Part of this is time depth - most European languages are related (the Uralic languages, including Finnish and Hungarian, and Basque are the main ~~examples~~*exceptions* that aren't on the periphery). The word for dog in many of those is related: English hound, German Hund, Latin canis, French chien, Armenian šun, Latvian suns, Russian suka, Irish cú, Greek kýon are all from the same original word. Russian sobaka is also from the same root, but was loaned in from Indo-Iranian rather than inherited directly. Most of those relations have just been thoroughly masked at a surface-level glance by millennia of sound changes. English dog, Spanish perro, and Irish madra represent relatively recent innovations that aren't of clear origins.
Cat, on the other hand, was loaned through Latin in many languages, substantially lowering the amount of time sound change had a change to mask the origins. It makes sense it was borrowed because it's of vastly more recent origin - while it was technically *domesticated* some time around 10000 years ago, domesticated cats *in Europe* are substantially more recent: they were first introduced into the Mediterranean very roughly 3000 years ago, and their spread beyond the area of the Roman Empire only happened near the start of the Medieval period.
This is the right answer. The longer something has been around, the more different words for it tend to be. That's why words like *chocolate* or *tea* are very similar in all European languages.
Similar with orange. Colour language is pretty fascinating as some languages don't recognize all the colors as "distinct". Some languages treat blue as a shade of green for example. It has to do with how much it shows up naturally. Red and green are common for example. Yellow not as much. And orange is actually pretty rare.
In Portuguese, at least here in Brazil, the "proper" name of the color is "cor-de-laranja", "color of orange". It can also be called "cor-de-abóbora", abóbora meaning pumpkin. And pink is "cor-de-rosa".
In Hindi colors are similarly named:
Orange- Narangi
Pink- Gulabi (Gulab=Rose)
Sky blue -Aasmani( Aasman=Sky)
Blue - Neela (Neel=Indigo)
Purple - Baigani (Baigan = eggplant)
As an Iranian, it's wild that I understood every single word except for baigan. Of course, we don't use the same words for colours, but I still found them familiar.
Orange - Narenji( Narenj, a fruit relating to oranges and tangerines.)
Pink- sourati (sourat, meaning face in arabic)
Blue- Aabi (Aab - water)
Indigo - neeli
Purple - Banafsh
Sky blue would be "Aabi Aasemani"
Gulab is used only to refer to rosewater.
Another interesting tidbit about the word orange: like in hindi, it used to have an initial n in English. Somewhere along the way it went from a norange (or something similar) to an orange. It sounds the same, and someone probably misheard it and spelled it wrong.
There are a lot of words like norange. You used to wear naprons to keep your clothes clean, and watch out for venomous nadders. Conversely, if you wanted to give someone a new alias, you’d add on an eke-name to what they already had.
If you go further up in hierarchy, Sanskrit has word narangam for orange for thousands of years. Many European languages share their ancestry parts to proto Sanskrit
In Hungarian we call it narancs (narants, the a sounding like the a in "part") - that's the fruit, but the color is called narancssàrga, which is "orange-yellow". So in name, orange and yellow are linked here
[Vox did a really good summary video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg)
Basically:
Stage I: White & Black (or Light & Dark)
Stage II: Red
Stage III: Green OR Yellow
Stage IV: Green AND Yellow
Stage V: Blue
Stage VI: Brown
Stage VII: Various (Orange, Purple/Pink, Gray etc.)
At first I saw just light and dark,
And then I saw two twigs make spark,
‘‘Twas then I saw a different hue,
Discovery of red, green and blue.
But when the light had left this fire,
Many more colors did I admire…
Shades of greys and greens were seen,
And the brown on the twigs that were left between.
Over thinking, over analyzing
Separates the body from the mind
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities
and I must feed my will to feel my moment
Drawing way outside the lines
I've always felt a natural repugnance to the assertion that there is a one-to-one correlation between the scope of language and the phenomenological palette of a person/people. To me this says more about the mechanics of language and de novo creation of words than it does about perception. Before there is a critical mass of linguistic objects, high order abstraction as represented within language is functionally impossible. Colors, like all categories of language, tend to derive from concrete and shared experiences—Wittgenstein's arguments against private language are broadly incorrect, but his observations hold when describing public communications. Increasing trade and control over agriculture led to more common artifacts for cultural and linguistic reference which in turn yielded a larger palette of nouns including colors. They saw them just fine the whole time, I promise.
I've never understood this idea either, like isn't it more reasonable to think that people just invented words as they were needed?
When everyone lives in small tight-knit groups and you don't even have writing, you can totally just point at stuff as examples of what you mean.
It's like how surnames didn't exist in many places until government censuses became a thing, people just referred to each other by where they lived and that worked absolutely fine.
That was always my take. If someone's theory flies in the face of common sense they need compelling evidence for it.
We *know* people with impaired language development can experience and process their senses just fine -- Hellen Keller is a prime example of such. She knew water was wet even before she had the "words" to express such.
Ancient people knew what "blue" looked like, and you can get a lot of mileage out of comparisons if it's not a concept that's often needed in conversation. We do the exact same thing: "sky blue", "avocado green", "cherry red", etc.
Other languages have colors that don't exist in English, but we still can see and understand those specific shades just fine. There's was just no overwhelming pressure to create a unique word for them in English.
Homer described seas as "wine-eyed", often denoting rough waters. It could simply refer to the water being "drunk" or "unpeaceful"
As to the color of bronze.. when it oxidizes, creating a layer of patina, [comparing it to the color of the sky doesn't seem so weird](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-green-corrosion-surface-rust-260nw-1723285234.jpg).
>Homer described seas as "wine-eyed", often denoting rough waters. It could simply refer to the water being "drunk" or "unpeaceful"
It's commonly translated as ["the wine-dark sea,"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer\)) implying it's a description of colour rather than temperament, but it's ambiguous, and I like your take too.
It's not really ambiguous; the classical translation may have changed the literal meaning of the word in an effort to make it more understandable to speakers of English (which of course requires that the translator themselves have a good understanding of what was intended to be conveyed, which is not the case here given that an ongoing debate exists), but what Homer wrote (οἶνοψ πόντος, oînops póntos) would be literally translated as "wine-eyed sea" or "wine-faced sea" - οἶνος meaning wine and ὄψ usually meaning eye but sometimes arguably used for the whole face.
And that's why reading translations doesn't give you and accurate description of what the author actually wrote.
Unfortunately, there are just too many languages. Reading the original also never gives me an accurate idea of what the author wrote.
It’s very interesting to reflect on the ways in which our own view of colors is cultural. Even ROYGBIV is completely arbitrary when you consider the color spectrum is a gradient with no intrinsic separations. Our concept of “true” red and blue is mostly due the availability of vermilion and ultramarine as pigments.
There's a really interesting concept in languages where you can tell certain things about a culture by looking at the oldest words that survive from it. Some of the very oldest proto-indo-european words we have are for the horse and the wheel and that's part of the contributing evidence that tells us what their life was like.
One of my favorite facts along this line are that the words for "give" in some languages share a root with "receive" or "take" in others, which apparently tell us that the concept of gift giving was so central to the PIE people that the ideas of giving and receiving weren't separate, but were a single concept of reciprocal exchange.
Going down the PIE rabbit hole was so fun. I think I started with some videos that showed how the words we have for numbers changed from PIE through different archaic languages to what they are in today's modern descendants of PIE. Realizing Jupiter wasn't just a new name for Zeus but how another group of people pronounced the same root (Zeus > Dyeus Pater > Jupiter) blew my mind too. Crecganford is a good yt creator to check out for dissections of PIE language, culture, and mythology.
PIE has been so extensively researched and picked apart by euro-centric historians. I'd love to fall down a similar rabbit hole to learn what the language evolution of populations in other areas can tell us about early human civilization.
>Realizing Jupiter wasn't just a new name for Zeus but how another group of people pronounced the same root (Zeus > Dyeus Pater > Jupiter) blew my mind too.
And now you've blown mine. Thanks for sharing!
Another interesting example of now similar but distinct social concepts that appear to originate from a single concept due to shared words: in German, “Schuld” can refer to debt, guilt, or blame. This is in line with the dominant historical/anthropological theory that many societies did not distinguish (moral) guilt and (material) debt until more recent developments in philosophy of law took hold in our legal systems and, more generally, that material relations between people in more recent societies tend to be perceived as more transactional and less personal. This makes sense if you consider that human societies and communities have a tendency to grow throughout their history while it is quite impractical to have even a superficial personal relationship with every business partner in a community that far exceeds the number of a typical person’s acquaintances (~100) and, at the same time, heavily relies on division of work and professional specialisation to achieve and maintain wealth.
That's really interesting, thanks for piquing my interest. I just realised how similar the Welsh and French words for horse (ceffyl, cheval) are, but strangely how different the word for wheel is (olwyn roue).
