I'm glad there's a community that appreciates languages and their historical family links and shares videos like this. I feel like this is such an under-rated science
In German there is the word "Hengst" for a male horse, which is related to the root of the Scandinavian words and there is the word "Ross" , a more noble/poetic word for horse that comes from the same root as horse.
fun fact: the word "bear" itself is a noa-name, as Indo-European groups from the north (typically the ancestors of the future Germanic tribes) would have to deal the most with bears and didn't want to summon such dangerous animal by using its real name, which has been kept in Romance languages for example (latin "ursus" Italian "orso").
not even Indo-European but Hungarian also lost the word for bear, we borrowed "medve" (meaning honey-eater) from a Slavic lang. Same thing happened to wolves and deers, their names mean "the tailed one" and "the horned one" (in Hungarian "farkas" and "szarvas" respectively).
Yeah, a swedish saying about trolls: "Don't speak about the trolls, or they be at and inside of of your doorstep" - If you speak about something or some one, you summon them. Like, the law of attraction or something.
French is not germanic language because its romanic language and his brothers are italian , spanish, portugel and romanian and of course romansch in swisserland . I think author never studied this language and than doesn't know differens between that's languages .
7:56 honestly I think it is pretty uncommon in German to use the word "Haifisch" usually it's just "Hai". It might be the proper scientific way but the word in practice is Hai. Amazing videos!
@@tangente00 as far as I know, this redundancy is not a sign of infancy, but there are other linguistic principals active. A few examples: people in German also use longer forms with other words like Bauchnabel instead of just Nabel, Eidotter instead of just Dotter. There are many very common examples. The reason in a nutshell: When people talk to each other there are always small and big disturbances like noises, inefficient brains, just little things like your ears closing for a millisecond while yawning and stuff like that. If you make your words slightly redundant, one or the other part of the word has a higher chance to be heard and registered. That's not my theory. I read it in a book by a linguist. I just can't remember his name.
@Talpa 1987 No it has something to do with the many german languages which existed in Germany before everyone started using standard german. Until 200 years ago Germans still spoke mainly their local versions of German and only educated people used the universal German. Standard German had a really hard way to become spoken by everyone because its more archaic than the local languages and therefore complicated. Thats why German words are often so descriptive, people just wanted to prevent misunderstandings.
@@lahelia9691 I don't know your qualifications and your sources, but I know the qualifications of the linguist who gave the explanation I gave and so I will just believe what he said. That of course doesn't mean that his reason is the only reason. The thing you mentioned might as well be an additional reason.
In German there is also "Kater" for the word for "Cat" but it's a masculine noun and it's used for cats whom gender is specified, you can still use Katze
English "palfrey" is of Norman French origin, but that word in turn came from a Frankish word related to Dutch "paard" and German "Pferd". All of these came from Latin "paraveredus", which is actually made up of a Greek prefix "para-" (side, extra), and a Gaulish word "weredos" 'horse' (it is related to the Welsh word "gorwydd", also 'horse'). So a hybrid Greek-Celtic word, used by Latin speakers, made its way into Germanic and Romance languages in northwestern Europe.
@@erynn9968 English is a perfect example of the people who live in Britain… it’s a European language pretending it isn’t. Brexit made it obvious that the Brits don’t consider themselves European, and honestly, it’s gross.
@@L333gok how does it pretend it isn’t, could you please explain me as a linguist to a linguist? And what do you mean by European language if not geography, may I ask?
@@erynn9968 it doesn’t matter it was just a comparison. The problem is that brits think they are better than us and that’s why they left the eu. They need to reconsider leaving the eu
@@L333gok 1st, more than a half Brits didn't want it (most didn't go vote cause they were young ppl). Second - your example doesn't make sense because it assumes Brits chose unique words INTENTIONALLY - which was never true, and no language in the world works like this on a big scale. Words' etymology is well studied for English, and I don't remember a single word that was intentionally invented instead of an existing one just for the sake of difference.
@@cactusowo1835 That's Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic languages, mostly spoken in western Scotland. Scots is a Germanic language spoken predominantly in eastern Scotland, some consider it to be a dialect of English (not the same as Scottish English, which is a dialect of "true" English).
@@wtc5198 Thanks for the information! I don't have that much clue about scottish, besides that they have their gaelinc language, gaelic is in my list of languajes that I will learn and when that time comes, I'll find more things about celtic languages
@@cactusowo1835 Celtic languages are awesome, there's six of them that are still alive: Brythonic: -Welsh -Cornish -Breton Goidelic: -Irish -Manx -Scottish Gaelic
You could take some other English and German words and just throw -fish on the end. Walfisch, tuna fish. Probably just that pattern of (phono-semantic part) + (extra semantic clarification part) . Stahl would seem to have been an acceptable but ambiguous forerunner of Diebstahl. German has Ren but since the English only remembered one kind of Tier, their language ends up with the completely unnecessary reindeer. Tell me you love antlers without saying “I love antlers”-national motto of England, probably.
The other interpretation, I guess, is to see it as which animal has the lowest “fired arrow to edible mass” ratio in a land where an incredibly high percentage of trees are coppiced or pollarded for very specific purposes. (I mean to say that the place was lousy with bows and arrows. Fletcher, Archer, Turner, and Yeo are all surnames. Likewise botch is a very common word, given its origin in niche technical jargon.)
Other German words for horse and squirrel would be Ross (cognate to horse) and Eichkätzchen (oak kitten). These are typically used in Austrian Standard German.
In Austria we also use Fack/Fock for pig, which comes from the Proto-Germanic term farhaz and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European pórḱos. Both terms have an English equivalent as well (pórḱos -> pork; farhaz -> farrow).
@@Delgen1951 Well, yes. The Proto-Indo-European word pórḱos evolved into the Latin word porcus, which became porc in Old French and, via Anglo-Norman, eventually became pork in English.
Eekhoorn in Dutch sounds exactly the same as the English word Acorn. I wonder if that is because squirrels eat acorns? Or, also possible, from the German "Eichhörnchen". Translated to Dutch that would be "eikhoorntje", literally oak (little) horn. Because their ears are pointy, like little horns.
ác means oak in Anglo-Saxon/Old-English. The name for squirrel seems to be ác-wern or ácweorna. The wern/weorna part.. speculative perhaps analogue to Dutch 'weer': against or like a guard? Some creature which is protecting oak trees.
Eekhoorn is similar to the word acorn in Dutch which is eikel so you could be right. Idk why there's a ''hoorn'' so maybe squirrels used to have horns or maybe they're referring to their teeth as horns so maybe the word literally meant acorn teeth before
4:29 In Dutch we also have the word “big”, mostly used for young pigs but worth mentioning. 5:35 In Dutch, and maybe also German?, we have the word Hengst wich correlates to Scandinavian Hest. This word is however only used for male horses.
Let's look at this word => *Frog* English => Frog German => Frosche Dutch => Kikker (Don't know its origin) West Frisian => Kikkert Afrikaans => Padda (Malay origin => Padi, but interestingly it means rice in Malay) Swedish => Groda (Sounds like kröte(toad) in German) Danish => Frø Norwegian => Frosk Faroese => Froskur Icelandic => Froskur
I think I once read somewhere that the English word was originally "cunny" but because that sounds to much like female genitalia the words coney and bunny were basically "made up" for lack of a better phrase. Maybe someone could confirm this?
I believe I have read somewhere that the "Eich-" or "eek" part of the words for squirrel don't derive from the word oak, but from a root meaning "quick" or "agile".
Interesting, the german Word for oak is Eiche. So as a native german speaker eich relates too oak for me too. The seed/nut of an oak is called Eichel. My guess is Eich is related to Eichel as squirrels like to eat those. So id be sincerely interested where you have read that information out curiosity. I mean could be true what you said im no expert in old germanic languages, quite interesting to me.
The old English word for squirrel was more similar to the others. Im not 100%sure on the spelling as i don't have it in front of me but iirc it was something like aakhorn
In old English it is not actually squirrel, but 'ācweorna'. I know this because of someone else of UA-cam and although the writing isn't similar, the sound is. It should sound somewhat like eckhorn(a?). And this one also refers to the type of tree: ac or eck sound is from oak. In Dutch this would be eekhoorn, with eek regering to eik. Eik = oak. I love this connection, you get to see how words trafelled.
