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Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

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Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#41

Post by golergka »

mootothemax wrote: post #30

For a good etymological mystery, it's hard to beat "dog." Not only is the word "dog" of unknown origin, its equivalents in Spanish and various Slavic languages also apparently appeared from nowhere. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dog If that's not fun enough, there's an extinct Aboriginal language from Australia which has a word for dog. That word is also "dog" - apparently pronounced the same as in English…

Given limited set of sounds a human can pronounce, and a natural tendency to keep the most common words small, can we calculate a probability of such a coincidence? Because it seems to me it's probably a classic birthday paradox example.

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#42

Post by pale-hands »

mootothemax wrote: post #30

For a good etymological mystery, it's hard to beat "dog." Not only is the word "dog" of unknown origin, its equivalents in Spanish and various Slavic languages also apparently appeared from nowhere. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dog If that's not fun enough, there's an extinct Aboriginal language from Australia which has a word for dog. That word is also "dog" - apparently pronounced the same as in English…

Opposite of the topic (ultra-nonconserved?), "butterfly" is a word that is strangely different in even closely related European languages (Romance, Teutonic, Slavic). Doing a cursory check in Google Translate now, but I've one found one language pair where the words appear to be related: French: "papillon", Catalan "papallona". Otherwise: mariposa, бабочка, motyl, schmetterling, vlinder, sommerfugl, fjäril, farfalla, пеперуда, leptir ...

I'd love to hear a linguistic explanation for this.

EDIT: Latin: "papilionem" (papilio?), so at least French and Catalan have conserved it, and I can see that Italian "farfalla" could be cognate.

EDIT EDIT: All the Slavic languages known to Google Translate have a word related to motyl, except for Russian: бабочка (butterfly) (but мотылек (moth)), so there is less to this phenomenon than meets the eye!

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#43

Post by ino »

rmetzler wrote: post #26
rabboRubble wrote: post #3

I really like the word "tea" across languages. Japanese - cha Chinese - chá Thailand - chā Russian - чай (chay) Turkish - Çay (chai) Sri Lanka Sinhala - තේ (tē) Arabic - شاي (shay) German - tee English - tea! You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns.

You should lookup the word for pineapple in other languages. English is the outlier, most (or all, IIRC) call it "ananas".

Also 'piña' in spanish and 'abacaxi' in brazilian portuguese.

Abacaxi is such a fun word to say out loud.

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#44

Post by wojt_eu »

The word "hammer" changed quite a bit, but I still find it interesting that it origins from Proto-Indo-European word for stone: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

It still sounds somewhat familiar to modern slavic words for hammer: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kamień#Polish

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#45

Post by singularity2001 »

pale-hands wrote: post #42
mootothemax wrote: post #30

For a good etymological mystery, it's hard to beat "dog." Not only is the word "dog" of unknown origin, its equivalents in Spanish and various Slavic languages also apparently appeared from nowhere. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dog If that's not fun enough, there's an extinct Aboriginal language from Australia which has a word for dog. That word is also "dog" - apparently pronounced the same as in English…

Opposite of the topic (ultra-nonconserved?), "butterfly" is a word that is strangely different in even closely related European languages (Romance, Teutonic, Slavic). Doing a cursory check in Google Translate now, but I've one found one language pair where the words appear to be related: French: "papillon", Catalan "papallona". Otherwise: mariposa, бабочка, motyl, schmetterling, vlinder, sommerfugl, fjäril, farfalla,…

Why 'strangely' different? Why would you expect such exotic animals to be ultra-nonconserved?

Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly)

also:

motyl~moth sommerfugl~summer-fly

interesting that wiktionary for papillon shows a puppy :) might also be linked to big pupils and fake eyes

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/papillon

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#46

Post by pale-hands »

singularity2001 wrote: post #45
pale-hands wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposite of the topic (ultra-nonconserved?), "butterfly" is a word that is strangely different in even closely related European languages (Romance, Teutonic, Slavic). Doing a cursory check in Google Translate now, but I've one found one language pair where the words appear to be related: French: "papillon", Catalan "papallona". Otherwise: mariposa, бабочка, motyl, schmetterling, vlinder, sommerfugl, fjäril, farfalla,…

Why 'strangely' different? Why would you expect such exotic animals to be ultra-nonconserved? Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly) also: motyl~moth sommerfugl~summer-fly interesting that wiktionary for papillon shows a puppy :) might also be linked to big pupils and fake eyes [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/papillon

You would expect closely related languages to have similar words for a common animal, i.e. to be at least somewhat conserved. I do find it mysterious. Another one: Dutch vlinder, Afrikaans (very close descendant) schoenlapper.

I think the papillon dog breed has big, butterfly-like ears!

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#47

Post by lacampbell »

rabboRubble wrote: post #21
lacampbell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all derive from two sources Mandarin - chá Hokkien - tê

Very cool about the Hokkien angle. I have near zero exposure to Hokkien and didn't realize the cha2 / te difference between the 2 dialects. Thank you! I've always been puzzled by the shift from the "ch" to "t" sound as the word migrated westward. I had always attributed the shift to a natural progressive change from language to language. Having two different original sources makes much more sense!

Someone else pointed out that the reason there's a cha/te divide in Eurasia is become some countries got it via maritime tried from coastal regions where Hokkien was spoken, and others got it overland from the interior, where Mandarin was more common.

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#48

Post by captainmuon »

beagle3 wrote: post #32
rabboRubble wrote: post #3

I really like the word "tea" across languages. Japanese - cha Chinese - chá Thailand - chā Russian - чай (chay) Turkish - Çay (chai) Sri Lanka Sinhala - තේ (tē) Arabic - شاي (shay) German - tee English - tea! You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns.

Similar to Pineapple which is basically "ananas" in every language except English (pineapple) and Spanish (piña); though "ananas" is also accepted, but rarely used, in Spanish, so English stands alone. [0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/134659/why-is-pi...

Except in Austrian German, where "Ananas" can strangely mean "strawberry" :-)

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#49

Post by lacampbell »

rabboRubble wrote: post #9
trynumber9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's because the Europeans all adopted the word later. From etymology online: The distribution of the different forms of the word in Europe reflects the spread of use of the beverage. The modern English form, along with French thé, Spanish te, German Tee, etc., derive via Dutch thee from the Amoy form, reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through the Dutch East India Company, f…

Yeah, you are right on with that observation. You prompted me to find out from where the VOC imported their tea. Apparently the initial source was Macao which spoke Cantonese. In modern day Canton and Putonghua words for tea are near indisguishable, so perhaps the Cantonese word for tea circa 1600 was quite like the current Putonhua word for tea. Had VOC sourced their tea from Sri Lanka, our word for tea might be dra…

From wikipedia

Starting in the early seventeen century, the Dutch played a dominant role in the early European tea trade via the Dutch East India Company.[18] The Dutch borrowed the word for "tea" (thee) from Min Chinese, either through trade directly from Fujian or Formosa where they had established a port, or from Malay traders in Bantam, Java.

Also interesting speculation as to whether the chinese themselves got it the word from speakers of austro-asiatic languages living in southwest china.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Etymology

Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

#50

Post by nandemo »

schoen wrote: post #22
ajross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nothing is that simple. Chocolate got mixed up, for example. It's an aztec compound word for the drink made from the plant (xocolatl == "bitter water", per wikipedia). The original term for the plant itself in the sense we use it was the unrelated mayan word cacao.

I used to have a folk etymology for chocolate as cacao + lait (or latte ), which feels very plausible despite being historically incorrect!

For some values of "plausible"? I'm pretty sure pre-Colombian mayans and aztecs didn't consume animal milk, as they hadn't domesticated cows, sheeps or goats.
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