk, to random
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The word for "I" has many different forms in the Romance languages, such as French 'je', Italian 'io', Portuguese 'eu' and 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:

(Updated September 8.)

1/2

video/mp4

yvanspijk, to random
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The Romance languages have multiple words for "wife" and "woman".

These stem from Latin, but some of their meanings changed quite a bit.

For example, French 'dame' means "lady" but its ancestor 'domina' meant "mistress of the house" and is related to 'dominion' and 'dominant'.

Here's more:

yvanspijk, to random
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Spanish 'palabra', French 'parole', and Catalan 'paraula' all stem from Latin 'parabola' ("word"; earlier "comparison; parable; speech"), a borrowing from Ancient Greek παραβολή 'parabolḗ'.

Click the video to hear and see how 'palabra', 'parola' and other Romance descendants of 'parabola' arose step by step:

video/mp4

yvanspijk, to random
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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:

yvanspijk,
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@marcas Nice! :)

yvanspijk, to random
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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:

yvanspijk, to random
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Some frown upon 'to ax' as a variant of 'to ask', but 'to ax' is more than 1200 years old.

It stems from Old English 'ācsian', a variant of 'āscian'. Chaucer used both 'axen' and 'asken' in Middle English.

The interchange of two sounds, such as /sk/ → /ks/, is called metathesis.

Here are more examples from the Germanic languages:

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