I absolutely loved this video, I love German in particular, so it was a really good experience, thank you! 💜 The first one used in the video is called _“The First Law Of Motion”_ composed by Johannes Bornlöf. The last two so used for this video are both composed by Bonnie Grace, the first one is _"The Goths"_ and the other is _"Where the Thistle Grows"_ . Hope this helps.
My grandma, from Dalarna in Sweden, always called spiders "kuppjerk". Always wondered about the origin and etymology of that word.. now I've got the "kupp"-part answered for. Thanks!
That's actually really interesting you got me to look up some more stuff about dalmål (the dialect some people in Dalarna speak) and it seems to have retained quite a few old Norse words. From what I can find it seems like this could be a consequence of the area being under Norwegian control for a long time during the middle ages. So my guess is that the natives of the area tried to keep their medieval Norwegian language alive which was relatively easy since a lot of them were pretty isolated from the rest of Sweden and from Norway. Their language seems to have eventually morphed into just a Swedish dialect but with some old medieval Norwegian/Norse words still being present in some form.
@@samuelwhite1228 Yes, there's definitely allot of Norwegian words in dalmål: "fejs/fjös" which I think is barn or something similar is the same in my grandma's dalmål. Also a funny thing about dalmål is that it's such a heterogeneous dialect.. you could travel just one kilometer and alot of common words would be totally different.
Funny, that many words may be also in Russian: bear - búryj, lion - l'ev, wolf - volk, cat - kot, owl - sová, horse - kon'/lóshad', bat - calque, literary "flying mouse", cow - koróva, eagle - or'ól, shark - akúla (close to icelandic).
Well I am Scotland and in Scotland a Cat = Ket, Fox = Todd, Owl =Hoolet, Dog = Dug, Pig = Grumphie, Horse = cuddie, Shark = Shairk It is always important to point out that each language has regional dialects and words can vary from region to region.
An alternative explanation why the Nordic languages has a completely different name for the fox than other Germanic ones is that it's a Sami word. Im not sure how plausible this is but the Sami did a lot of trade with fox fur with the other Scandinavian people so it makes sense in that respect at least.
@@ganjafi59 Thank you! I hadn't really looked into it until now, just once heard in passing "rev" being used as an example of a Sami loanword in Norwegian. It's clearly the same word of course so the only question is which languge group borrowed it from which and I think we can find a clue in Hungary. Hungarian is of course a Finno-Ugric language even though it's not closely related to Sami or Finnish. The Hungarian word for fox is róka (and it's plausible it has the same root as ravasz which means cunning). It's probably also worth noting that the Estonian word for fox is rebane. I think this is quite clear evidence the the root of the word is Finno-Ugric and not Germanic/Indo-European. But that leaves another question. The only language from the Nordic region and the only language from the widespread Finno-Ugric family to have a completely different name for the fox, is Finnish. Where on earth did the Finnish word "kettu" come from??? Edit: No, wait, there's another question too! Is the English word/name Reynardine derived from the Nordic fox? The word isn't that similar but it's not completely different either.
@SaxonThrashQueen there is a theory that Germanic peoples are Indo-Europeanized Uralic Finnic people. That Germanic peoples are just Uralians who adopted culture from Indo-Europeans. Don't know how true that is though.
The were many dialects in France back in the days. So saying that "eagle" comes from old French "aigle" is not accurate since there were two or more spellings of that word "eagle" and "aigle" (both are old French forms). Most of the time modern French retained the "ai" form over the "ea", but we have some words that kept the "ea" form as the word "eau" that comes from "aqua". "Aqua" also gave the word "aix" in French that wasn't retained for mordern standard French. Another example is "manteau" from "mantel" that could have been "mantail".
@ Hugo Bourgon. Interesting! But apart from the french word eau coming from latin agua, it occurs to me that it may also be connected to scandinavian aa/å , which sounds exactly like french eau. Did not the burgundian tribe come from sweden?!
@@simontenkate9601 No, but they are related via much more distant relations in Indo-European languages. Old English had the word Ea as well for River. They all come from the same root as Latin Aqua but k sounds in Germanic languages become Hs so Ahwa as it is in Gothic, then Ea in Old English and Á in Old Norse which became Å in Scandinavian languages. Some modern English dialects retain the word ea (pronounced as ee) just as some German dialects still have Ach for river.
It's very clear in here how different English is from the rest of the Germanic languages, but at the same time still very similar in the words it doesn't use French for.
Kaninchen / Kanin, the German suffix "chen" only means that it is something small. Same with Eichhörnchen. Eichhorn (german) vs Eekhorn (dutch) In northern Germany, "Swin" is also used for "Schwein" (pig/swine), nordic Svin Varken (dutch), Ferkel (German) Pferd, (Pherd, Phard, or even Ferd, ... ) and Paard. German and Dutch, dialect variants in between. Hengst, Hest, Hänst ... But wait ! German: "ein (Stück) Vieh verkaufen" English "pay a fee" Yes "Vieh" and "fee" come from the same root but "fee" has change its meaning. Like Engl. gift vs German "das Gift" changed over time.
Ah, throwback to my first English class where we didn't get a heads up regarding the "gift =/= Gift" situation. "Today is Tom's birthday. Sally gives Tom a gift. Tom is very happy." We deadass thought Sally poisoned Tom on his birthday, and that he actually liked that.
I would like to see you use IPA translations for each word so we could see how each word is pronounced. Sometimes, letters aren't specific enough to guess how it might be said
I like to think of english as the french of germanic languages, similar but very different sounding with lots of outside influences from other language groups.
@@wtc5198 The similarities with Arabic aren't coincidences. They are a result of the Islamic conquest of Iberia where Arabic was spoken alongside early Castillian Spanish and other early Spanish languages
@@wtc5198 Yes you're right. As a general rule, most Spanish words beginning with al have some Arabic origin. Take 'alfombra' for example, meaning rug or carpet. Over time the definite article 'al' from Arabic became inseperable from the noun leaving modern Castillian with 'la alfombra'.
As Italian sometimes I don't understand spanish: Dog, Latin = canis Dog, Italian = cane Dog, Spanish = perro Fox, Latin = vulpis Fox, Italian = volpe Fox, Spanish = zorro. Lamb, Latin = Agnus Lamb, Italian = Agnello Lamb, spanish = Cordero What the hell?
Mmm in Castilian (Spanish as you call it) we can also say "can" for dog, but it's something you'd hear in a Mexican movie, I'm from Argentina and it sounds horrible for me, "perro" is much better.
The answer is that "perro" and "zorro" are most likely substrate words from the ancient Iberian language that was spoken in eastern Spain before the Roman conquest. Alternatively, they might be of Basque origin, and there are some proposed French and Germanic origins for "zorro"
An older Swedish word for bat is läderlapp (leather flap), cognate with the Icelandic word. Batman was called Läderlappen (the bat) until 1990. I remember being confused in 1989, seeing two Batman comics in the supermarket: Läderlappen och Robin ("child-friendly" Batman comics from 50s-70s) and Batman (then current "dark and gritty" Batman comics and some other DC stuff).
I don't know if it's my title that is wrong, because it is automatically translated into German by You Tube, but these are all Germanic languages, not Romanic languages.
Where are the Frisian equivalents? Frisian is a Germanic language too. I guess it wasn't included because it's spoken by too few people and in an area no longer known as a separate country.
Hate to be that guy but I wished you used the English flag rather than the British one as that represents the English language. The British one could include Welsh, Scots Gaelic etc which are completely different languages but also spoken under the Union Jack.
The video is about Germanic languages language, the English in the video is English as spoken in the British Isles (by which I mean there's no separate examples given for Scots, for Hibernian English, for Doric, for Welsh English etc). It would have been arguably more inaccurate to use the English flag. There's other languages in the Netherlands than Dutch, but no one seems to be complaining about the use of the Netherlands flag.
