Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is quite a far fetched explanation.
I'm not seeing you provide a better explanation
I don't have one, but that's really not grounds to believe the first thing anyone tells you.
Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#72I love this kind of thing. There’s plenty of neat little nuggets I have come across. Folk Etymology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology This has a good list of words that came from misconceptions about etymology. - “Crayfish”/“crawfish” mistakenly associated with “fish,” from Old French “crevice,” diminutive of their word for crab. - A really great one: “chaise lounge” from the French “chaise longue” meanin…
> “varsity” is just a 17th century shortening of “university” This one doesn't really fit here, as the "obvious" etymology is the correct one.
This was a question on a game show last night I watched.
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#73I love this kind of thing. There’s plenty of neat little nuggets I have come across. Folk Etymology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology This has a good list of words that came from misconceptions about etymology. - “Crayfish”/“crawfish” mistakenly associated with “fish,” from Old French “crevice,” diminutive of their word for crab. - A really great one: “chaise lounge” from the French “chaise longue” meanin…
> The example given is “resurrection” from Latin via Old French, and “resurrect” formed much later directly from the English noun. It’s a little confusing because it seems like, at least in the “resurrect” case, it also follows the rules of Latin Not really; if the verb were taken from Latin it would be "resurge", not "resurrect". Compare "surge", which is not "surrect". "Translate" has a similar problem where if you…
> Algorithm is just someone's name. It seems no more erroneous to include the al- part of his name than it is to include the "van der" in the "van der Waals force"
I thought the part of his name that led to the word “algorithm” was “al-Khwārizmī” which just means “the person from Khwarazm.” Is that not right?
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#74I love this kind of thing. There’s plenty of neat little nuggets I have come across. Folk Etymology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology This has a good list of words that came from misconceptions about etymology. - “Crayfish”/“crawfish” mistakenly associated with “fish,” from Old French “crevice,” diminutive of their word for crab. - A really great one: “chaise lounge” from the French “chaise longue” meanin…
My favourite example of rebracketing is the origin of the word "orange". European languages got the word from Persian or Arabic. But in Persian it's "narang" and in Arabic it's "naranj". (And in the languages they got it from, the word also begins "nar-".) So what happened to the initial "n"? Answer: rebracketing, not as with "alchemy" from an article present in the source language but with an article that isn't ther…
That’s a good one. I’ve heard that referred to as “faulty separation.” “Apron” was supposed to be “a napron,” not “an apron.” “Umpire” was from Old French “nonper” (meaning not even, i.e. an odd-numbered person to settle a dispute between two even groups).
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#75> Where male goes back to Latin masculus, female comes through French femelle from Latin femella. The eventual overlap in pronunciation was accidental. Latin was masculus and femella, old French was masle/male and femelle/femaile, modern "English" is male and female. We didn't take one from Latin and one from French -- we took both from French. It doesn't make any sense that "male" was taken from "masculus" when "mas…
Fair enough, but masle in Old French comes from the vulgar latin masclus, so the article isn't wrong, it's just that the lineage is indirect. It seems a very minor nit to pick.
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Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure you are not referring to a theory of direct derivation - which would be quite an irrelevant matter? Because evidence is that the Sanskrit terminology is massively present in this modern language and defines it; hence, awareness of Sanskrit is fundamental for awareness of the current language - which is the important thing. You could say that if they were unrelated, it would be the most extraordinary coin…
>Are you sure you are not referring to a theory of direct derivation - which would be quite an irrelevant matter? I am not sure what else you may mean by "comes from". >Because evidence is that the Sanskrit terminology is massively present in this modern language and defines it; There is no such evidence in modern linguistics. >hence, awareness of Sanskrit is fundamental for awareness of the current language - which…
> I am not sure what else you may mean by "comes from"
Thing is, we do not have Proto-Indo-European. So, we have to somehow reconstruct it in the investigation of terms. Sanskrit just seems to be a close enough derivation of PIE to shed invaluable light over the kernel meaning of the elements of these languages.
> There is no such evidence in modern linguistics
'Evidence': vid, veda, vitti, vidura, vidvas, vidyā... 'Modern': mā, mātrā, medhā... 'Linguistics': lal, lalanā... 'There': tar-hi... 'No': an...