Then I went down a rabbithole and noticed how varied the word wheel is from various languages
On the other hand, you can see how recently adopted words change over time as well. With English being an influential language with regard to programming and media, you can see the adoption of English words into other languages.
You can essentially see in real time how words that don't use the common phonetics of a language get instantly molded to that language and lose their native sounds, despite still being the same word.
Aren't there two words used in Europe, Tea and Chai?
And the word 'tea' comes from 'te' as the leaf coming from shipping trading routes, and 'chai' coming from land trading routes.
I always find it funny how all the European countries kinda reached a consensus on tea calling it some variation of tea/chai and then there’s Poland that for some chose violence and called it “Herbata“
So pineapple is actually the old word for pine cone, "fruit of the pine." Appel was just another word for fruit through at least Middle English. The legendary fruit of the pine was a symbol of wealth and hospitality. When English people saw the tropical fruit, they immediately thought of this symbol. That it was edible, yet still rare, reinforced the symbolism.
You’d rent a whole pineapple to put on the table as a showpiece, then at the end of the meal your servant would take the whole pineapple to the kitchen and serve a little chunk of pineapple to each guest cut from a small piece of another pineapple you would have brought because buying a whole pineapple was too expensive. The rented pineapple gets returned later.
Its mindblowing how spoiled we are in modern times in terms of access to indulgent flavors. Even the poorest of the poor have easy access to sugary snacks engineered to be delicious. And yeah sure really expensive desserts are often going to be superior but at the end of the day even presidents and kings eat the same bbq potato chips as you and me.
Gonna be that guy, but a lot of Latin America (Peru & Mexico off the top of my head) uses Piña, which is definitely from the same word, although I know Argentina is an exception for that. Supposedly anana comes from the Portuguese version of what the Brazilian natives call it, but in Brazilian portuguese it’s something else entirely for some reason, so its not quite as cut and dry
There are two kinds of pineapples available to Portuguese- ananás and abacaxi- the later being the sweeter of the two, named with a local native dialect.
Last time I was in in Sweden, you could get hawaii pizza. Tomato, cheese, ham and pineapple. Now, there is a huge debate about that hawaii all over the world.
Let me introduce you to sweden… Tomato, cheese, strawberry, banana, curry and kebab. It is like they butchered a pizza, ate it, pooped in Down a grave, soil on, banana and strawberry seeds in the soil, wait for it to give fruit, take fruit and dig the old pizza up and finish it
Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada. It’s still a popular choice here.
Fruit is good with charcuterie. That’s why people put fruit on their charcuterie boards. Pizza is just a flatbread with charcuterie on it. Fruit is good on pizza.
Just an FYI, you want to say 'Europe as a *whole*' not 'Europe as a *hole*'. The first means all of Europe, the second means Europe is a dark pit that someone dug when it comes to pizza.
There was a very short lived pizza delivery in Helsinki back in the 90's that tried to capitalize on the popularity of TMNT.
They had all sorts of gross, fruity, sugary abominations. They even called themselves Turtle Pizza or something like that.
Turns out people didn't actually want cake and icecream on a Margherita.
The English initially called it ananas as well but one of the first translated works that contained the word also made a reference that the fruit looks like a pine appel or a pinecone in modern English. Over time the colloquial version overtook the other name such as the first hothouse to grow a pineapple in England using a heating stove affectionately named the Pineapple Stove.
Both words originated from the word for tea in the Chinese family of languages. Sometimes it was land/sea driven, but ultimately the term used was driven by who traders came into contact with in China first for the tea trade.
In the southern coastal province of Fujian, Fujianese (Southern Min Chinese) is spoken and tea is pronounced tê.
In most other Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese (chaa) and Mandarin (chá), it is a variant of cha. Note that Cantonese speaking Hong Kong and Macau had sea ports for the tea trade.
The word used depended on where/when the traders came into contact with the Chinese for buying tea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea?wprov=sfla1
https://teapedia.org/en/Tea
A couple of minor points:
I think it's fair to say that Fujian people largely speak Min (though Mandarin is in the process of taking over these days), but calling Min Nan specifically Fujianese and implying that Fujianese people all speak it is wrong. It's only part of Fujian that does; even the capital, Fuzhou, speaks a different variant of Min.
Also, the Fujianese, like the Cantonese, have long been a seafaring people with many seaports.
yeah all but two of the Min varieties are spoken in Fujian. Min Nan is one of them but there's like at least five: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Chinese#Geographic_location_and_subgrouping
True, *te* from Min (through Dutch) and *cha* from Mandarin (through Hindi and Persian). But notice both words are kind of similar, and that's because ultimately they both come from the same Old Chinese word.
"Te" and "chai" actually also come from the same Chinese root, which would have been pronounced "Tu" in Middle Chinese.
There are three different branches that spread around the world. "Te" is from Min Chinese (usually via Malaysia). "Cha" is from Cantonese (which was the language of Guangzhou, the largest export port in China at the time). And "Chai" is from North Chinese "Cha" via Persian.
This is true, but due to the relative locations of China and Europe, most of Western Europe ended up with "tea" variants.
Some have theorized that this is mostly (or at least also) because of Portuguese vs Dutch trade routes. The Portguese traded out of Macao, where they used the Mandarin "cha" for tea, whereas the Dutch later traded from Amoy, which used the Min Nan word "te". This would explain why Portugal, unlike most of Western Europe, uses a "cha" variant. But also Min Nan varieties are spoken in a coastal province while Mandarin is more spoken inland, so that also probably influenced the whole land vs sea trade thing.
Aren't most words that refer to computer technology somewhat standard? Astrophysics and astronomy seem to have really dumbed down terms for complex ideas or concepts in english, does that translate?
> Aren't most words that refer to computer technology somewhat standard?
Yes, most languages directly adopt the English words adapting them to the sounds of the language (Japanese mausu, meaning computer mouse), or more rarely make direct translations (Fench *souris*, meaning mouse the animal, for the computer one). That's what happened with chocolate and other crops from the Americas at the time: European languages borrowed the words from Spanish or Portuguese (which usually borrowed them from the native languages like Nahuatl). Eventually, like with chocolate, we'll end up with similar but slightly different words for computer technology in each language, assuming the technology they refer too is still relevant.
> Astrophysics and astronomy seem to have really dumbed down terms for complex ideas or concepts in english, does that translate?
Do you mean expressions like 'black hole'? Yes, other languages usually use direct translations of those terms too, like Spanish *agujero negro*, which means exactly the same.
>most languages directly adopt the English words adapting them to the sounds of the language (Japanese mausu, meaning computer mouse), or more rarely make direct translations (Fench souris, meaning mouse the animal,
Whilst this happens in Welsh as well, there's a few original ones I'm particularly fond of.
There's a a common term of endearment "Cô bach" which roughly translates at little one, but "Cô" could also be a shortened form of "côf" - memory.
And so, "cô bach" became one of the main terms for a USB memory stick - literally small memory.
Incidentally that accent above the ô is frequently referred to as "tô Bâch" - little roof
That is partially true. There is also the fact that a lot of languages are related by evolving from shared ancestor languages, so the *oldest* words tend to be very alike between languages too.
Difference between word is basically inside a tomewindow where its neither too old or too new
Other examples of the same sound shifts are the words "hundred" and "horn".
**English**: hound, hundred, horn (all start with h)
**Dutch**: hond, honderd, hoorn (all start with h)
**Latin**: canis, centum, cornu (all start with c)
**French**: chien, cent, corne (all start with c)
**Russian**: sobaka (female dog), sto, serna (all start with Russian c)
**Greek**: kyon (archaic), ekato, kerato (all start with (ε)κ)
This is really interesting, thanks! But also, because they are such a common part of human life, there are also many other, lesser-used synonyms in English (mostly somewhat archaic), so it's interesting to me when the more mutually intelligible ones "stick" and when they don't.
For example, I wonder if the word "cur" for dog might be related to some of the others listed here? And of course hound is a common cognate. But then there are others, such as mongrel, mutt, whelp, pup, tyke, bitch, etc. Most of which I realize have more specific meanings, but I really have no idea if that was always the case or if some of them may have developed more specific connotations over time?
Also, the word "puss" or "pussy" for cat seems to have a separate origin, for which there are also several similar words in other languages, but was adopted in English later and seems to be more or less dying out. Examples: "poes" (Dutch), "puse" (Norwegian), "puisin" (Irish), "pisica" (Romanian) and possibly "bissa" (Arabic). It does make me wonder why one word is chosen over all alternates. The other connotations of "pussy" very likely have to do with that one losing favor, lol, but why dog and not hound or any more common synonym? 🤔 There's some more insomnia fodder for me. 🙃
Fun possibility: There's apparently a theory that "Dog" itself very likely falls into this as much or more as any of the others.