So interesting to see, that even some words aren't related, there might be still some similar words used as synonyms. For example horse in German - Pferd - Ross (old fashioned) - close to Horse - Hengst (=Stallion) - close to Hangistaz There are a few other words, maybe someone can relate to these? Stute (female Horse) Fohlen (foal) Wallach (gelding)
@Arcadium In germany we have Ross as an old word for horse. Pferd is generell the horse, Hengst is a male horse, Stute is a female horse, Fohlen is a young horse
There is also a hypothesis that the north Germanic names for fox , refur, rav, ræv are a loanword from a Finno ugric language, perhaps the Saami language
1:50 'vargur' is a synonym of 'úlfur' in Icelandic. And 3:52 'hross' and 'hors' (the latter being archaic) are synonyms of 'hestur' and are cognates to the English word 'horse'. 3:26 in the nominative case it is 'íkorni' but in all the other cases it is 'íkorna'.
@@kilsestoffel3690 I would overall not say it is outdated but rather that it depends on the region. And in Dutch the words 'ros' and 'hors' are synonyms to 'paard'.
Same for Dutch! 'Ros' for 'paard' and it is usually used to mean something like the English word 'steed' instead of refering to the animal. 'Ross/ros' are probably cognates of 'horse' no?
@@mauritsponnette Yes, they are cognates. In German, there's also the word "Hengst" for male horses which I believe to be cognate with the Scandinavian words for horse shown in the video. Ross in German is also more of a "fancy" word, while "Pferd" is the everyday word.
Just a comment about that *shark* may relate to the Dutch word *schurk* = villain. That is fun because the Norwegian word *skurk* means villain, criminal, bandit, crook etc.
In Dutch a young pig is called a "big". Not pronounced as in English but with the typical dutch g sound. And a male horse is a "hengst". I miss the Frisian words, an important language in the North Sea area.
That is why my last name, which is Lower, comes from the German Löwe, which was the last name of my great-grandparents when they immigrated to Argentina in the 20th century, but at that time the state changed it to the way it is now.
I'm also Argentine and one of the surnames of my (Swiss-)German family is Wiederkehr that means 'return', so now I want to return to Europe lol. I also have Italian family and they got literally all their surnames changed so I get you.
That's a good one, and is found in Shakespeare. Apparently it fell out of use since then because it was too similar to "cunny" which meant female genitals :/
Came to say this, good to see it was already said! I would add it is only a dialect word in modern Britain but in Middle English and earlier it was more of a mainstream word.
That's unlikely, since German words beginning in d- would be expected to begin with th- in English. Here's what Wiktionary says about the possible origins of "dog": The original meaning seems to have been a common dog, as opposed to a well-bred one, or something like 'cur', and perhaps later came to be used for stocky dogs. Possibly a pet-form diminutive with suffix ga (compare frocga (“frog”), *picga (“pig”)), appended to a base *dog-, *doc of unclear origin and meaning. One possibility is Old English dox (“dark, swarthy”) (compare frocga from frox). Another proposal is that it derives from Proto-West Germanic *dugan (“to be suitable”), the origin of Old English dugan (“to be good, worthy, useful”), English dow, German taugen. The theory goes that it could have been an epithet for dogs, commonly used by children, meaning "good/useful animal."
@@aaronmarks9366 the same can be said for the unknown bird and pig,they replaced fowl and swine although still on used but not number one,and what about replacing the germanic deer for latin animal? it's a linguistic crime among many unnecessary latin loan words.
Good vid and music. I feel bad for those who think English is a Latin language. That's demonstrably false. I have a book about how English would be if the Normans lost in 1066. Its very interesting. There is a song I like called "As flittermice as Satan's spys" by the Norwegian band Darkthrone,whose lyrics were written(in English) by a man who called himself Varg. I'm all for replacing bat with flittermouse,ha ha.
The is an alternative archaic name in English for a rabbit - 'coney', similar to the other germanic language names. I don't know is this is a cognate word or not.
It is ;) It's funny, it used to be common in English in the late medieval and early modern period, but at some point it fell out of use, with the main theory being that it started sounding too much like "cunny", an older term for "p*ssy" XD
I am Arab from Algeria North Africa but I love Germanic languages so much ❤❤❤❤. Ich liebe Deutschland und Österreich. Jeg Elsker Danmark Jeg Elsker Norge Jäg Älskar Sverige IK hou van Nederland. I don't know how to say it in Icelandic 😊 I love Iceland. Deutsch+Nederlands +Dansk+Svenska+Norsk+Icelandic =❤❤❤
I think you include much too many proto Indo European roots.. it's obviously very different from the proto Germanic roots in most cases. Very different languages and you seem to assume it's always the Latins that influenced the Germans.. I have more the impression it's the other way around. Look into old Frisian more also to understand the pre Roman Chatolic imperial world better.
Here is English -> Frisian: Bear = Bear Lion = Liuw Dog = Hûn Cat = Kat Wolf = Wolf Fox = Fokse Rabbit = Knyn Squirrrel = Iikhoarn Owl = Ûle Bat = Bat Horse = Hynder Cow = Ko Spider = Spin Eagle = Earn Shark = Haai
Kaninchen isn’t the only word for rabbit in german, in fact the other word ”Hase” is used far more frequently. Kaninchen also doesn’t mean “Rabbit” in particular, it rather refers to a domesticated Rabbit while “Hase” is normally used for a Wild hare (though many people would also call a domesticated Rabbit “Hase”
Interesting. 🐎 horse , in North introduced to Island, England , Ireland, by Vikings. When traveling brought horses with them in their boats, later Spain.. 🇩🇰🌅🇺🇸💙🙏
In the dialect where I come from in Sweden, spider is "kopjärk", I guess it's related to edderkopp in Norwegian but turned around and mixed with Järk/Jerk (pronounced 'yairk', not like English 'jerk'), which is the local variant of the name Erik.
I've read a more likely origin for the Scandinavian term "rev" for fox. Fox fur was at the dawn of historical times one of the main export goods from the area, and many of the foxes had been caught by Lapps (Saami). In Saami the term for fox is "revva"...
Small correction, "erne/earn" are not from Greek "ὄρνις", rather, both the English and Greek words are independent cognates of Proto-Indo-European *h₃érō ~ *h₃r̥nés, "large bird, eagle"
@@georgeadams1853 Ah ok, I checked and I can see where the confusion is, it's not very clearly written. I found: "Middle English, from Old English earn; akin to Old High German arn eagle, Greek ornis bird" "Akin to" basically means "cognate with" in etymologies, but the order it's written in here makes it sound like the English word comes from the German word, which in turn comes from the Greek word. In reality they're all just cognates of each other.
Nice to see that the not mentiond secondary words of one language can be related to the primary word in an other. Like the german Hengst and Ross for horse, but also "Ferkel" (young pig) with dutch verchen, also it has an english cognate "farrow".
Finnish is part of a family called (unsurprisingly) Finnic, and includes not only Finnish, but Estonian, Karelian, Ingrian, Livonian, Votic, Ludic, and Veps, all of which are spoken in either Finland, Estonia, or the parts of Russia near the Gulf of Finland. Finnic, though, is part of a larger language family called Uralic, named for the Ural mountains in Russia, where it is believed this family originated. Besides Finnic, the Uralic family includes Samic (the Sami languages of Scandinavia), Mordvinic (the Erzya and Moksha languages of Russia), Permic (the Komi and Udmurt languages of Russia), Mari, Khanty, Mansi (all spoken in Russia too), and Hungarian, spoken in central Europe. There is also a Samoyedic branch spoken in Siberia.
The Finnic group is very distantly related to the Ugric group, the largest member of which is Hungarian. If they were descended from a common proto-language then the split must have happened several millennia ago. You can just about see some kinship in some of the numbers and some basic vocabulary Egy - Yksi Kettő - Kaksi Három - Kolme Négy - Neljä Öt - Viisi Hat - Kuusi Hét - Seitsemän Nyolc - Kahdeksan Kilenc - Yhdeksän Tíz - Kymmenen Both languages have been influenced by neighbours over the past thousand years so have drifted further apart.
Can you do Slavic languages too? And maybe you can even compare them to Old Slavic words (don't forget to add Old Church Slavonic as one of the languages)
Please, make video about Slavic languages comparisons. Slavic languages are: Belarussian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian.
