Kill, enTuer, frUccidere, itTöte, deMatar, esDræbe, daDoden, nl
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:00 (eleven years ago) link
That's pretty good, but isn't the German one a noun but the others verbs? What's the German word, umbringen?
The other thing is that these languages are "foreign" but they are so much a part of Western Culture (Insert ironic/moronic square quotes, Gandhi citation if needed) - music/philosophy/President's Day Free Hulu Streaming Criterions,etc- that it ends up that you don't have to try as hard as you might think to be exposed to them.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:02 (eleven years ago) link
Still highly recommend this book which is all about what happens when people learn multiple languages http://www.babelnomore.com/.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:04 (eleven years ago) link
Sorry, töte should be töten for part of speech parallelism.
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:05 (eleven years ago) link
Though umbringen is better, since töten is cognate with doden <== fhazel rule.
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:07 (eleven years ago) link
See, I'm very interested in this, and it informs my choices and discussion here, I just don't follow you all the way into widening the synonyms until they're no longer synonyms. My boundaries are blurry, I'll accept, but it's a case of you know a shed when you see one, and you know when a shed is no longer a shed.
You can see the blurriness coming into play in the last few examples though... a word like wood with related term forest. In English both "forest" and "wooden material" can be collapsed into one word, wood while Spanish has madera and bosque which cannot be used interchangeably. But French has bois, a cognate of bosque, as an acceptable word for both "forest" and "wooden material". And English does have the word bosk meaning small forest. And the word material in English is a cognate of the Spanish word for wood.
As a native English speaker, you know what's a shed and what is not a shed, but once you say the thing the Spanish call a cobiertazo is a shed, that doesn't mean you know what's a cobiertazo and what isn't. They intersect, but they aren't necessarily congruent. That's going to affect what qualifies as a cognate, even in the stricter sense we're using for this game.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:08 (eleven years ago) link
fh, I am starting to suspect you were coming up with strict rules as a way of stalling until you came up with some of your own;)
Heh... I had to let go of my stricter definition of non-cognate before I could really get into it :) I still think it would be quite a prize to find a five-language list of total non-cognates with very similar meanings! If there even are any.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:10 (eleven years ago) link
Wow, never knew material was related to madera. Don't think that breaks it though. Although I have to admit I too thought there might be some confusion between "wood, that is still in the tree" and "wood, that is ready to be firewood" but couldn't work it out and I am tired and needing to go to sleep.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:12 (eleven years ago) link
Toad, enKröte, deCrapaud, frSapo, esRospo, it
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:13 (eleven years ago) link
So you are still not buying *Shark* and *Butterfly*? Because of Icelandic?
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:14 (eleven years ago) link
Are toad and Kröte not related then?
Funny thing about toad is trying to get Spanish speakers to sort out the mapping between toad and frog and rana and sapo. Finally had to resort to asking "which do Frenchmen eat and which did the Conquistadors lick and experience hallucinations?"
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:17 (eleven years ago) link
Wiktionary is cagey with the etymology, saying that in English it's unclear. :-P
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:18 (eleven years ago) link
Nah, I think shark is pretty solid! Icelandic has a cognate with the German word, but you never said anything about Icelandic!
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:20 (eleven years ago) link
WIth the cagey etymology toad is looking good. Leee, you are the Come From Behind Kid.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:21 (eleven years ago) link
LOL thanks James!
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:24 (eleven years ago) link
And thank you for this:
Behind, enHinter, deDetrás, esDerrière, frBag, daAchter, nl
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:29 (eleven years ago) link
Wait, can we swap in Italian and swap out French and Spanish respectively to make squirrel and bat work as quadruplets?
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:30 (eleven years ago) link
This thread/fil/faden/hilo/garn delivers.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 25 February 2013 05:35 (eleven years ago) link
Another interesting one that illustrates f hazel's point (unless I'm misunderstanding): potato (derived from Spanish batata), where the roots among Dutch, German, and French are not necessarily cognate, but they all translate literally to something like apple/tuber of the earth (aardappel, Kartoffel, pomme de terre).
but it's interesting that two distant languages both call it earth apples (pomme de terre (fr), aardappel (nl)), while the German Kartoffel goes straight to a Romance language (tartuficolo (it)).
― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 06:02 (eleven years ago) link
i immediately looked up tuna to see if any languages transliterated to "chicken of the sea" and was verrrry disappointed.