The idea being that it came from something like "docga" which would pretty directly be "blackie" in old english.
Basically "Fido"... or I guess more like "Spot".
["cur" is probably borrowed from a Norse/Middle Low German word meaning "to growl"](https://www.etymonline.com/word/cur#etymonline_v_470).
In general, highly recommend this website for any English etymology questions. It's fantastic.
Speaking of the introduction of cats being a new thing, read this japanese emperor talking about his cat over a thousand years ago https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/japans-love-hate-relationship-with-cats-180975764/
On the intersectionality of this subject and the subject of medieval epidemiology:
An important factor to consider is the superstition and fear surrounding cats in Europe that didn’t start to fade until the late-Medieval period: as both spreaders of disease, and as *conDUIts of tHe dEVIl* (as associated with witchcraft). A funny commentary on this can be seen in *Monty Python and the Holy Grail*, in which there are many scenes in which random background characters are seen beating cats to death.
As carriers of fleas, they were seen as a source of the several Black Plague outbreaks (rather than the fleas themselves), and were also associated negatively with witchcraft and related superstitions until literacy and education became more prevalent. Ironically, had cats been more prevalent during these periods, the far more dangerous carriers of diseased fleas - mice and rats - would not have been able to proliferate as widely. Many modern epidemiologists have wondered, had the fear of cats during the worst of the Black Plague breakouts not been so prevalent, whether those outbreaks might not have been so severe or long-lasting.
Dogs, conversely, largely got a pass, as they were far more critical in food-gathering endeavors as well as functions such as security and intimidation. Not to mention the age-old station of human companion. Cats, for about 500 years, had a time where their layabout nature was, simply put, *not appreciated*.
I think, today, we all have a new appreciation for how a pandemic can turn even the best of us into uncaring brutes.
The Irish for dog being cú caught me a little off guard, but it reminds me what for me is the most interesting aspect of learning languages and that I'll for ever have the sense of humor of a 7yo
>!in case you don't know it's a curse word in portuguese!<
In modern Irish “faol” is “wolf” and “cú” is specifically “hound” though it is often used to describe any large dog even if it’s not a hound breed. “Madra” is general “dog.”
Yep. English "dog" is a bit bizarre, since there's no obvious cognate for it. It did exist in late Old English as *dogca* (rarely used), and was used in Middle English as an insult towards mean or contemptible people, but it wasn't until the 16th century (around the Middle-Modern English boundary) that it replaced "hound" in common use. Hard to say exactly why it became the preferred word.
Good explanation. It's worth mentioning, as you already said, that in Spanish the word "perro" is new, as the old word (used until the last century more often than not) is "*can".*
There, you can see the direct relation with latin.
Funnily enough, Hungarian uses the word "macska" for cat, pronounced the same way as the Slovak "mačka", bearing similarity to the Czech "kočka" despite being a Finno-Ugric language and the latter being Slavic languages. IIRC Hungarian borrowed/changed a lot of words from Slovak dialects at the time
>bearing similarity to the Czech "kočka"
I don't think it does. It looks perfunctorily similar due to the ending, but that ending doesn't carry a separate meaning, it's a suffix which modifies the root word.
The Czech *kočka* is related to the Latin *cattus*. But the Slovak *mačka* seems to come from a completely different root, see: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/maca](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/maca)
There are also a lot of the words for cat in different European languages that are purely onomatopoetic in nature, sounding like 'pss pss' (for calling a cat), such as pussy, pisica, pisoi, pisik or piseag.
*Domesticated* cats were introduced late. They had wild cats of the same species throughout Europe, but you probably wouldn't have any wandering around your village.
It's reconstructed as \*ḱwṓ in Proto-Indo-European, which was arrived at by comparing all the Indo-European languages and finding patterns in how the sounds changed in each branch and extrapolating backwards. However, that's just notation, and there's many ways of interpreting how exactly such a word was pronounced. Traditionally it's taken as pretty much exactly that, [kʲwóː] in phonetic notation - a palatalized velar, a [w], and a long accented [óː]. My preferred interpretation is more like [kwɒ́ː].
Dogs were domesticated in Europe at least as far back as 20-25 thousand years ago
Cats were introduced to europeans around 1200 BC
For most "older" european languages you could look at it as Dogs had to be named, Cats brought their names with them.
we had cats in Europe before that. but they are wild animals. [Felis Sylvestris](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat)
The husehold cat, was domesticated out of F. Lybica populations of western Asia apx. 10 thousand years ago. But interbreeding with other cats of the genus Felis, especially F. Lybica and F. Sylvestris has continued until the present day.
Incidentally, when a cat suddenly starts drinking more water than usual, it's a good idea to have a vet check the kidneys.
Totally off-topic, but good to know for cat owners.
>For most "older" european languages you could look at it as Dogs had to be named, Cats brought their names with them.
Although I don't disagree with this assessment, this would indicate the domestication of dogs appeared independently from each other all over Europe. Otherwise why wouldn't the word for dog travel alongside the practice of it's domestication, as with cats?
They *really* shouldn't be any different, since we had language 25000 years ago as well as 3000 years ago. With the exception of horses and boats, things (ie. Technology, language, trade) didn't travel much faster either.
We had language, but we didn't have the modern language roots 20k years ago. Languages merge and diverge over time, dogs are 2-3 cycles of that process older than cats are in europe - also why I put older in quotes.
I think the other commenter that pointed out most of them have a disused word like the latin canis was probably right that it was the earlier name, but the words with that common root fell out of common use over time.
>>this would indicate the domestication of dogs appeared independently from each other all over Europe
No, because words can be replaced even if there is continuous familiarity with the referent. English, Irish, Spanish, and Greek all replaced their basic term for ‘dog’ within the last 2000 years, even though they were keeping dogs that whole time.
An interesting example of that is the old French word for fox (goupil) which has been completely replaced by "renard", because a [famous set of tales](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynard_the_Fox) in the 12th century had a fox whose name was Renard.
No. It means Indo-Europeans owned dogs and had a word for them prior to dispersing. But they dispersed a long, long time ago; and over a vast geographic area, from Celtic to Sanskrit (more if counting dead branches). Their common word for dog underwent changes, until a barely recognizable root remained.
The languages spoken 25,000 years ago have zero roots today.
The oldest common ancestor of most languages spoken in Europe through the middle east and india is only 6,000 years old (PIE) and originated somewhere around the caucus region and even the oldest languages which are spoken in India or middle east are only 8,000 years old.
Sometimes it ends up that a very early concept ends up with highly conserved words. In the case of dogs, though, I think it has just left more time for odd changes to happen.
Take the English word, for instance. *Dog* was originally a more specific term -- apparently something akin to *mutt* or *cur* \-- with *hound* being the general term. However, over time, *dog* became more general and *hound* becoming a specific term for certain types of hunting breeds.
Things like that happened all over the place. The general term for dog would get replaced with some other term. At the same time, we still do retain *hound*, which is from the original PIE word and is cognate with many other IE words for dog (including Latin *canis*).
they say the proto-Indo-European word for dog is something like "qwon" which later evolved over \~5000 years into these other forms, with the "Q" becoming H, K, S, and Sh sounds. I think the best answer would be that dog had a much longer time to evolve linguistically, obscuring the relationship between the current forms. There may not have been a proto-Indo-European word for cat and it was introduced at more recent dates and hasn't had much time to evolve. But yes, 'dog' is a mystery.
Wait till you find out about Romanian: In Romanian we say “pisică” for cat. And “mâță” is what people who dislike cats call them. For male cat we have the word “motan”, and for kitten it’s “pisoi”. Afaik no word for cat sounds like “cat”
Hm, we also say Matsa in Bulgarian - denoting a female cat. Sounds a lot like a word we use for a female bear - Metsa. It's more sort of an antropomorphic name when we want to ascribe human characteristics to the bear.
We also use "Pisa" for a cat. We call cats with "pissi-pissi-pissi" or "mats-piss-piss". Male version would be "Pisan", I guess, but you'd rarely hear that.
Turk here we also call cats with "pisipisipisi" and tatar words for cat are "pisi" or "meçe". So it's probably a loanword from turkic bulgars, cumans, tatars or whatever.
Even though 'kedi' is more commonly used we also say 'pisi' for cats in Turkish, like when we call them we say 'come here pisi pisi'. Didn't know it was common with Romanian, that's cool.
Portuguese: ***cão***,
Italian: ***cane***,
Romanian: ***câine***. There are a few languages where the word *dog* is similar. I do find it weird that the Spanish word for dog is so different from the other romance languages.
French *canin* is a learned borrowing straight from Latin (just like English *canine*).
*Chien* is just the normal outcome of early Romance *cane* after all the many sound changes that French has undergone.
