Taal aan de wandel

Hi! I'm Yoïn van Spijk and I make graphics and videos about Romance and Germanic etymology • linguist • patreon.com/yvanspijk • toot.community/@yvanspijk • yvanspijk.bsky.social

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Unexpected cognates

The word town shares its origin with German Zaun (‘fence’) and Dutch tuin (‘garden’), even though their forms and meanings are quite different. They all stem form Proto-Germanic *tūnan, whose meaning is reconstructed as ‘fenced area’. Over the course of 2000 years, they’ve grown apart.

My new graphic shows nine unexpected but true cognates in English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and Swedish.

In the article on my Patreon (850 words, tier 1), I explain how the meanings of these nine words group diverged over time.

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Early Latin borrowings: food

After my infographic about words such as wall, street, and kitchen, which are very early Germanic borrowings from Latin, here’s a second one, this time about food. While words such as carnivore, cereal and, edible are late and obvious borrowings from Latin, words such as cheese, pear,and wine were adopted from that language 2000-1500 years ago, when the Romans occupied the parts of Europe where the ancestor of English was spoken.

Next episode: utensils!

How do we know that the words featured in these infographics were borrowed? Couldn’t they just be the native Germanic cognates of the Latin words? There are several ways we can identify them as borrowings. You’ll learn all about them in the short article on my Patreon.

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Early Latin borrowings: utensils

Over the past few days, I’ve created two infographics on early Germanic loanwords from Latin: one on construction, with words such as kitchen and street, and one on food, with cheese, butter and others.

Today, I’m wrapping up the trilogy with an infographic on utensils. Fork, pan, sack, mint and chest – they were all borrowed into Proto-West Germanic, the ancestor of English, when the Romans controlled large parts of north-western Europe during the early first millennium AD.

How do we know these words were borrowed from Latin? You can read all about it in this article. And this article tells you three ways can you identify early borrowings from Latin.

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Early Latin borrowings: food

After my infographic about words such as wall, street, and kitchen, which are very early Germanic borrowings from Latin, here’s a second one, this time about food. While words such as carnivore, cereal and, edible are late and obvious borrowings from Latin, words such as cheese, pear,and wine were adopted from that language 2000-1500 years ago, when the Romans occupied the parts of Europe where the ancestor of English was spoken.

Next episode: utensils!

How do we know that the words featured in these infographics were borrowed? Couldn’t they just be the native Germanic cognates of the Latin words? There are several ways we can identify them as borrowings. You’ll learn all about them in the short article on my Patreon.

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Early Latin borrowings: construction

Words such as museum, formula and ratio instantly give away their Latin origin, but did you know wall, street, and kitchen come from Latin too? They were borrowed during the Roman occupation of the part of Europe where Proto-West Germanic was spoken, the ancestor of English and its West Germanic sister languages.

Today’s infographic about construction terms shows six of these early borrowings and their descendants in English, Dutch, and German. Next time: food words.

How can you identify early loanwords from Latin? By analysing three aspects: stress shift, vowel reduction and certain preserved consonants. My short article below (750 words, tier 1) tells you all about it.

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Probly haplogy

Probably is often pronounced /probly/. The syllable ba is deleted because it’s followed by another syllable starting with a b. This is called haplology – or haplogy if you will.

Some people have an issue with /probly/, but what they don’t know is that their beloved form probably is the result of haplology too: in Middle English, it was probablely: probable + ly. The part le was lost because it was followed by ly.

Haplology can be found in all ages and places. My new infographic shows cases from English, Latin, French, Greek, German, and Portuguese.

Haplology is a so-called sporadic sound change. In the short article on my Patreon (470 words, tier 1), you'll learn all about the difference between sporadic sound changes such as haplology, and regular sound changes.

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Queens, queans & gynes

The word queen is distantly related to the first part of gynaecology and the second part of misogyny.

It’s also related to Norwegian kone (wife) and kvinne (woman), but they’re not full cognates.

While queen comes from Proto-Germanic *kwēniz (wife), kone and kvinne stem from *kwenōn (woman). In English, this became the disparaging – and now archaic – word quean (slut).

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Words of the house

The word dame is part of a huge word family. It contains the same root as damsel, domain, to dominate, danger, dome, and despot.

In the Romance languages, it’s related to Spanish don (Mr.), French dimanche (Sunday), and Italian duomo (cathedral).

All of these words were built on the foundations of a Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘house’.

Click my new infographic to learn more.

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Words of the house

The word dame is part of a huge word family. It contains the same root as damsel, domain, to dominate, danger, dome, and despot.

In the Romance languages, it’s related to Spanish don (Mr.), French dimanche (Sunday), and Italian duomo (cathedral).