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 25 February 2013 06:10 (eleven years ago) link
the shark thing is solid but in French, even though it's not used as often you can say un squale, which is exactly like the Italian squalo.
― Jibe, Monday, 25 February 2013 06:18 (eleven years ago) link
This thread is ILX's Puppy Bowl counterprogramming to OSCARS 2013.
― Plasmon, Monday, 25 February 2013 06:21 (eleven years ago) link
Potato is a twice corrupted mangling of "batata" from Taino (indigenous Haitian/Caribbean language) which explains the lack of latin-ness en español.
But that is a small sweet potato, not what we think of when think of potatoes.
The large white potato was known in Quechua/ancient Incan as "papa",.. which is why in South America, they defer to papa rather than patata... they've been eating them for many millenniums longer than the rest of us.
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Monday, 25 February 2013 06:47 (eleven years ago) link
Leider, squirrel ain't gonna work none, cos in DE it's das Eichhornchen. (the -chen suffix implies small/cute) from die Eichen (the oaks), die Eichel (the acorn)"Dichhornetwas" doesn't exist, Dickhornschaf is a bighorn sheep. ("thickhorn", literally translated).Thus, it being "Das Eichhornhen" it's too close to the French & Dutch
:(
― massaman gai, Monday, 25 February 2013 07:51 (eleven years ago) link
mist a "c" ther, din't i?
― massaman gai, Monday, 25 February 2013 08:07 (eleven years ago) link
i think its funny that almost every language - european language - uses a variation of maiz for the word corn except english. even the dutch and german is from maiz and the word corn comes from germany (word for seed).
Sorry Scott, maize is totally a word in British English.
― Just noise and screaming and no musical value at all. (Colonel Poo), Monday, 25 February 2013 08:24 (eleven years ago) link
Shark is actually pretty disparate... German and Icelandic words for shark are cognates (Haifisch and hákarl), but I can't chase down much else!
The Scandinavian languages all have Hai or Haj, i think, and the Russian (Akula) also comes from the same root. I like the speculation that Shark comes from a Mayan dialect.
― Head Cheerleader, Homecoming Queen and part-time model (ShariVari), Monday, 25 February 2013 08:50 (eleven years ago) link
Leider, squirrel ain't gonna work none, cos in DE it's das Eichhornchen. (the -chen suffix implies small/cute) from die Eichen (the oaks), die Eichel (the acorn) Thus, it being "Das Eichhornhen" it's too close to the French & Dutch
Well, only Dutch. The French écureuil comes from Old Latin sciurus which is borrowed from the Ancient Greek σκίουρος meaning... squirrel. Not related to the Germanic cognates. Middle English actually had the cognate aquerne with the German Eichhorn but squirrel borrowed from French replaced it.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 25 February 2013 08:58 (eleven years ago) link
I was going to say that squirrel and ecureuil would have the same root. I think 'éc...' from 'sc...' is a common thing in french - right now can only think of Écosse for Scotland (presumably the root there is whatever's the Latin form of Scozia) but I'm sure there are lots of others.
― Ismael Klata, Monday, 25 February 2013 09:06 (eleven years ago) link
École's another one (school)
― Just noise and screaming and no musical value at all. (Colonel Poo), Monday, 25 February 2013 09:09 (eleven years ago) link
eichureuil
― massaman gai, Monday, 25 February 2013 10:16 (eleven years ago) link
English - LollipopFrench - SucetteGerman - LutscherItalian - Lecca-LeccaSpanish - PiruliRussian - Ledenets na palochke
idk if that works. French and Germans presumably suck them, Italians lick them and Russians think of them more clinically as a sweet on a stick.
― Head Cheerleader, Homecoming Queen and part-time model (ShariVari), Monday, 25 February 2013 11:15 (eleven years ago) link
And most importantly, there is France Gall song about them.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 11:29 (eleven years ago) link
D'oh! I didn't notice that the Italian scoiattolo is related to both the English and French for squirrel so doesn't work as a substitute.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 11:35 (eleven years ago) link
Also, the chess thing is really a, horse of a different color in that it is not really an etymological question but I find it interesting in its own right.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 11:42 (eleven years ago) link
Pig, maybe:
F: CochonG: SchweinI: CerdoS: Maiale
Is that the primary pig-as-animal word in each language? i can see there's a lot of pig-as-food and synonym overlap (pork/porc/porco, swine/suino).
