Linguaphiles

“Language is almost the only window available to us into an unfamiliar world, <...> an opportunity to live several lives at once, moving from one parallel universe to another. What could be more exciting?”

Alexander Stesin, “Non-Western civilizations translated from African”, Moscow, 2019



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It is not enough to read French correctly.

It is not enough to literally understand what is written.

You also need to be French in order to correctly understand the meaning of what was said...

Source: http://www.paabo.ca/papers/pdfcontents.html

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To the memory of Vladislav Illich-Svitych.

This is just to bring attention to something very ‘Nostratic’ (far beyond ‘Indo-European’ languages — which as a term itself is very outdated):

udi̮ni̮ (Udmurt), udni̮ (Komi) - to give to drink;
utta (Vepssian) - squeeze out;
udar, gen. udara (Est.), udār (ливон.), uhar (Votic), uar (Izhora), utare, udar (Fin.), udareh (Karelian), udare (Ludic), udar (Veps.) - udder, feeding breast;
odar (Erzia., Moksha), βoδar, vodar (Mari) - udder, feeding breast;
udder (archaic Eng.), uder (archaic Frisian), uyder (archaic Dutch), uijer (Dutch), utar (archaic Ger.), Euter (Ger.) - udder, feeding breast;
[outhar] (Greek), uber (Latin) - udder, feeding breast;
[udhar] (Sanskrit) - udder, feeding breast.



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sammas, gen. samba, also Sampo (Fin., Est.) - in Finnic mythology: space pillar, pillar that supports the sky; a magic mill, the roof of which symbolizes the star-studded celestial dome revolving around the central axis - the pillar on which the whole World rests; according to Graham Hancock, the Sampo mill represents the precession of the Earth's axis of rotation, the full cycle of which is about 25,765 years: http://kladina.narod.ru/hancock/chast5.htm ; См. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Прецессия ).

स्तम्भ [stambha, skambha; стамбха, скамбха] (Sanskrit) - in the Indian Vedas, the column connecting the Heavens (svarga) and the Earth (prithivi); also a monumental stone pillar in Indian architecture topped with a lotus-shaped capital.

жамба [zhamba] (Ingush language, Caucasus) - a column from the middle and above.

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(Somewhat prompted by watching the Olympics.)

Why is that silly redundancy there in "three one-hundredths of a second"? Nobody says "two one-thirds of a second", or "four one-tenths of a second"; what so special in 100 as the denominator?

As a L2 English speaker, I cannot tell how unnatural to a L1 eye/ear would "three hundredths of a second" look/sound. I have little doubt that it will be understood; but how much of a mistake would it be?

...Like Penelope, Helen is described as weaving and spinning wool, common tasks for women in the Homeric world. Also in an episode of the Iliad—in Paris’s home in Troy—she was working on “a large web” (megan histón) upon which she was embroidering the events of the war the Trojans and Achaeans were waging over her (Iliad 3.125–128). We can imagine Helen’s weaving as comparable to the 11th-century Norman Bayeux tapestry, which (according to tradition) William the Conqueror’s wife, Mathilda, personally fashioned, depicting scenes from her husband’s war on English soil.

Incidentally, the huge dimensions of Mathilda’s tapestry—70 metres long by 50 cm high—lead us to understand why the suitors found it normal (Odyssey 19.151) that Penelope worked three whole years on her famous web, also defined as “large” or “oversized” (19.140).

Helen and Penelope on the one hand and Mathilda on the other, although they are separated by a time abyss of thousands of years, show us that it was common for high-ranking women in the north to spend their time weaving depictions of important stories, a custom that could have been prevalent for almost three thousand years. Among those ancient peoples, the memories of the past were preserved not only by bards’ cantos, but also by noblewomen’s weaving, suggesting a relationship between the Homeric term histós, meaning “tapestry,” and our word history (historiē in Greek).

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"... Agenor, king of the Phoenician city of Sidon, had a beautiful daughter Europa, literally (in Greek) the "wide-eyed". In fact, of course, not Europe is named after some daughter of Agenor, but, vice versa. There is an opinion that this word comes from the ancient Semitic "erebus" "west", "evening", "country of sunset", and the Greek meaning is just a result of people's rethinking."
prof. L.S.Klein, Time of the Centaurs (Время Кентавров), St. Petersburg, Eurasia, 2010, p. 13.

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The English word climax has two seemingly incompatible meanings of "climax" and "orgasm". Yet, we should not forget that the word has not only a specific meaning, but also a more general, broader meaning, not of a 'specialized' term.