I'm glad there's a community that appreciates languages and their historical family links and shares videos like this. I feel like this is such an under-rated science
i agree
In German there is the word "Hengst" for a male horse, which is related to the root of the Scandinavian words and there is the word "Ross" , a more noble/poetic word for horse that comes from the same root as horse.
The same as the Scandinavian word hingst which also means stallion.
The word "Hengest" also exists in old English, and means the same thing.
It's the same in Dutch. Female horse is a merrie, like English mare. Nightmare is nachtmerrie.
And we also have the old word ros.
It’s also called “ross” in Faroese. It’s used maybe 50/50 together with the word “hestur”. :)
fun fact: the word "bear" itself is a noa-name, as Indo-European groups from the north (typically the ancestors of the future Germanic tribes) would have to deal the most with bears and didn't want to summon such dangerous animal by using its real name, which has been kept in Romance languages for example (latin "ursus" Italian "orso").
Interesting! I wonder what the original word for bear in Germanic languages was. “Urs” in Romanian.
I didn't know that! Fun! In Portuguese it's Urso
not even Indo-European but Hungarian also lost the word for bear, we borrowed "medve" (meaning honey-eater) from a Slavic lang.
Same thing happened to wolves and deers, their names mean "the tailed one" and "the horned one" (in Hungarian "farkas" and "szarvas" respectively).
Same thing with Slavic languages. The new name literally means honey eater
Yeah, a swedish saying about trolls:
"Don't speak about the trolls, or they be at and inside of of your doorstep"
- If you speak about something or some one, you summon them. Like, the law of attraction or something.
Love how all Germanic Languages share the same word for hound then there's English that randomly made another word "dog" lol..
Dog... Old French "Dogue" (example Bouledogue = Bulldog) ?
German has "Dogge" which is specific type of dog. Apparently called "Great Dane" in English.
In Swedish dog means died 🤷
@@felixschneidenbach2422 oder grosse dane
French is not germanic language because its romanic language and his brothers are italian , spanish, portugel and romanian and of course romansch in swisserland . I think author never studied this language and than doesn't know differens between that's languages .
7:56 honestly I think it is pretty uncommon in German to use the word "Haifisch" usually it's just "Hai". It might be the proper scientific way but the word in practice is Hai. Amazing videos!
@@tangente00 as far as I know, this redundancy is not a sign of infancy, but there are other linguistic principals active. A few examples: people in German also use longer forms with other words like Bauchnabel instead of just Nabel, Eidotter instead of just Dotter. There are many very common examples.
The reason in a nutshell:
When people talk to each other there are always small and big disturbances like noises, inefficient brains, just little things like your ears closing for a millisecond while yawning and stuff like that. If you make your words slightly redundant, one or the other part of the word has a higher chance to be heard and registered.
That's not my theory. I read it in a book by a linguist. I just can't remember his name.
@Talpa 1987 No it has something to do with the many german languages which existed in Germany before everyone started using standard german. Until 200 years ago Germans still spoke mainly their local versions of German and only educated people used the universal German. Standard German had a really hard way to become spoken by everyone because its more archaic than the local languages and therefore complicated. Thats why German words are often so descriptive, people just wanted to prevent misunderstandings.
@@lahelia9691 I don't know your qualifications and your sources, but I know the qualifications of the linguist who gave the explanation I gave and so I will just believe what he said.
That of course doesn't mean that his reason is the only reason. The thing you mentioned might as well be an additional reason.
@@Speireata4 sure but tbh it doesn't sound plausible to me, it makes no sense.
There is probably another reason for that.
@Moe5Tavern So damn right! Vollkommen richtig. I thought the same. Normally no one says "Haifisch", just "Hai".
In German there is also "Kater" for the word for "Cat" but it's a masculine noun and it's used for cats whom gender is specified, you can still use Katze
It's also the Dutch word for a male cat.
@@Elaud Interesting
@@Elaud Also the Dutch word for a hangover, lol.
@@gertvanderstraaten6352 in German too
@@ladypurple3851 origin of Kater as hangover in german was Katarrh (catarrh in english). Students and their excuses.
English "palfrey" is of Norman French origin, but that word in turn came from a Frankish word related to Dutch "paard" and German "Pferd". All of these came from Latin "paraveredus", which is actually made up of a Greek prefix "para-" (side, extra), and a Gaulish word "weredos" 'horse' (it is related to the Welsh word "gorwydd", also 'horse'). So a hybrid Greek-Celtic word, used by Latin speakers, made its way into Germanic and Romance languages in northwestern Europe.
Amazing, thank you 👍
@@jeanlucmascoli2903 My pleasure!
@@aaronmarks9366 : I also read this description you made long time ago.
So germanics language are fake?
?
In german it is more common to say just "Hai" instead of "Haifisch" (Hai+fish).
Pls more episodes like this with Roman languages as well. I absolutely need them❤️ I love the work you're doing
I am already working on the next one :)
@@TheLanguageWolf I truly hope it will come out as soon as possible
Scottish isn´t Germanic
@@diesesphil But Scots is.
@@TheLanguageWolf Can you do Slavic languages ?
Other Germanic languages: why can’t you just be normal?
English: *screams*
English is not much different if you follow the other abnormalities, not only your beloved English.
@@erynn9968 English is a perfect example of the people who live in Britain… it’s a European language pretending it isn’t. Brexit made it obvious that the Brits don’t consider themselves European, and honestly, it’s gross.
@@L333gok how does it pretend it isn’t, could you please explain me as a linguist to a linguist? And what do you mean by European language if not geography, may I ask?
@@erynn9968 it doesn’t matter it was just a comparison. The problem is that brits think they are better than us and that’s why they left the eu. They need to reconsider leaving the eu
@@L333gok 1st, more than a half Brits didn't want it (most didn't go vote cause they were young ppl). Second - your example doesn't make sense because it assumes Brits chose unique words INTENTIONALLY - which was never true, and no language in the world works like this on a big scale. Words' etymology is well studied for English, and I don't remember a single word that was intentionally invented instead of an existing one just for the sake of difference.
You should've included non-national languages since they're languages too: Low German, Frisian, and, depending on your views, Scots!
Frisian would have been the cherry on top, too bad it's not present in the video
Wasn't scotts gaelic?
@@cactusowo1835 That's Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic languages, mostly spoken in western Scotland. Scots is a Germanic language spoken predominantly in eastern Scotland, some consider it to be a dialect of English (not the same as Scottish English, which is a dialect of "true" English).
@@wtc5198 Thanks for the information! I don't have that much clue about scottish, besides that they have their gaelinc language, gaelic is in my list of languajes that I will learn and when that time comes, I'll find more things about celtic languages
@@cactusowo1835 Celtic languages are awesome, there's six of them that are still alive:
Brythonic:
-Welsh
-Cornish
-Breton
Goidelic:
-Irish
-Manx
-Scottish Gaelic
It is true that you can say Haifisch in German, but most people just say Hai.
You could take some other English and German words and just throw -fish on the end. Walfisch, tuna fish. Probably just that pattern of (phono-semantic part) + (extra semantic clarification part) . Stahl would seem to have been an acceptable but ambiguous forerunner of Diebstahl. German has Ren but since the English only remembered one kind of Tier, their language ends up with the completely unnecessary reindeer.
Tell me you love antlers without saying “I love antlers”-national motto of England, probably.
The other interpretation, I guess, is to see it as which animal has the lowest “fired arrow to edible mass” ratio in a land where an incredibly high percentage of trees are coppiced or pollarded for very specific purposes.
(I mean to say that the place was lousy with bows and arrows. Fletcher, Archer, Turner, and Yeo are all surnames. Likewise botch is a very common word, given its origin in niche technical jargon.)
@@polyhistorphilomath : In german it is also Rentier ( but french spoken it means a totally different thing!)
Nice video. One remark: the normal Dutch word for eagle is 'arend'. 'Adelaar' is used for such a bird as depicted on coats of arms.
Thanks for the remark, I did not notice that unfortunately
Well, that's maybe so in the Netherlands, but in Belgium arend and adelaar are synonymes, with the latter and older form.
I think both Adelaar and Arend are correct in Dutch, although Arend is more common. Arend seems cognate with Örn.
