91–100 of 103 posts
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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.
This is presumably a folk etymology of the French or English word "chocolate", not of the Aztec word "xocolatl"
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
I wonder how many of those would survive multiple hypothesis testing. That is, there are bound to be a number of phonetically similar words that happen to have similar meanings in two different languages. They may not however have common historical roots.
1) "Hear ye! I, [a] man who[se] hand gives this fire [to] bark. What black ashes! Not thou old mother, that pulls the worm and spits. We flow."
2) "We, man [and] old mother, hand-pull black bark. Worm that spits fire, not ashes, flows. This, what I give ye, thou who hear."
3) "Black, old, male mother pulls worm, not spits fire [or] ashes. I give thou who hear what flows [to] ye."
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My Japanese native language speaker in college had an obsession with the word "squirrel". We spent an entire year trying to teach her how to pronounce it. Ssss-ka-wuh-rrr-llll
I am German and 'squirrel' is the one English word I just can't pronounce. I am very good at all the other words, but that one stumps me.
Can you pronounce "squirt"? If yes, try pronouncing the "squir" portion of the word, dropping the "t". You should be pronouncing it like this reference, minus that hard "t" sound at the end [0].
Can you pronounce the rare English word "rill"? It's of Germanic origin so you should be able to. You should be pronouncing it like this reference [1]
If yes to both of the above questions, you can pronounce "squirrel".
Say "squir" from squirt, take a pause for a half second, then say "rill". Repeat the phrase faster and faster trying to shorten the pause between the two.
Alternatively, you can approximate the word "squirrel" from the English word "quarrel" by adding an "s" to the beginning. "s" + "quarrel". There will be a subtle mispronunciation with this method, but you should be able to pass in most conversation.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CPhAx00d2Y
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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."
I'm not sure why it baffles you, this type of "names-by-associations" are pretty common. See "woodpecker", "ladybug", "daddy longlegs", "silverback" etc... Not that different. Also maybe "shadow" had a slightly different meaning back then or the translation is simply not 100% accurate (are they ever?).
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Yet in Polish the word "czaj" also exists and it means a very strong tea. Herbata seems to come from Latin, as it relates to herbs.
Wikipedia says that the -ta in Lithuanian and Polish is from Latin thea , from the phrase herba thea ('tea herb'), so there is still a morpheme in common with the other languages in this case!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Japanese native language speaker in college had an obsession with the word "squirrel". We spent an entire year trying to teach her how to pronounce it. Ssss-ka-wuh-rrr-llll
I am German and 'squirrel' is the one English word I just can't pronounce. I am very good at all the other words, but that one stumps me.
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,…
Sure, "farfalla" is relatively recent, in old italian it is "parpaglia" or (still used in some dialects "parpaja" or "parpajon"), according to some sources:
http://www.etimoitaliano.it/2017/02/farfalla.html
There is seemingly an Indo-european root "s-par" or "s-pal" or "s-far" and the Greek "pallo" with the meaning of something that vibrates.
The root seems the same a "palpebra" (eyelid) which is paupière in French, párpado in Spanish and pálpebra in Portuguese.
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Wikipedia says that the -ta in Lithuanian and Polish is from Latin thea , from the phrase herba thea ('tea herb'), so there is still a morpheme in common with the other languages in this case!
I think this is from New Latin, not Latin Latin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is presumably a folk etymology of the French or English word "chocolate", not of the Aztec word "xocolatl"
Right, I think I had thought we got it from French and that they had formed it as cocoa / cacao + lait .
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Interesting, I never actually encountered "czaj" used to describe tea. From a quick search it seems to be either prison slang, or a word used in eastern Poland, coming from Russia. And then there's "czajnik" for teapot.
I know it as a prison slang word to describe a very strong tea.