Let's illustrate this via an example: a person may have a profession of a lawyer - yet, within this profession there are many specialties: a judge, an arbitrator, a prosecutor, a notary...

The general meaning for the word climax is 'the highest point, the culmination.' But there are several applied, special, narrower meanings. Climax is the culmination of adulthood - yet, climax as 'orgasm' is the culmination of pleasure.

The etymologist is obliged to grasp a common semantic core, which allows different meanings to co-exist under one 'sound roof'.

I was once amazed that the Arabic word شراء [SHARA] means both “buy” and “sell” at the same time. And now I look at this calmly: both narrow, special meanings go back to the broader, general meaning: "to engage in trade."

Valeriy D. Osipov
Ph.D.

The Oxford Etymologic Dictionary (OED) considers Ego / I as if it were a self-standing word developed within the Germanic and 'Indo-European' languages with a mere meaning of 'I / me / self, myself':[Spoiler (click to open)]

I (pron.)
12c., a shortening of Old English ic, the first person singular nominative pronoun, from Proto-Germanic *ek (source also of Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek, Norwegian eg, Danish jeg, Old High German ih, German ich, Gothic ik), from PIE *eg- "I," nominative form of the first person singular pronoun (source also of Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego (source of French Je), Greek ego, Russian ja, Lithuanian aš).
Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, later everywhere; the form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c. 1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. It began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/I

ego (n.) by 1707, in metaphysics, "the self; that which feels, acts, or thinks," from Latin ego "I" (cognate with Old English ic; see I); its use is implied in egoity.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ego

местоим., укр. я, др.-русск. язъ, я (и то и другое – в Мстислав. грам. 1130 г.; см. Обнорский – Бархударов I, 33), ц.-сл. азъ ἐγώ, реже ѩзъ (см. Дильс, Aksl. Gr. 77), болг. аз, яз (Младенов 702), сербохорв. jа̑, словен. jàz, jâ, чеш. já, др.-чеш. jáz (совр. чеш. форма – с начала ХIV в.), слвц. jа, др.-пол. jaz, пол., в.-луж., н.-луж. jа, полаб. joz, jо.
Праслав. *аzъ отличается своим вокализмом от родственных форм, ср. др.-лит. еš, лит. àš, лтш. еs, др.-прус. еs, аs, др.-инд. ahám, авест. azǝm, др.-перс. аdаm, арм. еs, венет. еχо, гр. ἐγώ, лат. еgо, гот. ik "я". Наряду с и.-е. *еǵ- (гр., лат., герм.), существовало и.-е. диал. *eǵh- (др.-инд., венет.). Недоказанной является гипотеза о существовании *ō̆go наряду с *еgō на основе слав. аzъ и хетт. uk, ug "я" (Мейе – Эрну 342 и сл.; см. Вальде – Гофм. I, 395 и сл.). Не объяснена еще достоверно утрата конечного -z в слав.; весьма невероятно, чтобы она совершилась по аналогии местоим. tу (напр., Ягич, AfslPh 23, 543; Голуб – Копечный 147), а также чтобы долгота начального гласного была обусловлена долготой гласного в tу (Бругман у Бернекера, см. ниже). Более удачна попытка объяснения аzъ из сочетания а ězъ (Бернекер I, 35; Бругман, Grdr. 2, 2, 382), но см. против этого Кнутссон, ZfslPh 12, 96 и сл. По мнению Зубатого (LF 36, 345 и сл.), в этом а- представлена усилит. част. *ā, ср. др.-инд. ād, авест. āt̃, ср. также др.-инд. межд. ḗt "смотри, глядь!" из ā и id; Педерсен (KZ 38, 317) видит здесь влияние окончания 1 л. ед. ч. -ō; сомнения по этому поводу см. у Бернекера (I, 35). Для объяснения -z привлекают законы сандхи (Сольмсен, KZ 29, 79); ср. Бернекер, там же; И. Шмидт, KZ 36, 408 и сл.; Вакернагель – Дебруннер 3, 454 и сл.
http://www.classes.ru/all-russian/russian-dictionary-Vasmer-term-17126.htm

ich (Ger.), Εγώ [ego] (Gr.), ego (Lat.), io (Ital.), yo (Sp.), I (Eng.), jag (Sw.), я [ja] (Slavic)...

However, should one look beyond the hypothetic *constructions, established by the German philologists in the 19th Century, one would see an obvious Nostratic relation of the above words with the meaning of ' I ' to the following words with the meaning of ' 1 (one)':

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