Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 8:53 AM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #8

My favorite example of this is the word "squirrel," which is originally from ancient Greek, σκίουρος (lexical translation: skiouros, which means shadow-tailed). Somehow the notion that Socrates would use approximately the same (rather unlikely) word for this animal that I do is fascinating.

Post by pcrh » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 9:17 AM UTC

dancing_shark wrote: post #20

The 23 words from the PNAS paper (Table 1): Thou I Not That We To give Who This What Man/male Ye Old Mother To hear Hand Fire To Pull Black To flow Bark Ashes To spit Worm http://www.pnas.org/content/110/21/8471/T1.expansion.html

Post by Kostic » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 9:28 AM UTC

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,…

Post by throwanem » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 10:04 AM UTC

ginko wrote: post #54

singularity2001 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly) No, it's semantically linked via 'butter'. Schmetterling comes from Schmetten or Schmand which is a sort of heavy cream. There used to be a folk believe that butterflies would consume milk or butter if left uncovered. They were also sometimes called Milkdieb or milk-thief in German. See: www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=butterfly

Post by simias » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #51

mturmon wrote: post #8

My favorite example of this is the word "squirrel," which is originally from ancient Greek, σκίουρος (lexical translation: skiouros, which means shadow-tailed). Somehow the notion that Socrates would use approximately the same (rather unlikely) word for this animal that I do is fascinating.

Interesting etymology. Does that mean the in ancient Greek, squirrels were called "shadow tails"? I find these explanations a bit baffling. That's a much more sophisticated and metaphorical name than you'd expect. It would be a bit like calling cats "bird scratchers."