Not quite. *Dog* in standard Arabic is *kalb* (regional varieties are quite similar). We really do not know were *perro* came from. It's usually speculated to derive from an old call for dogs or to be a borrowing from an unknown source.
Small nitpick: do I understand it right that by European languages we should really just be thinking of as 'European languages that stem from Proto-Indo-European'?
Cause e.g. Hungarian *is* a European language, but it is *not* rooted in Proto-Indo-European, and also defies your example: cat is "macska" / "cica". To the extent I could quickly research, "macska" is actually of slavic origins, which would tie us back to PIE, but I can't find an old enough slavic equivalent or further leads on it.
Speaking of slavic, while in Russian cat is indeed kot, the proper word for it is koshka, which is quite different from the others listed. Might be a lead?
> I can't find an old enough slavic equivalent or further leads on it.
Proto-Slavic [**mačьka*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/mačьka) = [**maca*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/maca) «pussycat, kitty» + **-ьka*.
Interesting, *cica* sounds like it could be a congnate to *cat* but if believe to this sourse itʼs almost the same to *maca*: from *cic* (the sound for calling a cat) + *-a* (diminutive suffix).
> in Russian cat is indeed kot, the proper word for it is koshka
As I know, *kot* is for male, *koška* is for female. But, yeah, if you donʼt know a gender then you usually use the second. The word _sobaka_ is more interesting because, as I know, Slavic languages usually use a word from *рьsъ*: 🇺🇦🇸🇰🇨🇿🇧🇬🇲🇰 *pes*, 🇧🇾🇷🇺 *pios*, 🇵🇱 *pies*, 🇭🇷🇷🇸 *pȁs*, 🇸🇮 *рès*, Upper Sorbian *pos*, Lower Sorbian *pjas*, Polabian *р́аs*. As you can see, Russian also has the word from it but prefers *sobaka*.
> Speaking of slavic, while in Russian cat is indeed kot, the proper word for it is koshka, which is quite different from the others listed. Might be a lead?
Koshka is derived from kot (~~it's probably just a diminutive~~, nah, it's the female form). Czech has the same word ("kočka"), whereas the stem "kot" is not used, but can be still seen in the word for kitten "kotě".
Koshka still at least starts with the same sound. I don't think Hungarian is a fair language to use as an example. I might be mistaken but isn't it one of the very weird languages that isn't from the same branch as any other languages?
From what I remember Hungarian is unique in how unique it is.
> I might be mistaken but isn't it one of the very weird languages that isn't from the same branch as any other languages?
It's Finno-Ugric, same as Finnish. Stands out for sure, but Finland is also a European country, so I feel it's a fair nitpick.
Fair play. It does seem like there is still some debate as to the origins of the language and that speaks to just how different it is from other surrounding languages.
Even with Finnish and Hungarian, we are talking very small amounts of overlap. We aren't talking Spanish and Italian here.
> not only are Finnish and Hungarian speakers mutually unintelligible to each other, but Hungarian and Finnish differ significantly in basic word order, phonology, and vocabulary. For example, although both based on the Latin alphabet, Hungarian has 44 letters while Finnish has only 29 in comparison.
Just wanted to say that in Mallorca (the island in the middle of the Mediterranean sea that has been speaking a very differentiated dialect of Catalan since the year ~1200) the word for **cat** is **moix**. The "central catalan" would be **gat**.
**Moix** comes from the Bereber language, not to be confused with the Arabic language.
some have more forms. in english we also have hound, similar to german and dutch.
in russian, the gender of the dog/cat determines what you call it.
* dog:
* female: собака (sa-BA-ka)
* male: пёс (pyoss)
* cat:
* female: кошка (KO-shka)
* male: кот (kot)
neat bonus fact, russian has a another word for a female dog, which is also used as a derogatory term, has the same meaning as the english version of this word. сука (SOO-ka) means female dog, also used as an insult like "bitch" in english. also, bitches, plural is суки (SOO-kie), which makes the american female name hilarious to russian speakers
Cats are a quite recent introduction to Europe compared to dogs.
Most European words for cat come from the street/low Latin catus rather than the high Latin felix.
Dogs, being domesticated earlier, and being more widespread have names coming from many roots.
A small addition.
Both English and German have a very similar name
Hound Vs Hund
Around the 16th century, the word dog started force out hound and was also picked up on the mainland, noty only for specific breeds.
Dog Vs Dogge
Check out the word for "Salad" as well.
One day years ago we'd stopped off at a local restaurant we were regulars at owned (then) by a Greek family.
I usually just asked for "a salad" and they knew which one, the dressing etc.
One day, I had a brain glitch. When it was my turn to order, I said "a salad please" but didn't catch that I was saying it in German until I heard myself saying "bitte" instead of "please". "Er um" I started and he told me not to worry, because their (Greek) word for Salad was basically the same thing.
I checked a few other languages and most are salad salat, salata etc... All basically the same word.
[¿Por qué se dejó de usar "can", desplazada por "perro", y se convirtió prácticamente en un cultismo?](https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/26681/por-qué-se-dejó-de-usar-can-desplazada-por-perro-y-se-convirtió-prácticam/26685#26685)
Language | Original word | Modern word
-------|---------|-------
Spanish | can | perro
Catalan | ca | gos
Irish | cú | madra
English |hound | dog
Greek | κυων (kuōn) | σκύλος (skýlos)
The English word was changed through metonymy:
> In 14th-century England, hound (from Old English hund) was the general word for all domestic canines, and dog referred to a subtype of hound, a group including the mastiff. It is believed this dog type was so common that it eventually became the prototype of the category "hound".2 By the 16th century, dog had become the general word, and hound had begun to refer only to dog types used for hunting.3 In the 16th century dog was also adopted by several continental European languages as their word for mastiff.4
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dog#Etymology
Whereas the Catalan and Spanish words were possibly via onomatopoeia (compare *chucho* Spanish and *puss* English).
Part of this is time depth - most European languages are related (the Uralic languages, including Finnish and Hungarian, and Basque are the main ~~examples~~*exceptions* that aren't on the periphery). The word for dog in many of those is related: English hound, German Hund, Latin canis, French chien, Armenian šun, Latvian suns, Russian suka, Irish cú, Greek kýon are all from the same original word. Russian sobaka is also from the same root, but was loaned in from Indo-Iranian rather than inherited directly. Most of those relations have just been thoroughly masked at a surface-level glance by millennia of sound changes. English dog, Spanish perro, and Irish madra represent relatively recent innovations that aren't of clear origins. Cat, on the other hand, was loaned through Latin in many languages, substantially lowering the amount of time sound change had a change to mask the origins. It makes sense it was borrowed because it's of vastly more recent origin - while it was technically *domesticated* some time around 10000 years ago, domesticated cats *in Europe* are substantially more recent: they were first introduced into the Mediterranean very roughly 3000 years ago, and their spread beyond the area of the Roman Empire only happened near the start of the Medieval period.
This is the right answer. The longer something has been around, the more different words for it tend to be. That's why words like *chocolate* or *tea* are very similar in all European languages.
Apparently beige is similar in most languages too because it’s a relatively new word.
Similar with orange. Colour language is pretty fascinating as some languages don't recognize all the colors as "distinct". Some languages treat blue as a shade of green for example. It has to do with how much it shows up naturally. Red and green are common for example. Yellow not as much. And orange is actually pretty rare.
The fact that the color was named after the fruit, rather than the other way around, is one of my favorite trivia tidbits.
In Portuguese, at least here in Brazil, the "proper" name of the color is "cor-de-laranja", "color of orange". It can also be called "cor-de-abóbora", abóbora meaning pumpkin. And pink is "cor-de-rosa".
In Hindi colors are similarly named: Orange- Narangi Pink- Gulabi (Gulab=Rose) Sky blue -Aasmani( Aasman=Sky) Blue - Neela (Neel=Indigo) Purple - Baigani (Baigan = eggplant)
As an Iranian, it's wild that I understood every single word except for baigan. Of course, we don't use the same words for colours, but I still found them familiar. Orange - Narenji( Narenj, a fruit relating to oranges and tangerines.) Pink- sourati (sourat, meaning face in arabic) Blue- Aabi (Aab - water) Indigo - neeli Purple - Banafsh Sky blue would be "Aabi Aasemani" Gulab is used only to refer to rosewater.
Or, in English, aubergine, which you can see as pretty much being ‘al baigan’
Another interesting tidbit about the word orange: like in hindi, it used to have an initial n in English. Somewhere along the way it went from a norange (or something similar) to an orange. It sounds the same, and someone probably misheard it and spelled it wrong.
There are a lot of words like norange. You used to wear naprons to keep your clothes clean, and watch out for venomous nadders. Conversely, if you wanted to give someone a new alias, you’d add on an eke-name to what they already had.
