Linguaphiles

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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The “beard” sticking out of the Egyptian pharaohs' chins is strikingly reminiscent of poturu, a cone-shaped “lip plug” made of bone or wood and inserted through the lower lip of everyone in a small Amazonian Indian tribe (self-name: Zo'é - 'we','us'- as opposed to non-Indians, enemies; external name - Poturu, in honor of the distinguishing attribute of Zoe; the tribe counts to only 160 people, and contacts with the tribe were only established in 1987); poturu is inserted when a child reaches the age of 7-9 years (which is one of the most important ceremonies, and a rite of passage for children); poturu is gradually enlarged throughout one's life; most adults wear poturu of approx. 18 cm in length and 2.5 cm in width: https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/zoe .

Most of the South American Indians do not have beard and other face hair. Poturu for Zo'é likely serves as a 'substitute' of what they do not have, but have seen on some foreign teachers long time ago - and wished to have, too.

And - the Egyptian pharaos seem to have belonged to the same beardless race as the Indians (also having the very same distinct face characters)!

And what else is the POTURU other than Ital. POTERE, Port., Sp. PODER - the POWER ?!

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I've noticed that the acronym KO in French and Italian informal communication can mean simply "not OK" without particular relation to the original meaning "Knock Out".

Specifically, in French at work (OK = "test passing", "KO" = "test failing"), and in Italian here (scroll down for the history of Russian revolution in hand-drawn cartoons with Italian captions): the very first one has "guerra KO", another one close to the bottom has

INDUSTRIALIZZAZIONE

Industria pesante OK
Industria leggera KO

How is that "KO" pronounced in French and Italian? What other languages use that meaning of "KO"?

Hi! I came across this community and am intrigued. I'm getting my MA TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) right now in a program that requires a lot of credits in linguistic disciplines. I've taken classes in phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, first language acquisition and second language acquisition. I also lived in Japan for a while and speak incompetent Japanese. I'm looking forward to seeing what this comm is all about.

I was also hoping perhaps someone could help me out. I'm writing a story right now with an Italian character, and if there's anyone out there who speaks Italian, I'd love to pick your brain about some terms and phrases.

Thanks!

I'm an occasional contributor to fanlore.org, a wiki about fandom - fan fiction, fan art, conventions, etc. based on books, films, TV etc. At the moment the overwhelming majority of posts are about English-language fandom and activities, but one of its aims is to broaden the coverage and cover source material and activities in other countries.

As part of this I recently wrote a small entry about the Italian comic "Diabolik" and the film "Danger: Diabolik" which derives from it.

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Diabolik

What I wasn't able to do was find out if there is an active fandom for the comic; unfortunately in English-language searches it's drowned out by an unrelated anime series, Diabolik Lovers. About all I've learned is that there are Diabolik panels at Italian comics conventions.

If anyone here can give any more information about this comic's Italian fandom and activities I'd be very grateful. And if anyone knows anything about other non-English fandoms it would be great if you could think about posting an article to Fanlore.org

Hi, guys! First time poster here :D My name is Hope, and I have a question.

I'd like to self-teach myself Italian. I already have a pretty good basis for learning - my mother tongue, Maltese, borrows heavily from Italian and has similar verb conjugation and pronunciation. Now, what I want to ask is: are there any helpful resources (websites, books, films) that you'd recommend? And what are some tips for learning Italian?

Aiutami, per favore!

I’m trying to translate this angsty, terribly liberal arts student poem about my unhealthy feelings about opera into Italian for part of my final project (which I have gotten little to no instructions about other than some vague thing about looking into my heart and doing mind exercises which are NOT appropriate instructions for my advance comp final. Guhhh)

So, if anyone who is far better at Italian than I am could possibly have a look at this and tell me just how rubbish it is, I would be terribly, terribly grateful.

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I'm thinking of learning Spanish, but I'm not sure how well that would go given the level of proficiency I have in other languages. I'm an Italian major who has been studying German, too, for years. Roughly how difficult would it be to add an intensive beginning Spanish course? Would it be easy to get it mixed up with Italian? I know I managed to get Italian mixed up with German when I first started Italian, which everyone says is ridiculous, so I'm a bit worried about the Spanish.

So, basically, will Spanish be more difficult because of Italian, or less difficult? And what about French? I might have time to add French, too, but I'm torn because it's at the same time as Yiddish and I'd like to take up another Germanic, oyyy

Additionally, I'm planning on going abroad to Italy next year, and I still want to take German and possibly Yiddish. Has anyone had any experience taking one foreign language in another?

Any advice would be great.

EDIT: Because I can't HTML

Hello there! This is my first post here so, I'll make a small introduction.
I'm an Italian girl that loves languages, cats and indie music.
I'm a graduated student and my major at university is Japanese.
I can also speak English and French, some Chinese and a little German and that's because I love learning about languages that I'm here.
In my free time I run a blog in 4 languages: Italian, English, Japanese and French, where I write
about random things, not only about Italy or Japan.
I also have some pages where I try to teach Italian to Japanese and French people, but I also make some funny posts where I try to teach Romanesco, (Rome's dialect) to everyone.
If you want to have a look you can do it by clicking here .
I hope it can be interesting for you and if you have any advice or even corrections, it would be really appreciated!
Thank you so much for your attention!

Hey linguaphiles!

I'm a graduate student in the humanities and it behooves me to learn Italian, French and German asap. I have a really good textbook for French (French for Reading, Sandberg and Tatham), and I intend to take a German reading course. I don't have to pass an exam for Italian, but in my subfield knowing it thoroughly will be essential.

However, my school doesn't offer an Italian reading course, and there seems to be a dearth of textbooks designed specifically for reading (I could only really find this one, http://www.amazon.com/From-Italian-English-Reading-Knowledge/dp/007353661X/, and it seems oddly difficult to get hold of and not overly well-reviewed, insofar as reviews of it even exist - though has anyone used it?). I took a semester of Italian in undergrad, but knowing how to ask for eggplant at the supermarket does not much help the reading of belletristic scholarly articles...

I know a number of graduate students are in the position of having to learn modern languages for reading, so I wondered if anyone had recommendations for textbooks, etc, that are good for self-learning, and encompass enough of the grammar to get one up to speed with scholarly prose? I'm pretty familiar with learning languages and have studied Latin as a primary subject for a number of years, so Italian shouldn't in theory be excessively difficult. It's just a case of finding a suitable resource, really, and that seems easier said than done. I wonder if just sucking it up, getting a decent Italian grammar, and drilling myself on verb forms and so forth is the best way, though vocabulary building can be a challenge. Plus, I enjoy the learning via progressive reading method.

tia!