Taal aan de wandel

From from from where?

The Spanish way of saying ‘from where’ is de donde. However, to speakers living a thousand years ago, that would’ve meant ‘from from from where’.

In Old Spanish, ‘from where’ was simply onde, a descendant of Latin unde. However, this word would end up getting reinforced by de (‘from’) twice because of an interesting series of ambiguities.

Usted, você & vostè

Spanish ‘usted’ and Portuguese ‘você’, words meaning “you”, don’t look much alike, but they have the same origin: Latin ‘vostram + mercēdem’, literally “your mercy”.

Click my new graphic to learn all about their fascinating history – in which no Arabic was involved, contrary to a persistent myth.

Chez casa mia

Chez moi is the French way of saying ‘at my place’. The preposition chez has a fascinating origin: it comes from the same word as Spanish casa (‘house’): Latin casa.

Casa originally meant ‘hut’, but it was destined for a great future: it would become the common word for ‘house’ in almost all Romance languages.

A quick bio of vital words

The word quick has many surprising relatives.

It’s related to vital, vivid, and Spanish vivir (to live) via Latin, and to bio- and zoo via Ancient Greek.

Germanic relatives include Dutch kweken (to grow; to foster) and German keck (sassy).

Indo-European youth

The English word young has surprising cognates in other languages in its Indo-European family.

Irish óg and Welsh ifanc mean ‘young’ but don’t resemble young at all, while Italian giovenco means ‘young bull’.

More distantly, young is related to youth, juvenile, junior, Spanish joven, French jeune, and more.

East & west

The French words est and ouest look a lot like English east and west.

That’s because they were borrowed from Old English, along with other nautical terms, which points to naval contacts. French then passed on est and ouest, as well as nord and sud, to the other Romance languages.

My new graphic tells you how we know Old English was the donor language, how east is related to aurora, and why west may have orignally meant ‘where the sun sets’.

The French words nord and sud look a lot like English north and south.

That’s not a coincidence: it’s because Old French borrowed these words from Old English norþ and sūþ – along with est and ouest, which come from ēast and west. The other Romance languages later adopted these words from French.

My new infographic tells you all about the fascinating theories about the history of north, south and their cognates.

Next time: east and west.

The seasons of Romance

The Spanish words primavera (spring) and verano (summer) both derive from Latin vēr (spring).

Originally, primavera was early spring, while verano was late spring.

However, their meanings shifted to later in the year, and estío, the original word for summer, was dethroned.

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.

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.

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!

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.