> They are related. Latin, Sanskrit, Russian, English, Greek, German, Persian, Bengali, etc are all descended from Proto-Indo-European. Knowing one is not any better
Of course they are related. The comparative consideration of Latin, Greek and Sanskrit reveals a network of meanings propagating in all those derivations. Without such consideration, awareness is bound to remain poor - you are losing pieces of the puzzle. Persian and Bengali, I do not know (almost at all); others, I have explored but have not found the same productive richness in light shedding over the matter. English: well it is to understand English (and French, Spanish etc.) that you may want to undertake the endavour, and the awareness comes from considering 'knowledge' out of jñāna, gnō̃́sis and gnosco (but especially jñāti, diánoia, nobilis) - it is not a matter of knowing «one». For those who have familiarity with Latin and Greek, Sanskrit appears to be a very important piece, to reconstruct the network of meanings and better define their common core meaning.
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The example given is “resurrection” from Latin via Old French, and “resurrect” formed much later directly from the English noun. It’s a little confusing because it seems like, at least in the “resurrect” case, it also follows the rules of Latin Not really; if the verb were taken from Latin it would be "resurge", not "resurrect". Compare "surge", which is not "surrect". "Translate" has a similar problem where if you…
> Algorithm is just someone's name. It seems no more erroneous to include the al- part of his name than it is to include the "van der" in the "van der Waals force" I thought the part of his name that led to the word “algorithm” was “al-Khwārizmī” which just means “the person from Khwarazm.” Is that not right?
That's right. It's pretty much exactly analogous to "da Vinci".
The concept of the algorithm is named for the person, al-Khwarizmi, and not for the place, Khwarazm. Why would you remove the al-?
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#78> Where male goes back to Latin masculus, female comes through French femelle from Latin femella. The eventual overlap in pronunciation was accidental. Latin was masculus and femella, old French was masle/male and femelle/femaile, modern "English" is male and female. We didn't take one from Latin and one from French -- we took both from French. It doesn't make any sense that "male" was taken from "masculus" when "mas…
Fair enough, but masle in Old French comes from the vulgar latin masclus, so the article isn't wrong, it's just that the lineage is indirect. It seems a very minor nit to pick.
Except the author is not claiming that Latin's masculus and femina/femella are unrelated, but instead that English's male and female are unrelated because "one is taken from Latin and one is taken from old French." That the French words are inarguably related and the lineage all leads back to the definitely-related Latin words, would mean the English versions are also related.
Given the article's premise of words being unrelated, I'd say that's more of a massive plot hole than a "nit."
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Are you sure you are not referring to a theory of direct derivation - which would be quite an irrelevant matter? I am not sure what else you may mean by "comes from". >Because evidence is that the Sanskrit terminology is massively present in this modern language and defines it; There is no such evidence in modern linguistics. >hence, awareness of Sanskrit is fundamental for awareness of the current language - which…
> I am not sure what else you may mean by "comes from" Thing is, we do not have Proto-Indo-European. So, we have to somehow reconstruct it in the investigation of terms. Sanskrit just seems to be a close enough derivation of PIE to shed invaluable light over the kernel meaning of the elements of these languages. > There is no such evidence in modern linguistics 'Evidence': vid, veda, vitti, vidura, vidvas, vidyā... '…
>Sanskrit just seems to be a close enough derivation of PIE to shed invaluable light over the kernel meaning of the elements of these languages.
Sanskrit is one of the languages that was used by comparativists to reconstructed PIE. Trying to use Sanskrit "to shed invaluable light over the kernel meaning of the elements of these languages" is no better than using those languages to shed light over Sanskrit.
>'Evidence': vid, veda, vitti, vidura, vidvas, vidyā... 'Modern': mā, mātrā, medhā... 'Linguistics': lal, lalanā... 'There': tar-hi... 'No': an...
That's not evidence of anything.
Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Algorithm is just someone's name. It seems no more erroneous to include the al- part of his name than it is to include the "van der" in the "van der Waals force" I thought the part of his name that led to the word “algorithm” was “al-Khwārizmī” which just means “the person from Khwarazm.” Is that not right?
That's right. It's pretty much exactly analogous to "da Vinci". The concept of the algorithm is named for the person, al-Khwarizmi, and not for the place, Khwarazm. Why would you remove the al- ?
> The concept of the algorithm is named for the person, al-Khwarizmi, and not for the place, Khwarazm. Why would you remove the al-?
Well, the word does not refer directly to that person, so the fact that its etymological origin happens to be the nisba suffix of that person's name doesn't mean it's not a mistake to include the article. Of course, we can presume that most of the people involved in the gradual coining of the English word "algorithm" (via the Latin translation of his Arabic book, followed by some mistaken association with the Greek arithmos) never even considered the etymology at any step along the way.