Words with similiar roots...................

[eric l]

The English word "town" has the same roots as the German word "Zaun" which means "enclosure". People who speak Dutch will recognize this as "tuin" which means "garden". (I don't know about Afrikaans, which is closely related to Dutch - maybe Boerseun can give us a clue).

 

Anyway, both a town and a garden can be considered "guarded areas", which closes the circle on this.

[Michaelangelica]

There must be hundreds.

The French always say that English is merely a dialect of French !

(Don't you just love the French -they are so predictable but I forgive them everthing for their food)

 

i have always wanted(but could never afford ) a Complete Oxford dictionary ( all 20 volumes or so). this gives the entomology and history of every English word.

 

i have little language skills but being of Irish ancestry I have no difficulty with words that sound similar. I can often pick out words of french or Italian on the radio or film.

My wife being an English graduate has to have everything spelled and pronounced correctly for her to understand it.

I remember sitting in bed with her when we were part time students. She was struggling with a course in Anglo-Saxon language. She said what do you think this word means I can't find it.

I told her it sounded like "X"

rubbish she said and plowed though her dictionaries for another two hours.

Finally she found the word meant "x"

She was very P**sed

 

Interestingly while in Germany some years ago she was standing in along line of people at a Post Office. The old woman in front could not make he needs known to the postal clerk.Both were getting very frustrated. My wife stepped in and explained what the old woman wanted to the clerk. When she then got to the clerk she started speaking to her in German. she explained that she did not speak German. Amazed the clerk said in English then how did =you understand the old lady.

It was then she realised the old lady was speaking something akin to ancient Anglo-Saxon. She was dumbfounded herself.

 

In a book who's title i can't remember. The autobiographical story is told of a man's travels through Europe before WW2. In that he comes across a middle European town who he can talk to fluently as they all talked Latin which he had studied all his life. !! this was about 1930s?

 

I will ask my wife for some examples of common roots for you Erich

[Chacmool]

The English word "town" has the same roots as the German word "Zaun" which means "enclosure". People who speak Dutch will recognize this as "tuin" which means "garden". (I don't know about Afrikaans, which is closely related to Dutch - maybe Boerseun can give us a clue).

 

Anyway, both a town and a garden can be considered "guarded areas", which closes the circle on this.

We also use the word "tuin" (meaning "garden") in Afrikaans. Very interesting relationship to "town"!

[eric l]

Interestingly while in Germany some years ago she was standing in along line of people at a Post Office. The old woman in front could not make he needs known to the postal clerk.Both were getting very frustrated. My wife stepped in and explained what the old woman wanted to the clerk. When she then got to the clerk she started speaking to her in German. she explained that she did not speak German. Amazed the clerk said in English then how did you understand the old lady.

It was then she realised the old lady was speaking something akin to ancient Anglo-Saxon. She was dumbfounded herself.

 

 

This is a situation that you find over and over again in Europe. (I do not know that you have anything similar in Australia.) Local "accents" (including grammar and vocabulary) have lots of elements that would be obsolete in the standard language. e.g. standard Dutch does not know declensions (which are a pain in the neck for anyone learning German), but they are still used in the Dutch accents spoken in the northern part of Belgium. Sometimes these local accents also use words that have disappeared in the standard language.

 

Of course the local accents are under heavy pressure, for three main reasons :

 

• people are much more mobile, it is exceptional that they stay in the same locality for several generations
  
• the accents are rarely written, let alone printed,
  
• the media (radio and television mainly) impose more or less the standard language or the accent of one of the major towns
  

[eric l]

The Latin word faber (meaning "smith" or "blacksmith") is the root for the English "fabric" a woven textile. The French "fabrique" is not the product, but the place where it is made, a manufactury. The same word exists also in French, in the same sense (manufacture), but in Dutch the word "manufacturen" (always plural) is an obsolete or pedant term for - you'd never guess - woven textiles !

[Qfwfq]

And fabbrica means factory in Italian too, while a fattoria is a farm.

[eric l]

And fabbrica means factory in Italian too, while a fattoria is a farm.

And in 17th century Dutch "factorij" was a trading post, in North america or in the colonies. Of course it is quite possible that a good trading post included a farm.

By the way, Qfwfq, is it true that "machina" in Italian is used almost exclusively for a car ? When I was a kid, we used the word "machine" mainly for a steam locomotive - any other machine needed some precission, like "drilling machine", ""planing machine"...

[Tormod]

BTW in Norway, "fabrikk" means factory. We can use the term "fabrikere" to imply manufacture, but it is in fact used in a negative sense (it implies a fraudulent intent).

 

We use instead the term "produksjon" for "manufacture", and "produkt" for product. Produksjon = production, produsere = to produce.