@@tammo100 @Sven Bras The original comment was right.
Also, Arend is way more closely related to the variations of Orn, basically being the same with a D on the end
Other German words for horse and squirrel would be Ross (cognate to horse) and Eichkätzchen (oak kitten). These are typically used in Austrian Standard German.
In Austria we also use Fack/Fock for pig, which comes from the Proto-Germanic term farhaz and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European pórḱos. Both terms have an English equivalent as well (pórḱos -> pork; farhaz -> farrow).
Ros is also used in Dutch. And Hengst for a male horse and Merrie for a female horse.
@@TheBluverde I thought that Pork came from Norman French, while pig and boar and swine were English.
@@Delgen1951
Well, yes. The Proto-Indo-European word pórḱos evolved into the Latin word porcus, which became porc in Old French and, via Anglo-Norman, eventually became pork in English.
@@TheBluverde : In Württemberg there had been formerly in every village a ,Farrenstall' , but a Farra is in our dialect a breeding bull.
Eekhoorn in Dutch sounds exactly the same as the English word Acorn. I wonder if that is because squirrels eat acorns? Or, also possible, from the German "Eichhörnchen". Translated to Dutch that would be "eikhoorntje", literally oak (little) horn. Because their ears are pointy, like little horns.
ác means oak in Anglo-Saxon/Old-English. The name for squirrel seems to be ác-wern or ácweorna.
The wern/weorna part.. speculative perhaps analogue to Dutch 'weer': against or like a guard? Some creature which is protecting oak trees.
@@giselavaleazar8768 and "weer" also means weather. The other 2 meanings you mentioned are correct as well.
Eekhoorn is similar to the word acorn in Dutch which is eikel so you could be right. Idk why there's a ''hoorn'' so maybe squirrels used to have horns or maybe they're referring to their teeth as horns so maybe the word literally meant acorn teeth before
The Swedish word for squirrel translates to "oak-famous Scottish whiskey bird".
Very interesting. Here are the Faroese words:
Bear = bjørn
Lion = ljón/leyva/løva
Dog = hundur
Cat = ketta (køttur also exists)
Wolf = úlvur
Fox = revur
Rabbit = kanin
Squirrrel = íkorni
Owl = ugla/úla
Bat = flogmús (flight + mouse)
Horse = hestur (ross also exists, and hors is a poetic term)
Cow = kúgv
Spider = eiturkoppur
Eagle = ørn
Shark = hávur
Swedish:
Bear = Björn
Lion = Lejon
Dog = Hund
Cat = Katt
Wolf = Varg
Fox = Räv
Rabbit = Kanin
Squirrel = Ekorre
Owl = Uggla
Bat = Fladdermus
Horse = Häst
Cow = Ko/ Kviga
Spider = Spindel
Eagle = Örn
Shark = Haj
How different is your language from any of the other Scandinavian languages? Is it its own language or more of a dialect?
@@geerenmo It's definitely its own language with its own dialects. Speakers of other Nordic languages do not understand us without prior exposure.
Danish:
Bear = Bjørn
Lion = Løve
Dog = Hund
Cat = Kat
Wolf = Ulv
Fox = Ræv
Rabbit = Kanin
Squirrel = Egern
Owl = Ugle
Bat = Flagermus
Horse = Hest
Cow = Ko
Spider = edderkop
Eagle = ørn
Shark = Haj
@@weepingscorpion8739 Thank you for the knowledge.
4:29 In Dutch we also have the word “big”, mostly used for young pigs but worth mentioning.
5:35 In Dutch, and maybe also German?, we have the word Hengst wich correlates to Scandinavian Hest. This word is however only used for male horses.
in German we do have Hengst as well
Same for Denmark: "Hingst" = Male horse
@@ZeraWitch ah, danke!
@@matshansen4967 ohh, nice. Fun to see those correlations
@@LukasToya yeah, it’s cool to discover such things
Let's look at this word => *Frog*
English => Frog
German => Frosche
Dutch => Kikker (Don't know its origin)
West Frisian => Kikkert
Afrikaans => Padda (Malay origin => Padi, but interestingly it means rice in Malay)
Swedish => Groda (Sounds like kröte(toad) in German)
Danish => Frø
Norwegian => Frosk
Faroese => Froskur
Icelandic => Froskur
isn't padda of Dutch origin? (Pad = Toad in Dutch)
Wij hebben ook kikvors .
"Cony" is another word for rabbit in English, from the Dutch. Coney Island in Brooklyn got its name from the many rabbits there.
Sorry, we put them there, there were enough herbs to eat and they couldn't run away. Nice source of sustainable meat.
I think I once read somewhere that the English word was originally "cunny" but because that sounds to much like female genitalia the words coney and bunny were basically "made up" for lack of a better phrase. Maybe someone could confirm this?
I believe I have read somewhere that the "Eich-" or "eek" part of the words for squirrel don't derive from the word oak, but from a root meaning "quick" or "agile".
Interesting, the german Word for oak is Eiche. So as a native german speaker eich relates too oak for me too. The seed/nut of an oak is called Eichel. My guess is Eich is related to Eichel as squirrels like to eat those. So id be sincerely interested where you have read that information out curiosity. I mean could be true what you said im no expert in old germanic languages, quite interesting to me.
The old English word for squirrel was more similar to the others. Im not 100%sure on the spelling as i don't have it in front of me but iirc it was something like aakhorn
@@toddwebb7521 Is that where the word "acorn" comes from? It's pronounced the same as Dutch "eekhoorn".
In old English it is not actually squirrel, but 'ācweorna'. I know this because of someone else of UA-cam and although the writing isn't similar, the sound is. It should sound somewhat like eckhorn(a?). And this one also refers to the type of tree: ac or eck sound is from oak. In Dutch this would be eekhoorn, with eek regering to eik. Eik = oak. I love this connection, you get to see how words trafelled.
The Proto-Germanic "Hangistaz" still exists as "Hengst" in German! A "Hengst" is a male horse, a "stallion".
Hingst in norwegian.
@@torbygjordet2533 "Hings" in Afrikaans (the daughter language of Dutch spoken in South Africa).
@@ettiennefaure4636 Hingst in Swedish as well..
I absolutely loved this video, I love German in particular, so it was a really good experience, thank you! 💜
The first one used in the video is called _“The First Law Of Motion”_ composed by Johannes Bornlöf.
The last two so used for this video are both composed by Bonnie Grace, the first one is _"The Goths"_ and the other is _"Where the Thistle Grows"_ . Hope this helps.
thank you for the song names !
Thank you.
You two are welcome 💜
I live for the idea that our early ancestors were basically like "AHHH ITS THAT BROWN THING" when they saw a bear and didn't want it to come near
The word Coney can still be used in English as the Germanic root for rabbit. Very rare to hear it these days, but it's still there
Coniglio in italian
My grandma, from Dalarna in Sweden, always called spiders "kuppjerk". Always wondered about the origin and etymology of that word.. now I've got the "kupp"-part answered for. Thanks!
That's actually really interesting you got me to look up some more stuff about dalmål (the dialect some people in Dalarna speak) and it seems to have retained quite a few old Norse words. From what I can find it seems like this could be a consequence of the area being under Norwegian control for a long time during the middle ages. So my guess is that the natives of the area tried to keep their medieval Norwegian language alive which was relatively easy since a lot of them were pretty isolated from the rest of Sweden and from Norway. Their language seems to have eventually morphed into just a Swedish dialect but with some old medieval Norwegian/Norse words still being present in some form.
@@samuelwhite1228 Yes, there's definitely allot of Norwegian words in dalmål: "fejs/fjös" which I think is barn or something similar is the same in my grandma's dalmål. Also a funny thing about dalmål is that it's such a heterogeneous dialect.. you could travel just one kilometer and alot of common words would be totally different.
My grandparents in western Norway say "vevkjerring"
Funny, that many words may be also in Russian: bear - búryj, lion - l'ev, wolf - volk, cat - kot, owl - sová, horse - kon'/lóshad', bat - calque, literary "flying mouse", cow - koróva, eagle - or'ól, shark - akúla (close to icelandic).
