#llst-

[mapsontheweb]

How a word for "banana" from Papua New Guinea spread with ancient trade routes, becoming the scientific name for the banana genus. The Trans-New-Guinea word is also the source of the regular word for banan in languages like Turkish, Somali and Amharic

This is based on "Things your classics master never told you: a borrowing from Trans New Guinea languages into Latin" by Roger Blench. As far as I know, it's the easternmost word to have made it into European languages in pre-colonial times, having spread from New Guinea (where bananas where domesticated) along old trade routes. Some words have travelled further though, such as the Aymara word for 'potato' into Maori.

by LlST-

[mapsontheweb]

How "Algeria", "Madagascar" and "Malaysia" are etymologically connected

by LlST-

[mapsontheweb]

Migration of the Romani language, and the loanwords it picked up along the way

Notably, there are no direct Turkic or Arabic loanwords, which seems to suggest the migration happened before Anatolia was Turkicised and Persia adopted substantial Arab loanwords.

by LlST-

[mapsontheweb]

The Serbian 'bičak' and the Navajo 'béésh' both mean 'knife, and may reflect a common Wanderwort origin, spreading across the Northern Hemisphere over the last few thousand years

by u/LlST-

[mapsontheweb]

Some of the words related to English 'cook'

by u/LlST-

[mapsontheweb]

Ancestors of the Big Five Language Families - descendants of these five languages are spoken natively by 85% of people, and make up the majority of languages spoken today.

by u/LlST-

[mapsontheweb]

Ancestry of Cleopatra, last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt

by u/LlST-

[mapsontheweb]

Spread of ~Mooji, a Californian wanderwort referring to datura, a hallucinogenic plant used in spiritual and initiation rituals

by u/LlST-