The beauty of etymology | Page 2 | Linguists' corner | Forum

Raphacam said
I really liked this explanation of this Hebrew word, "dat", this one is going to my mental archive of amazing linguistic stories

Well, one that isn't that interesting but I enjoy as well is the etymology of the English word "barbarity", just like Portuguese bárbarie/barbárie/barbaridade (yay extra words), Spanish barbarie and et cetera.

When Greece was a big empire, they surely had many foreign cultures and languages in their territory, something that created the classic and contemporary xenophobia, something the Greek used in jokes and in comedies. In theses comedies, the foreign language speakers were represented by actors making just one onomatopoeic sound: "bar bar bar" (which later evolved into English "blah blah blah").

It seems that the Greek people really liked that joke, because they added the onomatopoeia a nominative adjective particle and created a word, bárbaros, used to talk about foreign cultures. This word came to Classical Latin as barbarus, with the same meaning but still with the xenophobic value of someone that is under you. Later on, the Catholic church started using this word to talk about the pagans. Well, if pagans are barbarus and, in their conception, pagans are "people that live in bad and ugly countries and follow bad and ugly gods", they are "bad and ugly people", they're raw, they are… barbarians. Then, this word came to Medieval Latin with a completely new meaning, absorbed by other cultures.

I was going to write a little bit about the etymology of "testicles", but most of you must know it and it's a little bit disgusting, also.

Wow, I seriously thought that this story was a joke, when I first heard it :/

(I also wrote this somewhere in this topic, that I had thought that this was a joke…)

Do you know if "bar bar bar" is still used in Greek?

I recently ran into another interesting fact: I had a few minutes of boredom and have already finished my German "chores" for the day, so I opened the article about Sweden in Wikipedia.

There I saw that the Swedish "motto" is "För Sverige i tiden" , which is translated there as "For Sweden – With the Times" .

Tiden = Times?

So apparently, the words "tide" and "time" are connected. Both are derived from an Indo-Europan root that means "to cut up, divide". This is baffling, but reading explanations you can actually formulated how this came to be:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=time

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tide

Mind blowing

Gaius Julius said

Raphacam said
I really liked this explanation of this Hebrew word, "dat", this one is going to my mental archive of amazing linguistic stories

Well, one that isn't that interesting but I enjoy as well is the etymology of the English word "barbarity", just like Portuguese bárbarie/barbárie/barbaridade (yay extra words), Spanish barbarie and et cetera.

When Greece was a big empire, they surely had many foreign cultures and languages in their territory, something that created the classic and contemporary xenophobia, something the Greek used in jokes and in comedies. In theses comedies, the foreign language speakers were represented by actors making just one onomatopoeic sound: "bar bar bar" (which later evolved into English "blah blah blah").

It seems that the Greek people really liked that joke, because they added the onomatopoeia a nominative adjective particle and created a word, bárbaros, used to talk about foreign cultures. This word came to Classical Latin as barbarus, with the same meaning but still with the xenophobic value of someone that is under you. Later on, the Catholic church started using this word to talk about the pagans. Well, if pagans are barbarus and, in their conception, pagans are "people that live in bad and ugly countries and follow bad and ugly gods", they are "bad and ugly people", they're raw, they are… barbarians. Then, this word came to Medieval Latin with a completely new meaning, absorbed by other cultures.

I was going to write a little bit about the etymology of "testicles", but most of you must know it and it's a little bit disgusting, also.

Wow, I seriously thought that this story was a joke, when I first heard it :/

(I also wrote this somewhere in this topic, that I had thought that this was a joke…)

 

Do you know if "bar bar bar" is still used in Greek?

 

I recently ran into another interesting fact: I had a few minutes of boredom and have already finished my German "chores" for the day, so I opened the article about Sweden in Wikipedia.

There I saw that the Swedish "motto" is "För Sverige i tiden" , which is translated there as "For Sweden – With the Times" .

Tiden = Times?

So apparently, the words "tide" and "time" are connected. Both are derived from an Indo-Europan root that means "to cut up, divide". This is baffling, but reading explanations you can actually formulated how this came to be:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=time

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tide

 

Mind blowing

As far as I know, it has fallen in disuse in the new language, and they use "mpla", which sounds almost the same as English/German "blah blah blah", Portuguese "blá blá blá", Spanish "bla bla bla", etc.

I've read more than once that those I just mentioned come all from "bar bar bar", but I don't know the way it ran or the first to change it that way

Well, in relation with "bla bla bla "etc…. we have a verb " blablater" ^^

But we also have " baragouiner". This is derived from two Breton words ( Brittany is north west part of France) : "bara" which means bread, and "gwin" which means wine.