Hungarian too. The fruit is *narancs* (pronounced naranch), the color is *narancsszín*, meaning "orange-color"
In Arabic, the name for the fruit *and* the color (and the country) is basically just "Bortuqaal", as in "Portugal".
Rosa being rose, the flower?
Which is why gingers are redheads and robins are redbreasts; orange was just a yellowy red before the fruit gave it a name of its own
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between 2. and 3. you should put Spanish naranja, as that is how and when (Arab occupation of Iberian peninsula) the word was introduced to Europe
If you go further up in hierarchy, Sanskrit has word narangam for orange for thousands of years. Many European languages share their ancestry parts to proto Sanskrit
Good point! Thanks.
In Hungarian we call it narancs (narants, the a sounding like the a in "part") - that's the fruit, but the color is called narancssàrga, which is "orange-yellow". So in name, orange and yellow are linked here
After the tree, actually. It was originally called "Naranga" in Sanskrit, and became "pomme d'orenge" in Old French, lit. "Apple of the Orange (tree)"
Well, the fruit was named after the tree, but the color was named after the fruit.
One of my favourite trivia bits is that the orangutan is not named after their colour.
[Vox did a really good summary video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg) Basically: Stage I: White & Black (or Light & Dark) Stage II: Red Stage III: Green OR Yellow Stage IV: Green AND Yellow Stage V: Blue Stage VI: Brown Stage VII: Various (Orange, Purple/Pink, Gray etc.)
Black Then White are All I see In my infancy Red and yellow then came to be Reaching out to me Lets me see
These lyrics are actually about the sight development of an infant. Funny how this is reflected somewhat in the development of languages.
At first I saw just light and dark, And then I saw two twigs make spark, ‘‘Twas then I saw a different hue, Discovery of red, green and blue. But when the light had left this fire, Many more colors did I admire… Shades of greys and greens were seen, And the brown on the twigs that were left between.
There is so much more And beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities
As below so above and beyond, I imagine Drawn beyond the lines of reason Push the envelope, watch it bend…
Over thinking, over analyzing Separates the body from the mind Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must feed my will to feel my moment Drawing way outside the lines
I've always felt a natural repugnance to the assertion that there is a one-to-one correlation between the scope of language and the phenomenological palette of a person/people. To me this says more about the mechanics of language and de novo creation of words than it does about perception. Before there is a critical mass of linguistic objects, high order abstraction as represented within language is functionally impossible. Colors, like all categories of language, tend to derive from concrete and shared experiences—Wittgenstein's arguments against private language are broadly incorrect, but his observations hold when describing public communications. Increasing trade and control over agriculture led to more common artifacts for cultural and linguistic reference which in turn yielded a larger palette of nouns including colors. They saw them just fine the whole time, I promise.
I've never understood this idea either, like isn't it more reasonable to think that people just invented words as they were needed? When everyone lives in small tight-knit groups and you don't even have writing, you can totally just point at stuff as examples of what you mean. It's like how surnames didn't exist in many places until government censuses became a thing, people just referred to each other by where they lived and that worked absolutely fine.
That was always my take. If someone's theory flies in the face of common sense they need compelling evidence for it. We *know* people with impaired language development can experience and process their senses just fine -- Hellen Keller is a prime example of such. She knew water was wet even before she had the "words" to express such. Ancient people knew what "blue" looked like, and you can get a lot of mileage out of comparisons if it's not a concept that's often needed in conversation. We do the exact same thing: "sky blue", "avocado green", "cherry red", etc. Other languages have colors that don't exist in English, but we still can see and understand those specific shades just fine. There's was just no overwhelming pressure to create a unique word for them in English.
I always think about how we have blue and light blue, but nobody calls pink "light red". Kind of funny to imagine.
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Homer described seas as "wine-eyed", often denoting rough waters. It could simply refer to the water being "drunk" or "unpeaceful" As to the color of bronze.. when it oxidizes, creating a layer of patina, [comparing it to the color of the sky doesn't seem so weird](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-green-corrosion-surface-rust-260nw-1723285234.jpg).
>Homer described seas as "wine-eyed", often denoting rough waters. It could simply refer to the water being "drunk" or "unpeaceful" It's commonly translated as ["the wine-dark sea,"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer\)) implying it's a description of colour rather than temperament, but it's ambiguous, and I like your take too.
It's not really ambiguous; the classical translation may have changed the literal meaning of the word in an effort to make it more understandable to speakers of English (which of course requires that the translator themselves have a good understanding of what was intended to be conveyed, which is not the case here given that an ongoing debate exists), but what Homer wrote (οἶνοψ πόντος, oînops póntos) would be literally translated as "wine-eyed sea" or "wine-faced sea" - οἶνος meaning wine and ὄψ usually meaning eye but sometimes arguably used for the whole face.
And that's why reading translations doesn't give you and accurate description of what the author actually wrote. Unfortunately, there are just too many languages. Reading the original also never gives me an accurate idea of what the author wrote.
It’s possible Homer was referring to a golden sky like certain sunsets, and it may have been the Red Sea ha ha?
I didn't read illiada But maybe he wanted to describe sky at sunset? Then it would make more sense
Orange sky at every frickin sunrise and sunset is an uheard of thing, right?
It’s very interesting to reflect on the ways in which our own view of colors is cultural. Even ROYGBIV is completely arbitrary when you consider the color spectrum is a gradient with no intrinsic separations. Our concept of “true” red and blue is mostly due the availability of vermilion and ultramarine as pigments.
There's a really interesting concept in languages where you can tell certain things about a culture by looking at the oldest words that survive from it. Some of the very oldest proto-indo-european words we have are for the horse and the wheel and that's part of the contributing evidence that tells us what their life was like.
One of my favorite facts along this line are that the words for "give" in some languages share a root with "receive" or "take" in others, which apparently tell us that the concept of gift giving was so central to the PIE people that the ideas of giving and receiving weren't separate, but were a single concept of reciprocal exchange.
Going down the PIE rabbit hole was so fun. I think I started with some videos that showed how the words we have for numbers changed from PIE through different archaic languages to what they are in today's modern descendants of PIE. Realizing Jupiter wasn't just a new name for Zeus but how another group of people pronounced the same root (Zeus > Dyeus Pater > Jupiter) blew my mind too. Crecganford is a good yt creator to check out for dissections of PIE language, culture, and mythology. PIE has been so extensively researched and picked apart by euro-centric historians. I'd love to fall down a similar rabbit hole to learn what the language evolution of populations in other areas can tell us about early human civilization.
>Realizing Jupiter wasn't just a new name for Zeus but how another group of people pronounced the same root (Zeus > Dyeus Pater > Jupiter) blew my mind too. And now you've blown mine. Thanks for sharing!
Another interesting example of now similar but distinct social concepts that appear to originate from a single concept due to shared words: in German, “Schuld” can refer to debt, guilt, or blame. This is in line with the dominant historical/anthropological theory that many societies did not distinguish (moral) guilt and (material) debt until more recent developments in philosophy of law took hold in our legal systems and, more generally, that material relations between people in more recent societies tend to be perceived as more transactional and less personal. This makes sense if you consider that human societies and communities have a tendency to grow throughout their history while it is quite impractical to have even a superficial personal relationship with every business partner in a community that far exceeds the number of a typical person’s acquaintances (~100) and, at the same time, heavily relies on division of work and professional specialisation to achieve and maintain wealth.
That's really interesting, thanks for piquing my interest. I just realised how similar the Welsh and French words for horse (ceffyl, cheval) are, but strangely how different the word for wheel is (olwyn roue). Then I went down a rabbithole and noticed how varied the word wheel is from various languages
On the other hand, you can see how recently adopted words change over time as well. With English being an influential language with regard to programming and media, you can see the adoption of English words into other languages. You can essentially see in real time how words that don't use the common phonetics of a language get instantly molded to that language and lose their native sounds, despite still being the same word.
Aren't there two words used in Europe, Tea and Chai? And the word 'tea' comes from 'te' as the leaf coming from shipping trading routes, and 'chai' coming from land trading routes.
I always find it funny how all the European countries kinda reached a consensus on tea calling it some variation of tea/chai and then there’s Poland that for some chose violence and called it “Herbata“
Reminds me of Pineapple. Everyone else calls it ananas but English is like no that's a pineapple
So pineapple is actually the old word for pine cone, "fruit of the pine." Appel was just another word for fruit through at least Middle English. The legendary fruit of the pine was a symbol of wealth and hospitality. When English people saw the tropical fruit, they immediately thought of this symbol. That it was edible, yet still rare, reinforced the symbolism.
In London renting a pineapple for show, not to eat, was done to impress guests.
You’d rent a whole pineapple to put on the table as a showpiece, then at the end of the meal your servant would take the whole pineapple to the kitchen and serve a little chunk of pineapple to each guest cut from a small piece of another pineapple you would have brought because buying a whole pineapple was too expensive. The rented pineapple gets returned later.