Well I am Scotland and in Scotland a Cat = Ket, Fox = Todd, Owl =Hoolet, Dog = Dug, Pig = Grumphie, Horse = cuddie, Shark = Shairk
It is always important to point out that each language has regional dialects and words can vary from region to region.
Grumphie sounds adorable for a pig
An alternative explanation why the Nordic languages has a completely different name for the fox than other Germanic ones is that it's a Sami word. Im not sure how plausible this is but the Sami did a lot of trade with fox fur with the other Scandinavian people so it makes sense in that respect at least.
Makes sense in northern Saami fox is rieban and the Norse was reban
@@ganjafi59 Thank you! I hadn't really looked into it until now, just once heard in passing "rev" being used as an example of a Sami loanword in Norwegian.
It's clearly the same word of course so the only question is which languge group borrowed it from which and I think we can find a clue in Hungary. Hungarian is of course a Finno-Ugric language even though it's not closely related to Sami or Finnish. The Hungarian word for fox is róka (and it's plausible it has the same root as ravasz which means cunning).
It's probably also worth noting that the Estonian word for fox is rebane.
I think this is quite clear evidence the the root of the word is Finno-Ugric and not Germanic/Indo-European.
But that leaves another question. The only language from the Nordic region and the only language from the widespread Finno-Ugric family to have a completely different name for the fox, is Finnish. Where on earth did the Finnish word "kettu" come from???
Edit: No, wait, there's another question too!
Is the English word/name Reynardine derived from the Nordic fox? The word isn't that similar but it's not completely different either.
@SaxonThrashQueen there is a theory that Germanic peoples are Indo-Europeanized Uralic Finnic people. That Germanic peoples are just Uralians who adopted culture from Indo-Europeans. Don't know how true that is though.
@SaxonThrashQueen not really confirmable. It's just a theory.
Wouldn't matter if if a Danish historian said something.
@SaxonThrashQueen i wish there was a local 7-11
The were many dialects in France back in the days. So saying that "eagle" comes from old French "aigle" is not accurate since there were two or more spellings of that word "eagle" and "aigle" (both are old French forms). Most of the time modern French retained the "ai" form over the "ea", but we have some words that kept the "ea" form as the word "eau" that comes from "aqua". "Aqua" also gave the word "aix" in French that wasn't retained for mordern standard French. Another example is "manteau" from "mantel" that could have been "mantail".
@ Hugo Bourgon. Interesting! But apart from the french word eau coming from latin agua, it occurs to me that it may also be connected to scandinavian aa/å , which sounds exactly like french eau.
Did not the burgundian tribe come from sweden?!
There also lion who is wrote same( but not the prononciations)
@@simontenkate9601 No, but they are related via much more distant relations in Indo-European languages. Old English had the word Ea as well for River. They all come from the same root as Latin Aqua but k sounds in Germanic languages become Hs so Ahwa as it is in Gothic, then Ea in Old English and Á in Old Norse which became Å in Scandinavian languages. Some modern English dialects retain the word ea (pronounced as ee) just as some German dialects still have Ach for river.
@@hoathanatos6179 quite interesting, thank you.
About ee for river: in frisian this als exists.
Also
España y portugal tiene. Los visigodos. Reino de suevo
Would have been fun to see Faroese as well in there. :)
An older English word for rabbit is “coney,” which is much closer to our Germanic sister languages.
The Romanian word for hawk is “uliu” there could be a connection with the Germanic “owl”.
It's very clear in here how different English is from the rest of the Germanic languages, but at the same time still very similar in the words it doesn't use French for.
Two reasons for this
1 - Norman invasion
2 - it’s an island nation not connected to the continent
Face palm
Although Finnish isn’t Germanic, the Norwegian word “hai” for shark is identical to the Finnish word (without the cases ofc).
Finnish was influenced by swedish for many years, that's why.
Oh the german word for shark is also "Hai".
Finnish is Uralic or Finno-Urgic... Hungarian, Sami and Permic are in the same language family 🇭🇺🇫🇮
@@fabianfuchs1402 , and beautiful Karelian!:)
It’s what happens when you show up for the Hansa and stay for the Sprachbund.
Kaninchen / Kanin, the German suffix "chen" only means that it is something small.
Same with Eichhörnchen. Eichhorn (german) vs Eekhorn (dutch)
In northern Germany, "Swin" is also used for "Schwein" (pig/swine), nordic Svin
Varken (dutch), Ferkel (German)
Pferd, (Pherd, Phard, or even Ferd, ... ) and Paard. German and Dutch, dialect variants in between.
Hengst, Hest, Hänst ...
But wait !
German: "ein (Stück) Vieh verkaufen" English "pay a fee"
Yes "Vieh" and "fee" come from the same root but "fee" has change its meaning.
Like Engl. gift vs German "das Gift" changed over time.
Ah, throwback to my first English class where we didn't get a heads up regarding the "gift =/= Gift" situation.
"Today is Tom's birthday. Sally gives Tom a gift. Tom is very happy."
We deadass thought Sally poisoned Tom on his birthday, and that he actually liked that.
I would like to see you use IPA translations for each word so we could see how each word is pronounced. Sometimes, letters aren't specific enough to guess how it might be said
Especially in languages with irregular spelling, like English or Danish. Btw it's IPA transcription
yeah could only really read the english and german, no clue what the vowels were in the othere
@@wtc5198 Correct, English OWL doesn't much vary from Dutch UIL, when pronounced. 🦉
I wish Friesland is a country. But you didn't put it there. The helmet was moving maybe.
I like to think of english as the french of germanic languages, similar but very different sounding with lots of outside influences from other language groups.
Has French been influenced that much? I know that Spanish has tons of similarities to Arabic for example, and also quite some to Dutch
@@NanoGalactic42 those are just coincidences. French has a Celtic substrate
@@wtc5198 The similarities with Arabic aren't coincidences. They are a result of the Islamic conquest of Iberia where Arabic was spoken alongside early Castillian Spanish and other early Spanish languages
@@oliverbrown9415 Yeah some could've been due to mutual influence
@@wtc5198 Yes you're right. As a general rule, most Spanish words beginning with al have some Arabic origin. Take 'alfombra' for example, meaning rug or carpet. Over time the definite article 'al' from Arabic became inseperable from the noun leaving modern Castillian with 'la alfombra'.
As Italian sometimes I don't understand spanish:
Dog, Latin = canis
Dog, Italian = cane
Dog, Spanish = perro
Fox, Latin = vulpis
Fox, Italian = volpe
Fox, Spanish = zorro.
Lamb, Latin = Agnus
Lamb, Italian = Agnello
Lamb, spanish = Cordero
What the hell?
volpe and zorro, I can't decide which one sounds better, just wonderful
Perro is NOT related to celtic, germanic, latin and much less slavic.
Mmm in Castilian (Spanish as you call it) we can also say "can" for dog, but it's something you'd hear in a Mexican movie, I'm from Argentina and it sounds horrible for me, "perro" is much better.
The answer is that "perro" and "zorro" are most likely substrate words from the ancient Iberian language that was spoken in eastern Spain before the Roman conquest. Alternatively, they might be of Basque origin, and there are some proposed French and Germanic origins for "zorro"
@@TheLanguageWolf Great name: Zorro Volpe. Sounds like an artist that makes wierd paintings in his own blood.
An older Swedish word for bat is läderlapp (leather flap), cognate with the Icelandic word. Batman was called Läderlappen (the bat) until 1990. I remember being confused in 1989, seeing two Batman comics in the supermarket: Läderlappen och Robin ("child-friendly" Batman comics from 50s-70s) and Batman (then current "dark and gritty" Batman comics and some other DC stuff).
I don't know if it's my title that is wrong, because it is automatically translated into German by You Tube, but these are all Germanic languages, not Romanic languages.
Where are the Frisian equivalents? Frisian is a Germanic language too. I guess it wasn't included because it's spoken by too few people and in an area no longer known as a separate country.
Hate to be that guy but I wished you used the English flag rather than the British one as that represents the English language. The British one could include Welsh, Scots Gaelic etc which are completely different languages but also spoken under the Union Jack.
The video is about Germanic languages language, the English in the video is English as spoken in the British Isles (by which I mean there's no separate examples given for Scots, for Hibernian English, for Doric, for Welsh English etc). It would have been arguably more inaccurate to use the English flag.