At first, France was composed of several dialects, as occitan, alsacien, provençal, auvergnat, breton… French French is only a dialect that was spoken by the court and it just spread because it was the language of the élite. Since it was spoken mostly in Parisian area, the majority of the population spoke another dialect. So, when Breton people were coming to Paris in order to find a job, they usually did not know the language, and when they wanted to order food, they will order bread and wine ( as the basic food of that time), but they will do it in Breton language. And Parisians would not understand a word.

 So, "baragouiner" means " to speak in a way you can hardly understand " ( = well, if anyone can correct the mistakes I've made I'll be very glad ).

sipes23 said
I have to confess a sick love of this sort of stuff.

 

I love that bear (to carry) in English and ferre (to carry) in Latin are related as Indo-European travelers. I love that amid, μετά (meta), middle and medium are likewise related. 

 

I love etymology and also the transparency between the languages, and the dialect continua. If it's allowed in this life now during I'm me [now 20 years old girl] I'd love to study the West Germanic continuum, I read some things in those dialects sometimes and I like so much the connections Low German across their country and into Dutch, also Limburgs I can undertsnad that [Dutch Limburgs, although this is incredibly diverse]. Then frisian [completely transparent via Dutch], and I'd like to continue to learn when it's more at the west, Scots and Northumberland also.Then also the ancient versions of the modern language. Especially with Dutch, it seems many connections with older English. Maybe I better learn Danish for that as well.

Anyway, ferre is nice because of fer, of course you think of iron, but then ferre to carry and you have the doubled reason why's the serum's "ferritin" although this doesn't carry, it's the iron's store. Trans-ferritin is the carry, or transport. But between the store and body, it must be carried I suppose.

Crapula hahahaha LOL.

Normally, I think about many of this connecitons, but now I can't remember them when I want to tell But generally Dutch is an absoutlely hilarious language, I laugh every time I hear, read, speak or write in that funny joke language haha

Also Durchfall LOL "through fall" German's word for diarrhoea. It's so hilarious, sometimes like Dutch, so litteral and impolite.

slacker said 

Going back to your original post, I've noticed similarities – or at least handy hooks for language learning – related to "to give" in a few Indo-European languages, for example:
"dar" – "to give" in Spanish and Portuguese ("dare" in Italian)
"dhene" – "give" in Albanian
"dena" – "to give" in Hindi and Urdu
"dar" – is also a dative particle in Pashto, useful in phrases like "I give something to you"

-slacker

Interesting. I guess it's one of those words that stood the test of time 

Here is a small theory, I haven't studied this one deeply (since I've been on the road for the past two months, now I'm in London, thank you for asking):

The word "mother" in every language that I can think of contains the consonant "m". Mother (English), Ima (Hebrew), Um (Arabic), Mutter (German), madre (Spanish), mate (Russian), madar (Persian)…. I checked a few more in Google Translate and they all contained the consonant "m". What do you good lords and ladies think of this?

I wanted to say a similar thing about the word "Father" containing consonants similar to "f" like "b" and "v", but then the word "dad" struck down that theory…

frapy said

Gaius Julius said
The word "mother" in every language that I can think of contains the consonant "m". Mother (English), Ima (Hebrew), Um (Arabic), Mutter (German), madre (Spanish), mate (Russian), madar (Persian)…. I checked a few more in Google Translate and they all contained the consonant "m". What do you good lords and ladies think of this?

I wanted to say a similar thing about the word "Father" containing consonants similar to "f" like "b" and "v", but then the word "dad" struck down that theory…

I read somewhere that there were two theories :
1) there was a first language, and in this language the word for mother had an "m" sound, and the word for father had a "b" sound.
2) These consonnants are the easiest to pronounce, and as the first words a child will pronounce are likely to be "mother" and "father" (or a childish equivalent), we can find this "m" and "b" sound in a lot of languages.

I found a discussion about that here : http://www.lingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5142&sid=27734cfa89bff7c788ee26d8f21164d0

I've seen this theory, it does make a lot of sense

The language would be Indo-European, it came apparently from somewhere near from Pakistan (I don't remember the exact place, it appeared on the news some of these days), and it was spoken by pilgrims that went to Europe.

I ran into this article:

http://geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/linguistic-geography/the-geography-of-the-onion-vocabulary

It discusses the word "onion" and how it is said in different European languages, showing the similarities. Very interesting.

Stephanie S said
Very cool thread! Do any of you get Dictionary.com's Word of the Day? The etymology is always my favorite part, and sometimes really surprising and unlikely. Of course it's even more fun to make your own discoveries as you study language.

I find it interesting that the Spanish word ojalá ("if only") is derived from the Moorish Ya Allah! ("Oh, God!"); therefore a literal translation is something like "would to God." 

Stephanie

Elanguest, Malta

I didn't know Dictionary.com's Word of the Day, so I just subscribed. Thanks

Speaking of Spanish and Arabic, does anyone know if "usted" in Spanish has any connection to "ustaz" (استاذ) in Arabic? I've always wondered about that.

(استاذ means "mister").