― woof, Monday, 25 February 2013 11:43 (eleven years ago) link
I was going to suggest:(en) grape(de) Traube(fr) raisin(es) uva
But the English comes from a French word for a bunch of grapes which has a close cousin in Italian, so I don't think I'm going to be allowed this one. Also the Italian is the same as the Spanish, so there are probably no more languages to add the pile.
― susuwatari teenage riot (a passing spacecadet), Monday, 25 February 2013 11:48 (eleven years ago) link
en: hourglassde: Sanduhrfr: sablieres: reloj de arenait: clessidra
Early medieval technology struck me as the most likely fertile ground for this game, being the coincidence of new things, difficult travel and the disintegration of Latin.
― Ismael Klata, Monday, 25 February 2013 11:55 (eleven years ago) link
Pizza Hut should change its name to Pizza Hat and be done with it IMO.
― dog latin, Monday, 25 February 2013 11:56 (eleven years ago) link
Grape seems to work despite the various near collisions. Hourglass, I dunno, with all those words for sand, even if they end up bring of different origin, has that same potential problem I had with honeysuckle, compound words based on the same underlying concept even if the constituent words are unrelated. Maybe these should be allowed but under a separate category.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 12:04 (eleven years ago) link
Heartbreaking to find non-cognates in the latin languages, then it turns out English is stinking the place up:
de: Ziegeles: ladrilloit: mattone (though NB also laterizio)fr: briqueen: brick (I was sure this'd be indigenous!)
― Ismael Klata, Monday, 25 February 2013 12:10 (eleven years ago) link
Thanks. That's one I used to have on my list to investigate.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 12:25 (eleven years ago) link
I always knew the German as Backstein and figured Brick was somehow related to it. Although maybe I was secretly scared away by charcoal briquettes.
― Stranded In the Jungle Groove (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 February 2013 12:29 (eleven years ago) link
I: CerdoS: Maiale
Is that the right way round? I've never heard of 'cerdo', but I heard the word 'maiale' a lot in Italy.
― A Yawning Chasm (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Monday, 25 February 2013 12:45 (eleven years ago) link
Yes, wrong way round, my screw up.
― woof, Monday, 25 February 2013 12:51 (eleven years ago) link
I think this works?
de: Rüsselkäferes: gorgojoit: tonchiofr: charançonen: weevil!
― thomasintrouble, Monday, 25 February 2013 13:07 (eleven years ago) link
Oh, the Swedish is like the Finnish, "poika".This happens a lot in Swedish, I think Finnish is an official language in Sweden. Just looked up "butterfly" in a Swedish dictionary and got "fjäril" which I guess is from Finnish but it turns out they also have "sommarfågel."
It's the other way around, Finnish has many derived from Swedish, because the area now known as Finland was part of Sweden for hundreds of years. (Finnish is an official language in Sweden mostly because a lot of Finns immigrated there during the 20th century, so Finnish has hasn't had much of an influence on Swedish.) "Fjäril" is Swedish, in Finnish "butterfly" is "perhonen", which I assume has Finno-Ugric roots and isn't an Indo-European cognate.
So, my theory, which is mine is that there is a certain chess piece, which moves diagonally on one specified shade of light or dark throughout the entire game which is called
En: the bishopFr: le fouDe: der LäuferEs: el alfil
The bishop, the fool, the runner, and (from the Persian) the elephant rider(!?).
This is pretty interesting, in Finnish it's called "lähetti", which means "messenger". It probably comes from "the runner" (the Swedish word for the chess piece is "the runner" too); I assume "runner" once once upon a time synonymous for "messenger" in Germanic languages, even though it isn't anymore.
As a side note, when I was young and wasn't that well versed in English, I was confused about what chess piece "knight" was supposed to be... In Finnish (as well as German and Swedish) the piece is called "steed" or "horse", in accordance with how it looks like. Took me a while to figure out the horse simply represents the cavalry, which is the explanation for the English word.
― Tuomas, Monday, 25 February 2013 13:16 (eleven years ago) link
knight in most languages is rider.....rittter / chevalier etc
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, 25 February 2013 13:19 (eleven years ago) link
hence knight rider being tautology ;_;
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, 25 February 2013 13:20 (eleven years ago) link
surely cheval/caballero come from latin caballus=horse ? maybe rider came first tho.
― thomasintrouble, Monday, 25 February 2013 13:22 (eleven years ago) link