There's other languages in the Netherlands than Dutch, but no one seems to be complaining about the use of the Netherlands flag.
@@alexmckee4683 Lol, there is one Belgian guy complaining further up
So interesting to see, that even some words aren't related, there might be still some similar words used as synonyms.
For example horse in German
- Pferd
- Ross (old fashioned) - close to Horse
- Hengst (=Stallion) - close to Hangistaz
There are a few other words, maybe someone can relate to these?
Stute (female Horse)
Fohlen (foal)
Wallach (gelding)
In Dutch we use hengst for male horses and instead of fohlen, we use veulen. Veulen is a baby horse. I think the speach should be near identical.
Hengst is a male horse in Dutch. I wonder if that's a cognate with hest.
@Arcadium In germany we have Ross as an old word for horse. Pferd is generell the horse, Hengst is a male horse, Stute is a female horse, Fohlen is a young horse
@Arcadium the word Ross btw comes from proto germanic *hrussą. Btw the word Horse in english comes also from this
No, I don’t thinks so. Hengst would be hingst in Scandinavian (Danish).
There is also a hypothesis that the north Germanic names for fox , refur, rav, ræv are a loanword from a Finno ugric language, perhaps the Saami language
I doubt it
1:50 'vargur' is a synonym of 'úlfur' in Icelandic. And 3:52 'hross' and 'hors' (the latter being archaic) are synonyms of 'hestur' and are cognates to the English word 'horse'. 3:26 in the nominative case it is 'íkorni' but in all the other cases it is 'íkorna'.
In German, the horse is also called "Ross", maybe a bit outdated. And a male horse is a "Hengst"
@@kilsestoffel3690 I would overall not say it is outdated but rather that it depends on the region. And in Dutch the words 'ros' and 'hors' are synonyms to 'paard'.
Vargur er samt notaður allt öðruvísi en úlfur
"Ulv" is the common word in Norwegian - but many still would say "Varg". An even older name was "gråbein" (greylegs).
Don't forget that female horse or a mare is called hryssa and meri in icelandic
You can also say "Ross" instead of "Pferd" (horse) in German.
Same for Dutch! 'Ros' for 'paard' and it is usually used to mean something like the English word 'steed' instead of refering to the animal. 'Ross/ros' are probably cognates of 'horse' no?
@@mauritsponnette Yes, they are cognates. In German, there's also the word "Hengst" for male horses which I believe to be cognate with the Scandinavian words for horse shown in the video. Ross in German is also more of a "fancy" word, while "Pferd" is the everyday word.
@@Gandalf-fe3gw hengst is also a male horse in Dutch
@@Gandalf-fe3gw also ros is indeed a bit fancy too here. Something you'd see in a book, or a knight. The English counterpart would be steed
@@mauritsponnette yeah, horse=hross; in old spanish there was a word for a beautiful horse, rocin. Pferd or paard is of latin origin.
Just a comment about that *shark* may relate to the Dutch word *schurk* = villain. That is fun because the Norwegian word *skurk* means villain, criminal, bandit, crook etc.
In Dutch a young pig is called a "big". Not pronounced as in English but with the typical dutch g sound.
And a male horse is a "hengst".
I miss the Frisian words, an important language in the North Sea area.
We Germans don't say haifisch. We say Hai..
There is a reason the ducth are so good at english, their language is the cloests to english of all the germanics.
Frisian
That is why my last name, which is Lower, comes from the German Löwe, which was the last name of my great-grandparents when they immigrated to Argentina in the 20th century, but at that time the state changed it to the way it is now.
Hmmmm.... German immigrants to Argentina in the 20th century you say?
@@wtr3059 of course, but obviously i mean prussia... especially my grandparents came in 1889
@@sadowlower 1889 is the 19th century man, 20th century is from between 1900-1999. Hence why I said hmmm
I'm also Argentine and one of the surnames of my (Swiss-)German family is Wiederkehr that means 'return', so now I want to return to Europe lol. I also have Italian family and they got literally all their surnames changed so I get you.
@@sadowlower Btw I was just making a joke, please don't take it personally
3:33 Refer to Squirrel as Oakhorn, got it
5:03 Bat is now Fluttermouse.
Cow
Icelandic: kýr
Swedish:. Ko
Danish:. Ko
English:. Cow
Ukrainian: korova🙂
Maybe you could include Frisian in this as well, since it's a Germanic language
English is like that displaced child in the family that want to distance themselves
Or the geek at schoool who formed a tech company worth billions.
"Coney" is a dialect word for rabbit in English, which matches the other Germanic languages.
That's a good one, and is found in Shakespeare. Apparently it fell out of use since then because it was too similar to "cunny" which meant female genitals :/
Came to say this, good to see it was already said! I would add it is only a dialect word in modern Britain but in Middle English and earlier it was more of a mainstream word.
I believe coney, was also the term used for rabbit fur, until animal furs went out of favour. With the o pronounced long to avoid offence!
In a version of Hamlet put on by rabbits the title character would be afforded at least one much richer pun.
...and I have heard it used by country people once or twice (in the south-east of England).
I think DOG is related to tl old german word dachs. The equivalent in spanish PERRO is not related with any in Europe.
Dachs is the German word for badger.
A dachshund is a dog for hunting badgers. We call them Dachshund as well or Dackel or Teckel.
That's unlikely, since German words beginning in d- would be expected to begin with th- in English.
Here's what Wiktionary says about the possible origins of "dog":
The original meaning seems to have been a common dog, as opposed to a well-bred one, or something like 'cur', and perhaps later came to be used for stocky dogs. Possibly a pet-form diminutive with suffix ga (compare frocga (“frog”), *picga (“pig”)), appended to a base *dog-, *doc of unclear origin and meaning. One possibility is Old English dox (“dark, swarthy”) (compare frocga from frox). Another proposal is that it derives from Proto-West Germanic *dugan (“to be suitable”), the origin of Old English dugan (“to be good, worthy, useful”), English dow, German taugen. The theory goes that it could have been an epithet for dogs, commonly used by children, meaning "good/useful animal."
@@aaronmarks9366 the same can be said for the unknown bird and pig,they replaced fowl and swine although still on used but not number one,and what about replacing the germanic deer for latin animal? it's a linguistic crime among many unnecessary latin loan words.
im not sure if this is a weird request but next time you do a germanic languages vid you should include afrikaans keep it up you just earned a sub
Afrikaans is much more closely related to another language here than other languages they left out, Low German and Frisian
@@wtc5198 yes, but it’s much more spoken
@@mateoproductions2741 Low German is still much more spoken than Icelandic
Good vid and music. I feel bad for those who think English is a Latin language. That's demonstrably false. I have a book about how English would be if the Normans lost in 1066. Its very interesting. There is a song I like called "As flittermice as Satan's spys" by the Norwegian band Darkthrone,whose lyrics were written(in English) by a man who called himself Varg. I'm all for replacing bat with flittermouse,ha ha.
The is an alternative archaic name in English for a rabbit - 'coney', similar to the other germanic language names. I don't know is this is a cognate word or not.
It is ;) It's funny, it used to be common in English in the late medieval and early modern period, but at some point it fell out of use, with the main theory being that it started sounding too much like "cunny", an older term for "p*ssy" XD
@@aaronmarks9366 yet Quimby is an acceptable surname? Quim + (near)by or quim + island. So only some of these synonyms were taboo.
We literally have the word "Adel" for "nobility" in German but it never came to my mind that "Adler" could have something to do with that.
"We have a job to do."
It's a game reference if you don't get it, I'm sorry.
Nice to find out the word Attercop in some English dialects. We have the word 'Etterkop' with the same meaning (Dutch)
I am Arab from Algeria North Africa but I love Germanic languages so much ❤❤❤❤.
Ich liebe Deutschland und Österreich.
Jeg Elsker Danmark
Jeg Elsker Norge
Jäg Älskar Sverige
IK hou van Nederland.
I don't know how to say it in Icelandic 😊 I love Iceland.