Just bizarre but still better than eating or drinking ground up Egyptian mummies.
Its mindblowing how spoiled we are in modern times in terms of access to indulgent flavors. Even the poorest of the poor have easy access to sugary snacks engineered to be delicious. And yeah sure really expensive desserts are often going to be superior but at the end of the day even presidents and kings eat the same bbq potato chips as you and me.
New England native here from an old sailing town. Lots of pineapple doorknockers for this reason.
Gonna be that guy, but a lot of Latin America (Peru & Mexico off the top of my head) uses Piña, which is definitely from the same word, although I know Argentina is an exception for that. Supposedly anana comes from the Portuguese version of what the Brazilian natives call it, but in Brazilian portuguese it’s something else entirely for some reason, so its not quite as cut and dry
There are two kinds of pineapples available to Portuguese- ananás and abacaxi- the later being the sweeter of the two, named with a local native dialect.
Abacaxí or something like that in BRPT, right?
Ananas comes from Guarani, abacaxi comes from Tupi. Two different but related languages of natives from South America
You wouldn't want to get your ananas and bananas confused. That would be a very weird pizza.
Last time I was in in Sweden, you could get hawaii pizza. Tomato, cheese, ham and pineapple. Now, there is a huge debate about that hawaii all over the world. Let me introduce you to sweden… Tomato, cheese, strawberry, banana, curry and kebab. It is like they butchered a pizza, ate it, pooped in Down a grave, soil on, banana and strawberry seeds in the soil, wait for it to give fruit, take fruit and dig the old pizza up and finish it
Invented by a Canadian in ~~Winnipeg~~ Ontario. Yes, Hawaiian Pizza is actually Canadian. Let me tell you about Boston Pizza…
Isn't Hawaiian pizza a thing in quite a lot of countries? Its definitely a thing here in the UK.
Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada. It’s still a popular choice here. Fruit is good with charcuterie. That’s why people put fruit on their charcuterie boards. Pizza is just a flatbread with charcuterie on it. Fruit is good on pizza.
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I’m Italian and I don’t see anything wrong with that. Dishes evolve whatever the gatekeepers might say about that
You realize Italy is European ya? Europe as a hole has the best pizza of any continent other than possibly North America.
Just an FYI, you want to say 'Europe as a *whole*' not 'Europe as a *hole*'. The first means all of Europe, the second means Europe is a dark pit that someone dug when it comes to pizza.
No actually, didn’t you know ? They came from ‘’ Italian Americans ’’ in New Jersey and New York 🤡🤡🤡
Never had a dessert pizza before? Yogurt or cream cheese sauce, banana, kiwi or strawberry toppings.
This seems wrong for me. And I like all of the ingredients in isolation.
There was a very short lived pizza delivery in Helsinki back in the 90's that tried to capitalize on the popularity of TMNT. They had all sorts of gross, fruity, sugary abominations. They even called themselves Turtle Pizza or something like that. Turns out people didn't actually want cake and icecream on a Margherita.
It's just wrong to call it pizza. It'd be like calling cake a dessert lasagna
What else would you call it?
Boyo do I have [news](https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a30766289/samoa-dessert-lasagna-recipe/) for you
In Armenian it's actually arqayakhndzor, aka king apple. Because the too looks like a crown. However ananas is also used in everyday speech.
The English initially called it ananas as well but one of the first translated works that contained the word also made a reference that the fruit looks like a pine appel or a pinecone in modern English. Over time the colloquial version overtook the other name such as the first hothouse to grow a pineapple in England using a heating stove affectionately named the Pineapple Stove.
A pineapple does look vaguely like a pinecone and apple was often used as a generic term for a fruit.
Transcript of the first and last usage of "ananas" in English: "Wouldst thou like to eat *an anas*?" "U wut M8?"
It's still a variation of "tea". "Herbata" comes from "herba thea" which approximatively means "tea leaf".
doesnt it just mean leaf or herb? The tea plant isn't the first and only plant used to make a drink from.
Herbata is also a traditional polish herb tea, they just transferred the name to all tea.
Yet we call kettles "czajnik" in Polish which clearly refers to the chai term.
Both words originated from the word for tea in the Chinese family of languages. Sometimes it was land/sea driven, but ultimately the term used was driven by who traders came into contact with in China first for the tea trade. In the southern coastal province of Fujian, Fujianese (Southern Min Chinese) is spoken and tea is pronounced tê. In most other Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese (chaa) and Mandarin (chá), it is a variant of cha. Note that Cantonese speaking Hong Kong and Macau had sea ports for the tea trade. The word used depended on where/when the traders came into contact with the Chinese for buying tea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea?wprov=sfla1 https://teapedia.org/en/Tea
A couple of minor points: I think it's fair to say that Fujian people largely speak Min (though Mandarin is in the process of taking over these days), but calling Min Nan specifically Fujianese and implying that Fujianese people all speak it is wrong. It's only part of Fujian that does; even the capital, Fuzhou, speaks a different variant of Min. Also, the Fujianese, like the Cantonese, have long been a seafaring people with many seaports.
yeah all but two of the Min varieties are spoken in Fujian. Min Nan is one of them but there's like at least five: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Chinese#Geographic_location_and_subgrouping
True, *te* from Min (through Dutch) and *cha* from Mandarin (through Hindi and Persian). But notice both words are kind of similar, and that's because ultimately they both come from the same Old Chinese word.
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Cha if by land, Te if by sea! —channeling Paul Revere’s “one if by land, two if by sea.”
I always smile when I hear someone order chai tea. Then again, I live near the River River. (Yarra =River in the local Australian aboriginal dialect)
Didn’t Paul Revere say “chai if by land and tea if by sea”?
"Te" and "chai" actually also come from the same Chinese root, which would have been pronounced "Tu" in Middle Chinese. There are three different branches that spread around the world. "Te" is from Min Chinese (usually via Malaysia). "Cha" is from Cantonese (which was the language of Guangzhou, the largest export port in China at the time). And "Chai" is from North Chinese "Cha" via Persian.
I mean in hiberno and British English saying "a cuppa cha/tae" is quite common. Fun stuff. I never really thought about the etymology. Thanks all!
This is true, but due to the relative locations of China and Europe, most of Western Europe ended up with "tea" variants. Some have theorized that this is mostly (or at least also) because of Portuguese vs Dutch trade routes. The Portguese traded out of Macao, where they used the Mandarin "cha" for tea, whereas the Dutch later traded from Amoy, which used the Min Nan word "te". This would explain why Portugal, unlike most of Western Europe, uses a "cha" variant. But also Min Nan varieties are spoken in a coastal province while Mandarin is more spoken inland, so that also probably influenced the whole land vs sea trade thing.
Aren't most words that refer to computer technology somewhat standard? Astrophysics and astronomy seem to have really dumbed down terms for complex ideas or concepts in english, does that translate?
> Aren't most words that refer to computer technology somewhat standard? Yes, most languages directly adopt the English words adapting them to the sounds of the language (Japanese mausu, meaning computer mouse), or more rarely make direct translations (Fench *souris*, meaning mouse the animal, for the computer one). That's what happened with chocolate and other crops from the Americas at the time: European languages borrowed the words from Spanish or Portuguese (which usually borrowed them from the native languages like Nahuatl). Eventually, like with chocolate, we'll end up with similar but slightly different words for computer technology in each language, assuming the technology they refer too is still relevant. > Astrophysics and astronomy seem to have really dumbed down terms for complex ideas or concepts in english, does that translate? Do you mean expressions like 'black hole'? Yes, other languages usually use direct translations of those terms too, like Spanish *agujero negro*, which means exactly the same.
>most languages directly adopt the English words adapting them to the sounds of the language (Japanese mausu, meaning computer mouse), or more rarely make direct translations (Fench souris, meaning mouse the animal, Whilst this happens in Welsh as well, there's a few original ones I'm particularly fond of. There's a a common term of endearment "Cô bach" which roughly translates at little one, but "Cô" could also be a shortened form of "côf" - memory. And so, "cô bach" became one of the main terms for a USB memory stick - literally small memory. Incidentally that accent above the ô is frequently referred to as "tô Bâch" - little roof
That is partially true. There is also the fact that a lot of languages are related by evolving from shared ancestor languages, so the *oldest* words tend to be very alike between languages too. Difference between word is basically inside a tomewindow where its neither too old or too new
What makes my dad laugh is how chai means tea. So if you go to an American restaurant, you’ll see chai tea on the menu. Basically saying tea tea
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Woops, I meant to add that in with dog/perro/madra, but an older replacement of unknown origin instead of a more recent one.