All of these words were built on the foundations of a Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘house’.

Click my new infographic to learn more.

[yvanspijk]

Words of the house

The word dame is part of a huge word family. It contains the same root as damsel, domain, to dominate, danger, dome, and despot.

In the Romance languages, it’s related to Spanish don (Mr.), French dimanche (Sunday), and Italian duomo (cathedral).

All of these words were built on the foundations of a Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘house’.

Click my new infographic to learn more.

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Kingly kin

The word king has a fascinating story to tell.

Its Proto-Germanic ancestor *kuningaz was derived from the word *kunjan, which became English kin. A king was a descendant of royal or divine kin.

The word *kunjan, in turn, stemmed from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to produce’. This root, through Latin and Greek, gave us many words, including genre, nature, genital, genesis, pregnant, and gonorrhea.

The early Germanic cognates of king were borrowed into the Finnic and Slavic languages, becoming Finnish kuningas (‘king’), Polish ksiądz (‘priest’), Serbo-Croatian knez (‘prince’) and many others.

Zoom in on my new graphic to learn more.

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Kingly kin

The word king has a fascinating story to tell.

Its Proto-Germanic ancestor *kuningaz was derived from the word *kunjan, which became English kin. A king was a descendant of royal or divine kin.

The word *kunjan, in turn, stemmed from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to produce’. This root, through Latin and Greek, gave us many words, including genre, nature, genital, genesis, pregnant, and gonorrhea.

The early Germanic cognates of king were borrowed into the Finnic and Slavic languages, becoming Finnish kuningas (‘king’), Polish ksiądz (‘priest’), Serbo-Croatian knez (‘prince’) and many others.

Zoom in on my new graphic to learn more.

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Fabricated forges

The English word fabric is a notorious false friend of Spanish fábrica: a fabric is a material, while a fábrica is a factory. However, these words are real cognates: they stem from the same Latin word: fabrica. They’re even related to the word forge, as well as the Spanish words fragua (meaning ‘forge’) and froga (“brickworks”).

Click my new infographic to learn all about these words. For those interested in how fabrica could ever evolve into words such as forge and fragua, I described the sound changes step by step.

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Fabricated forges

The English word fabric is a notorious false friend of Spanish fábrica: a fabric is a material, while a fábrica is a factory. However, these words are real cognates: they stem from the same Latin word: fabrica. They’re even related to the word forge, as well as the Spanish words fragua (meaning ‘forge’) and froga (“brickworks”).

Click my new infographic to learn all about these words. For those interested in how fabrica could ever evolve into words such as forge and fragua, I described the sound changes step by step.

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Flowers, fleurs, blossoms & blooms

The Old English word for a flower was blōsma. While this word survived, becoming modern blossom, it gave up part of its meaning to a French loanword. Interestingly though, this loanword, originally spelled both flour and flower in Middle English, stems from the same root as blossom.

Moreover, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the spelling variants flour and flower were consistently differentiated. Each was assigned one of the meanings: ‘finest part of ground grain’ versus ‘blossom of a plant’. Their pronunciation is still identical.

Click my new infographic to learn more.

The Proto-Indo-European root *bʰleh₃- also produced Celtic words for ‘blossom; flower’, such as Breton bleuñv, Welsh blawd (obsolete), Irish Gaelic bláth and Scottish Gaelic blàth. Outside Germanic, Latin/Romance, and Celtic, there are no words derived from *bʰleh₃-.

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Flowers, fleurs, blossoms & blooms

The Old English word for a flower was blōsma. While this word survived, becoming modern blossom, it gave up part of its meaning to a French loanword. Interestingly though, this loanword, originally spelled both flour and flower in Middle English, stems from the same root as blossom.

Moreover, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the spelling variants flour and flower were consistently differentiated. Each was assigned one of the meanings: ‘finest part of ground grain’ versus ‘blossom of a plant’. Their pronunciation is still identical.

Click my new infographic to learn more.

The Proto-Indo-European root *bʰleh₃- also produced Celtic words for ‘blossom; flower’, such as Breton bleuñv, Welsh blawd (obsolete), Irish Gaelic bláth and Scottish Gaelic blàth. Outside Germanic, Latin/Romance, and Celtic, there are no words derived from *bʰleh₃-.

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Live, life, leave

It will come as no surprise that to live is etymologically related to life and alive. However, these words are also related to to leave and German bleiben (‘to stay’), which used to have an English cognate: to belive. Even lipo- in liposuction is related, as are the parts -lev- and -lv- of the numerals eleven and twelve. All of these words stem from a common Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to stick’. Click my new graphic to learn all about this word family.