Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age

Post by jjtheblunt » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

Kostic wrote: post #55

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,…

> All the Slavic languages known to Google Translate have a word related to motyl, except for Russian In Serbian and Croatian the word for butterfly is лептир/leptir.

Post by fishnchips » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

iagooar wrote: post #100

fishnchips wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it as a prison slang word to describe a very strong tea.

In the area where I come from (Wielkopolska) czaj is a commonly known word for a "strong tea-like infusion". It's not prison slang at all, but of course there might be regional differences in the usage of this word.