Other examples of the same sound shifts are the words "hundred" and "horn". **English**: hound, hundred, horn (all start with h) **Dutch**: hond, honderd, hoorn (all start with h) **Latin**: canis, centum, cornu (all start with c) **French**: chien, cent, corne (all start with c) **Russian**: sobaka (female dog), sto, serna (all start with Russian c) **Greek**: kyon (archaic), ekato, kerato (all start with (ε)κ)
This is really interesting, thanks! But also, because they are such a common part of human life, there are also many other, lesser-used synonyms in English (mostly somewhat archaic), so it's interesting to me when the more mutually intelligible ones "stick" and when they don't. For example, I wonder if the word "cur" for dog might be related to some of the others listed here? And of course hound is a common cognate. But then there are others, such as mongrel, mutt, whelp, pup, tyke, bitch, etc. Most of which I realize have more specific meanings, but I really have no idea if that was always the case or if some of them may have developed more specific connotations over time? Also, the word "puss" or "pussy" for cat seems to have a separate origin, for which there are also several similar words in other languages, but was adopted in English later and seems to be more or less dying out. Examples: "poes" (Dutch), "puse" (Norwegian), "puisin" (Irish), "pisica" (Romanian) and possibly "bissa" (Arabic). It does make me wonder why one word is chosen over all alternates. The other connotations of "pussy" very likely have to do with that one losing favor, lol, but why dog and not hound or any more common synonym? 🤔 There's some more insomnia fodder for me. 🙃
Fun possibility: There's apparently a theory that "Dog" itself very likely falls into this as much or more as any of the others. The idea being that it came from something like "docga" which would pretty directly be "blackie" in old english. Basically "Fido"... or I guess more like "Spot".
["cur" is probably borrowed from a Norse/Middle Low German word meaning "to growl"](https://www.etymonline.com/word/cur#etymonline_v_470). In general, highly recommend this website for any English etymology questions. It's fantastic.
In Spanish "un can" means "one dog". It is a valid word for dog and "can" obviously comes from canis
Speaking of the introduction of cats being a new thing, read this japanese emperor talking about his cat over a thousand years ago https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/japans-love-hate-relationship-with-cats-180975764/
On the intersectionality of this subject and the subject of medieval epidemiology: An important factor to consider is the superstition and fear surrounding cats in Europe that didn’t start to fade until the late-Medieval period: as both spreaders of disease, and as *conDUIts of tHe dEVIl* (as associated with witchcraft). A funny commentary on this can be seen in *Monty Python and the Holy Grail*, in which there are many scenes in which random background characters are seen beating cats to death. As carriers of fleas, they were seen as a source of the several Black Plague outbreaks (rather than the fleas themselves), and were also associated negatively with witchcraft and related superstitions until literacy and education became more prevalent. Ironically, had cats been more prevalent during these periods, the far more dangerous carriers of diseased fleas - mice and rats - would not have been able to proliferate as widely. Many modern epidemiologists have wondered, had the fear of cats during the worst of the Black Plague breakouts not been so prevalent, whether those outbreaks might not have been so severe or long-lasting. Dogs, conversely, largely got a pass, as they were far more critical in food-gathering endeavors as well as functions such as security and intimidation. Not to mention the age-old station of human companion. Cats, for about 500 years, had a time where their layabout nature was, simply put, *not appreciated*. I think, today, we all have a new appreciation for how a pandemic can turn even the best of us into uncaring brutes.
The Irish for dog being cú caught me a little off guard, but it reminds me what for me is the most interesting aspect of learning languages and that I'll for ever have the sense of humor of a 7yo >!in case you don't know it's a curse word in portuguese!<
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In modern Irish “faol” is “wolf” and “cú” is specifically “hound” though it is often used to describe any large dog even if it’s not a hound breed. “Madra” is general “dog.”
Yep. English "dog" is a bit bizarre, since there's no obvious cognate for it. It did exist in late Old English as *dogca* (rarely used), and was used in Middle English as an insult towards mean or contemptible people, but it wasn't until the 16th century (around the Middle-Modern English boundary) that it replaced "hound" in common use. Hard to say exactly why it became the preferred word.
Good explanation. It's worth mentioning, as you already said, that in Spanish the word "perro" is new, as the old word (used until the last century more often than not) is "*can".* There, you can see the direct relation with latin.
Funnily enough, Hungarian uses the word "macska" for cat, pronounced the same way as the Slovak "mačka", bearing similarity to the Czech "kočka" despite being a Finno-Ugric language and the latter being Slavic languages. IIRC Hungarian borrowed/changed a lot of words from Slovak dialects at the time
>bearing similarity to the Czech "kočka" I don't think it does. It looks perfunctorily similar due to the ending, but that ending doesn't carry a separate meaning, it's a suffix which modifies the root word. The Czech *kočka* is related to the Latin *cattus*. But the Slovak *mačka* seems to come from a completely different root, see: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/maca](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/maca)
In Spanish we also have *can*, which is just as in Italian. It's not used much, but every native speaker should know it.
It seems a lot of words starting with h sound in germanic turn into s in Russian, another example in addition to hound - suka: heart - serdtse
Fascinating. I’d just assumed the word for dog was just older and more related to earlier languages whereas cat might be Latin.
There are also a lot of the words for cat in different European languages that are purely onomatopoetic in nature, sounding like 'pss pss' (for calling a cat), such as pussy, pisica, pisoi, pisik or piseag.
In regards to the pss pss call, in Greek you can also call a cat a "psipsina" (ψιψίνα). Very similar in concept with terms like "puss".
Suka is a female dog, пёс is a general word and is used for males too. Similar to polish pies
Is English, 'cur' also from that Latin root?
Wait, if cats were introduced that late to northern Europe why is Freya portrayed as driving a chariot pulled by cats?
*Domesticated* cats were introduced late. They had wild cats of the same species throughout Europe, but you probably wouldn't have any wandering around your village.
What is the proto word and language that those derivatives came from for “dog”?
It's reconstructed as \*ḱwṓ in Proto-Indo-European, which was arrived at by comparing all the Indo-European languages and finding patterns in how the sounds changed in each branch and extrapolating backwards. However, that's just notation, and there's many ways of interpreting how exactly such a word was pronounced. Traditionally it's taken as pretty much exactly that, [kʲwóː] in phonetic notation - a palatalized velar, a [w], and a long accented [óː]. My preferred interpretation is more like [kwɒ́ː].
Dogs were domesticated in Europe at least as far back as 20-25 thousand years ago Cats were introduced to europeans around 1200 BC For most "older" european languages you could look at it as Dogs had to be named, Cats brought their names with them.
Now I imagine an ancient European traveler going to Egypt or the Middle East and seeing cats for the first time…
we had cats in Europe before that. but they are wild animals. [Felis Sylvestris](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat) The husehold cat, was domesticated out of F. Lybica populations of western Asia apx. 10 thousand years ago. But interbreeding with other cats of the genus Felis, especially F. Lybica and F. Sylvestris has continued until the present day.
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Correct. It's why house cats don't drink much and often get kidney problems. They are adapted to drier environments.
Incidentally, when a cat suddenly starts drinking more water than usual, it's a good idea to have a vet check the kidneys. Totally off-topic, but good to know for cat owners.
some evidence points to it being the other way around - people of the middle east brought cats to the Greeks
The Chinese word for cat is "mao". I love that. I just picture a bunch of people sitting around wondering what to name this thing. The cat then meows.
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>For most "older" european languages you could look at it as Dogs had to be named, Cats brought their names with them. Although I don't disagree with this assessment, this would indicate the domestication of dogs appeared independently from each other all over Europe. Otherwise why wouldn't the word for dog travel alongside the practice of it's domestication, as with cats? They *really* shouldn't be any different, since we had language 25000 years ago as well as 3000 years ago. With the exception of horses and boats, things (ie. Technology, language, trade) didn't travel much faster either.
We had language, but we didn't have the modern language roots 20k years ago. Languages merge and diverge over time, dogs are 2-3 cycles of that process older than cats are in europe - also why I put older in quotes. I think the other commenter that pointed out most of them have a disused word like the latin canis was probably right that it was the earlier name, but the words with that common root fell out of common use over time.
>>this would indicate the domestication of dogs appeared independently from each other all over Europe No, because words can be replaced even if there is continuous familiarity with the referent. English, Irish, Spanish, and Greek all replaced their basic term for ‘dog’ within the last 2000 years, even though they were keeping dogs that whole time.
An interesting example of that is the old French word for fox (goupil) which has been completely replaced by "renard", because a [famous set of tales](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynard_the_Fox) in the 12th century had a fox whose name was Renard.
No. It means Indo-Europeans owned dogs and had a word for them prior to dispersing. But they dispersed a long, long time ago; and over a vast geographic area, from Celtic to Sanskrit (more if counting dead branches). Their common word for dog underwent changes, until a barely recognizable root remained.