Deutsch+Nederlands +Dansk+Svenska+Norsk+Icelandic =❤❤❤
I think you include much too many proto Indo European roots.. it's obviously very different from the proto Germanic roots in most cases. Very different languages and you seem to assume it's always the Latins that influenced the Germans.. I have more the impression it's the other way around. Look into old Frisian more also to understand the pre Roman Chatolic imperial world better.
Proto- Germanic comes from Indo-European. This video is simply following the roots back in time.
@@alisonhall5976 one would expect more similarities then no? Like with Southern or Eastern European languages..
@TheWeeaboo most words changed the meaning a bit
Actually in germany we don't Use the Word Haifisch... we mostly say Hai.
Here is English -> Frisian:
Bear = Bear
Lion = Liuw
Dog = Hûn
Cat = Kat
Wolf = Wolf
Fox = Fokse
Rabbit = Knyn
Squirrrel = Iikhoarn
Owl = Ûle
Bat = Bat
Horse = Hynder
Cow = Ko
Spider = Spin
Eagle = Earn
Shark = Haai
Bat = Flearmûs
Kaninchen isn’t the only word for rabbit in german, in fact the other word ”Hase” is used far more frequently.
Kaninchen also doesn’t mean “Rabbit” in particular, it rather refers to a domesticated Rabbit while “Hase” is normally used for a Wild hare (though many people would also call a domesticated Rabbit “Hase”
In swedish we use Kanin for domesticated and Hare for wild.
English-not one to go bald-also has Hare
The rabbits are in Germany called Kaninchen ( official word), Hase or Stallhase ( stable hare) are popular but scientific incorrect.
@TheWeeaboo in german Hase 🐇 und Kaninchen 🐰
hase is haas in dutch
In Spanish we say "Conejo", in Dutch they say "Konijn"
English 'BAT' does not come from Latin 'BLATTA', it comes from Scandinavian (cf. Swedish dialectal 'NATT-BATTA' (lit. 'NIGHT-BAT')
3:46 Squirrel in Icelandic is ‘íkorni’, just like in Old Norse. However, once you conjugate the word in singular form it becomes ‘Íkorna’.
Interesting. 🐎 horse , in North introduced to Island, England , Ireland, by Vikings. When traveling brought horses with them in their boats, later Spain.. 🇩🇰🌅🇺🇸💙🙏
Amazing breakdown! Looking forward to more.
In the dialect where I come from in Sweden, spider is "kopjärk", I guess it's related to edderkopp in Norwegian but turned around and mixed with Järk/Jerk (pronounced 'yairk', not like English 'jerk'), which is the local variant of the name Erik.
5:35 The Icelandic word Hestur does not come from Middle Norwegain, it comes from Old Norse directly.
At 100 likes I'll start a petition to change the English word "Bat" to "Fleathermouse"
"Bat" just doesn't fit in 5:16
The icelandic word for squirrel is Íkorni. “Íkorna” is used in accusative, dative and genitive cases.
We need to reunite my germanic brothers. Hail Wodan.
Bear in almost most of the IE languages is derived from the word "ours" and in Persian we call it "Xers - Khers"
In Colognian = German dialect, for example: Löv, Hungk/Hongk, Katz, Wulf, Kning, Eechhörnche, Ühl, Fleddermuus.
I've read a more likely origin for the Scandinavian term "rev" for fox. Fox fur was at the dawn of historical times one of the main export goods from the area, and many of the foxes had been caught by Lapps (Saami). In Saami the term for fox is "revva"...
In Kurdish we say Rovî
@@mroldnewbie and Kurdish is an Indo-European language, is it not?
@@jandamskier6510 it is
Should have pronounced them.
Would have been more interesting
English also has "erne", eagle or sea-eagle, from Old English "earn", ultimately from Greek "ὄρνις" (ornis), bird.
Small correction, "erne/earn" are not from Greek "ὄρνις", rather, both the English and Greek words are independent cognates of Proto-Indo-European *h₃érō ~ *h₃r̥nés, "large bird, eagle"
@@aaronmarks9366 You might want to pass your comment along to the editors of Merriam-Webster's dictionaries (my source).
@@georgeadams1853 Ah ok, I checked and I can see where the confusion is, it's not very clearly written. I found:
"Middle English, from Old English earn; akin to Old High German arn eagle, Greek ornis bird"
"Akin to" basically means "cognate with" in etymologies, but the order it's written in here makes it sound like the English word comes from the German word, which in turn comes from the Greek word. In reality they're all just cognates of each other.
English: hello, I am Owl, who are you?
Danish: I am Ugle
Nice to see that the not mentiond secondary words of one language can be related to the primary word in an other.
Like the german Hengst and Ross for horse, but also "Ferkel" (young pig) with dutch verchen, also it has an english cognate "farrow".
What movie are you watching?
Me: I'm watching Flittermouse Man.
In german it is right that you say "Haifisch" but actually everyone says "Hai"
Is there a German word for shark that's something like "Seehund" or "Hundfisch"? Thought I heard someone use those at some point
@@aaronmarks9366 Seehung is an entirely different animal. It's a seal
@@umchen1192 Ah ok, that makes sense. "Seadog" is an old word for seal in English too
@@umchen1192Seehund*
@@Optimist-Nolan1 korrekt. Ich hab erstmal 5 min gebraucht um wieder den gesamten Kommentarbereich zu abstrahieren
I have tried to research and it is still not clear to me what is the origin of the Finnish language. Someone knows?
Finnish is part of a family called (unsurprisingly) Finnic, and includes not only Finnish, but Estonian, Karelian, Ingrian, Livonian, Votic, Ludic, and Veps, all of which are spoken in either Finland, Estonia, or the parts of Russia near the Gulf of Finland.
Finnic, though, is part of a larger language family called Uralic, named for the Ural mountains in Russia, where it is believed this family originated. Besides Finnic, the Uralic family includes Samic (the Sami languages of Scandinavia), Mordvinic (the Erzya and Moksha languages of Russia), Permic (the Komi and Udmurt languages of Russia), Mari, Khanty, Mansi (all spoken in Russia too), and Hungarian, spoken in central Europe. There is also a Samoyedic branch spoken in Siberia.
The Finnic group is very distantly related to the Ugric group, the largest member of which is Hungarian. If they were descended from a common proto-language then the split must have happened several millennia ago. You can just about see some kinship in some of the numbers and some basic vocabulary
Egy - Yksi
Kettő - Kaksi
Három - Kolme
Négy - Neljä
Öt - Viisi
Hat - Kuusi
Hét - Seitsemän
Nyolc - Kahdeksan
Kilenc - Yhdeksän
Tíz - Kymmenen
Both languages have been influenced by neighbours over the past thousand years so have drifted further apart.
your videos are entertaining and very well researched, you deserve more subscribers
For shark in German, you'd normally say "Hai" instead of "Haifisch"
Germanic Differences Dialects Speaks Written Alphabetical Letters Texters Northern Baltic Lowlander European Countries (Norske 🇳🇴) Norwegian 🇳🇴 ( Svenska 🇸🇪) @(Sumoi 🇫🇮)Finland🇫🇮 (Isk🇮🇸) Iceland 🇮🇸 (Danske🇩🇰) Denmark 🇩🇰 (Alansk🇦🇽)Aland🇦🇽 (Hollander 🇳🇱) Netherlands 🇳🇱 (Foyorask🇫🇴) Faroe 🇫🇴 (Gronsk🇬🇱) Greenland 🇬🇱
You mean Suomi not Sumoi I assume.
Sigma male England
Can you do Slavic languages too? And maybe you can even compare them to Old Slavic words (don't forget to add Old Church Slavonic as one of the languages)
Why OCS, wouldn't proto Slavic be better
@@wtc5198 that's true
Scandinavian: Kanin, Icelandic: Kanína, German: Kaninchen, English: Rabbit
Norwegian and Danish have "varg" too, and Icelandic also has "vargur".
Are those words similar to English warg?
@@muhammadakmal9693 Warg?
@@dan74695 yeah I read that in English textbook in my country here
Danish don’t have varg
Please, make video about Slavic languages comparisons. Slavic languages are: Belarussian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian.
Eagle could also be "arend" in Dutch
In Swedish Horse is "Hingst" if you are specifically speaking of a male and "Sto" if it's a female