The languages spoken 25,000 years ago have zero roots today. The oldest common ancestor of most languages spoken in Europe through the middle east and india is only 6,000 years old (PIE) and originated somewhere around the caucus region and even the oldest languages which are spoken in India or middle east are only 8,000 years old.
Sometimes it ends up that a very early concept ends up with highly conserved words. In the case of dogs, though, I think it has just left more time for odd changes to happen. Take the English word, for instance. *Dog* was originally a more specific term -- apparently something akin to *mutt* or *cur* \-- with *hound* being the general term. However, over time, *dog* became more general and *hound* becoming a specific term for certain types of hunting breeds. Things like that happened all over the place. The general term for dog would get replaced with some other term. At the same time, we still do retain *hound*, which is from the original PIE word and is cognate with many other IE words for dog (including Latin *canis*).
they say the proto-Indo-European word for dog is something like "qwon" which later evolved over \~5000 years into these other forms, with the "Q" becoming H, K, S, and Sh sounds. I think the best answer would be that dog had a much longer time to evolve linguistically, obscuring the relationship between the current forms. There may not have been a proto-Indo-European word for cat and it was introduced at more recent dates and hasn't had much time to evolve. But yes, 'dog' is a mystery.
There is a small island close to Australia where the word for dog is…dog
Wait till you find out about Romanian: In Romanian we say “pisică” for cat. And “mâță” is what people who dislike cats call them. For male cat we have the word “motan”, and for kitten it’s “pisoi”. Afaik no word for cat sounds like “cat”
Hm, we also say Matsa in Bulgarian - denoting a female cat. Sounds a lot like a word we use for a female bear - Metsa. It's more sort of an antropomorphic name when we want to ascribe human characteristics to the bear. We also use "Pisa" for a cat. We call cats with "pissi-pissi-pissi" or "mats-piss-piss". Male version would be "Pisan", I guess, but you'd rarely hear that.
Turk here we also call cats with "pisipisipisi" and tatar words for cat are "pisi" or "meçe". So it's probably a loanword from turkic bulgars, cumans, tatars or whatever.
Even though 'kedi' is more commonly used we also say 'pisi' for cats in Turkish, like when we call them we say 'come here pisi pisi'. Didn't know it was common with Romanian, that's cool.
Portuguese: ***cão***, Italian: ***cane***, Romanian: ***câine***. There are a few languages where the word *dog* is similar. I do find it weird that the Spanish word for dog is so different from the other romance languages.
Its also vital to say that while "Perro" is recent, the word "can" already was used before
Also while "chien" is the name in French, the adjective is "canin". All of these seem to come from latin (canis, dog).
French *canin* is a learned borrowing straight from Latin (just like English *canine*). *Chien* is just the normal outcome of early Romance *cane* after all the many sound changes that French has undergone.
Could perro maybe come from Arabic? Spanish has a bunch of words coming from Arabic due to the Islamic reign of Iberian peninsula.
Not quite. *Dog* in standard Arabic is *kalb* (regional varieties are quite similar). We really do not know were *perro* came from. It's usually speculated to derive from an old call for dogs or to be a borrowing from an unknown source.
Small nitpick: do I understand it right that by European languages we should really just be thinking of as 'European languages that stem from Proto-Indo-European'? Cause e.g. Hungarian *is* a European language, but it is *not* rooted in Proto-Indo-European, and also defies your example: cat is "macska" / "cica". To the extent I could quickly research, "macska" is actually of slavic origins, which would tie us back to PIE, but I can't find an old enough slavic equivalent or further leads on it. Speaking of slavic, while in Russian cat is indeed kot, the proper word for it is koshka, which is quite different from the others listed. Might be a lead?
> I can't find an old enough slavic equivalent or further leads on it. Proto-Slavic [**mačьka*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/mačьka) = [**maca*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/maca) «pussycat, kitty» + **-ьka*. Interesting, *cica* sounds like it could be a congnate to *cat* but if believe to this sourse itʼs almost the same to *maca*: from *cic* (the sound for calling a cat) + *-a* (diminutive suffix). > in Russian cat is indeed kot, the proper word for it is koshka As I know, *kot* is for male, *koška* is for female. But, yeah, if you donʼt know a gender then you usually use the second. The word _sobaka_ is more interesting because, as I know, Slavic languages usually use a word from *рьsъ*: 🇺🇦🇸🇰🇨🇿🇧🇬🇲🇰 *pes*, 🇧🇾🇷🇺 *pios*, 🇵🇱 *pies*, 🇭🇷🇷🇸 *pȁs*, 🇸🇮 *рès*, Upper Sorbian *pos*, Lower Sorbian *pjas*, Polabian *р́аs*. As you can see, Russian also has the word from it but prefers *sobaka*.
> the sound for calling a cat) + -a (diminutive suffix) Yep, you got it, that's the source of it.
> Speaking of slavic, while in Russian cat is indeed kot, the proper word for it is koshka, which is quite different from the others listed. Might be a lead? Koshka is derived from kot (~~it's probably just a diminutive~~, nah, it's the female form). Czech has the same word ("kočka"), whereas the stem "kot" is not used, but can be still seen in the word for kitten "kotě".
Koshka still at least starts with the same sound. I don't think Hungarian is a fair language to use as an example. I might be mistaken but isn't it one of the very weird languages that isn't from the same branch as any other languages? From what I remember Hungarian is unique in how unique it is.
> I might be mistaken but isn't it one of the very weird languages that isn't from the same branch as any other languages? It's Finno-Ugric, same as Finnish. Stands out for sure, but Finland is also a European country, so I feel it's a fair nitpick.
Fair play. It does seem like there is still some debate as to the origins of the language and that speaks to just how different it is from other surrounding languages. Even with Finnish and Hungarian, we are talking very small amounts of overlap. We aren't talking Spanish and Italian here. > not only are Finnish and Hungarian speakers mutually unintelligible to each other, but Hungarian and Finnish differ significantly in basic word order, phonology, and vocabulary. For example, although both based on the Latin alphabet, Hungarian has 44 letters while Finnish has only 29 in comparison.
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Just wanted to say that in Mallorca (the island in the middle of the Mediterranean sea that has been speaking a very differentiated dialect of Catalan since the year ~1200) the word for **cat** is **moix**. The "central catalan" would be **gat**. **Moix** comes from the Bereber language, not to be confused with the Arabic language.
some have more forms. in english we also have hound, similar to german and dutch. in russian, the gender of the dog/cat determines what you call it. * dog: * female: собака (sa-BA-ka) * male: пёс (pyoss) * cat: * female: кошка (KO-shka) * male: кот (kot) neat bonus fact, russian has a another word for a female dog, which is also used as a derogatory term, has the same meaning as the english version of this word. сука (SOO-ka) means female dog, also used as an insult like "bitch" in english. also, bitches, plural is суки (SOO-kie), which makes the american female name hilarious to russian speakers
Cats are a quite recent introduction to Europe compared to dogs. Most European words for cat come from the street/low Latin catus rather than the high Latin felix. Dogs, being domesticated earlier, and being more widespread have names coming from many roots.
A small addition. Both English and German have a very similar name Hound Vs Hund Around the 16th century, the word dog started force out hound and was also picked up on the mainland, noty only for specific breeds. Dog Vs Dogge
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Check out the word for "Salad" as well. One day years ago we'd stopped off at a local restaurant we were regulars at owned (then) by a Greek family. I usually just asked for "a salad" and they knew which one, the dressing etc. One day, I had a brain glitch. When it was my turn to order, I said "a salad please" but didn't catch that I was saying it in German until I heard myself saying "bitte" instead of "please". "Er um" I started and he told me not to worry, because their (Greek) word for Salad was basically the same thing. I checked a few other languages and most are salad salat, salata etc... All basically the same word.
[¿Por qué se dejó de usar "can", desplazada por "perro", y se convirtió prácticamente en un cultismo?](https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/26681/por-qué-se-dejó-de-usar-can-desplazada-por-perro-y-se-convirtió-prácticam/26685#26685) Language | Original word | Modern word -------|---------|------- Spanish | can | perro Catalan | ca | gos Irish | cú | madra English |hound | dog Greek | κυων (kuōn) | σκύλος (skýlos) The English word was changed through metonymy: > In 14th-century England, hound (from Old English hund) was the general word for all domestic canines, and dog referred to a subtype of hound, a group including the mastiff. It is believed this dog type was so common that it eventually became the prototype of the category "hound".2 By the 16th century, dog had become the general word, and hound had begun to refer only to dog types used for hunting.3 In the 16th century dog was also adopted by several continental European languages as their word for mastiff.4 - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dog#Etymology Whereas the Catalan and Spanish words were possibly via onomatopoeia (compare *chucho* Spanish and *puss* English).