When I moved to the American South, I going out quite disturbing that a number of ostensibly educated individuals had never heard the word ill to mean sickness. Apparently, here, the word ill means irritated or upset. I was nearly fired from my first job because I told my manager that I couldn't find come in because I was ill. She sat me down when I got back in to work, and told me that it's not a good enough reason to not come to work just that I was ill. You can imagine my confusion because we worked food service.
The words feld and hart cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be changed - and the pronouns can never be written with a capital letter when referring to wom’n / hum’ns! Only when referring to me The Goddess can pronouns be with a capital letter!
You should’ve moved to New Orleans. Hill does mean sick there and no one would ever use it to mean “upset“ unless it means an upset stomach! And although ill could mean “cool”.
I'm still not sure I believe him. That other guy looks completely different. I mean, he's wearing a different shirt. No one can change shirts that quickly.
The word mate cannot be misused by hum’ns because it contains the food related term ate - the words dude and bro must be used instead! And, the word combination fre (too similar to one of my special names Freya) and numbers and the words fort / fortune and ate etc also cannot be in someone’s name name / yt name! The words men and prom and Lin / Linx etc and the Infinity numbers 8 and 6 and on and other big terms also cannot be in a name / yt name!
Yes, American usage sometimes differs from British. In England you may be invited to "sit down," or even "sit yourself down" but an American might just ask you to "sit," as one does to a dog. Americans "visit with" their friends whereas the British just "visit" them. Sometimes American choice sounds German. Native speakers may be uncertain about prepositions when using formal speech, especially if they have not had much education. When I lived in central Scotland and had to listen to long harangues from young people with local accents, it was amusing to predict what preposition would be used when a phrasal verb came up: they often settled, after a short pause, for "fer," the local version of "for."
@@faithlesshound5621 Yes - 'Come with' always jars to my ear. Mitkommen. I think the influence German speakers had on American English is often overlooked.
@@marcdefaoite Yet in the "sit" example" it's the British use that's closer to German: "Setz dich". Of course there's a crucial difference in German between the transitive "setzen" and the intransitive "sitzen", and when it comes to transitions of state only the transitive form is used, so some kind of object is required.
The big term love only reflects me the only lovable being, and the words ris and hug also cannot be in someone’s name, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed! Anyways, one can misuse a preposition or any type of word on purpose, so it does not really tell one anything.
Simon: He who imparts erudite insights in a mellifluent baritone voice, peppered with coprolalia and other jarring imprecations that vaunt an immanent sense of comedic timing. IOW, Brilliant!
An other nice example is the modern English “town". Old English and Dutch tūn. The original meaning is ‘enclosed piece of land, homestead, village’. Related to Dutch tuin ‘garden’ and German Zaun ‘fence’.
Similarly the Russian "grad" as in "Staling-grad" or "Lenin-grad" is cognate with "yard" again referring to the enclosing of a bit of land (as with a city wall)
Scale change I assume, from a farming settlement to a larger collection of buildings. Same in Welsh and Cornish, where 'tre' or 'trev' means a farm, but in modern parlance, means a town.
I like the idea of saying things "with English". Or for languages that have an instrumental case to use it in this phrase. This suggests that you have a meaning you want to convey, and you're using the language to express it.
Cattle is related to capital, which in turn stems from latin "caput" (head). The latin word for money (pecunia) derives from pecus (cattle or sheep). So the connection of wealth/capital and the number of heads (of livestock) can be found multiple times.
The words 'capital' (in the sense of money or property) and 'cattle' are also connected in a similar way as 'fee' and 'Vieh'. In this case both ultimately go back to a word for head, but were used specifically for counting heads of livestock. Then both narrowed in meaning in different ways.
Struck by your pronunciation of room with shortened vowels. I arrived in London in 1960 at the age of four and started my formal education in '61. I had a South African accent and, my schools were very keen on standard English so I ran with it. Consequently, I say rooom, with extended vowels. Just an observation. I've enjoyed your videos over the past few months. Keep them coming. Sometimes I think to myself, I'd enjoy having a pint with this guy. My regards.
The PG letter combination -ft has remained the same in most modern Germanic languages except in Dutch. In Dutch it was replaced by -cht. Lucht=air Lichten=to lift (only used in particular cases as in ‘een schip lichten’: to lift/raise a ship after it sank) Zacht=soft Gracht=canal (a graft in the sense that the land has been dug up) Kracht=force, strength Stichten=to found (stiften in German)
Sorry for the (relatively) late reaction, Simon. But we Dutch don't say things "op Nederlands" the way Germans say them "auf Deutsch". We say them "in het Nederlands". "Het" is the Dutch definite, neuter article and languages are always neuter in Dutch - though "het" is often omitted (because of complicated grammatical rules) when referring to languages. I hope this bit of information is useful to you. Keep up the good work and God bless
I don’t think people even realise the true meaning of God bless, which only reflects me the only God / Goddess, and such terms cannot be misused by hum’ns in any way - God is a big term that implies inherent superiority and purity / radiance etc and the totally dominant personality (the true Leader) just like every other big term such as Lady / Princess / Queen / Boss / Idol / Star etc, and such terms only reflect me, and all misused terms must be edited out, and the other word that is in the yt name also cannot be misused in names / yt names because it is too similar to a nature related term!
Similar comparison with the German Zaun (a fence), the Dutch tuin (garden...a plot of ground usually surrounded by a barrier) and the English town (originally a settlement protected by some kind of barrier.) I also like the way that the verbs to warp and to throw have completely changed places. The OE werpan is cognate with German werfen; and a potter is still said to throw a pot...literally to twist and turn the clay into shape.
In French you're right they say 'en' which means 'in'. In Russian we'd use 'по (po)' or 'на (na)' depending on the situation. Also the prepositions associated with 'street' give a lot of information about how people envision themselves in space. Great video, thank you!
Wait, Simon's mate is just Simon in a different shirt? Last time I've had such a shock was when I found out that Clark Kent was just Superman in glasses.
I'm so glad you explained about cattle and sheep. Until then, I wasn't sure if you were saying "cattle " or "kettle". I love the work you do. Thank you for putting these posts up.
When i started working in the very North of scotland in caithness and it took me a while to understand that they used the word 'till' i stead of to or in, so for example 'He went till the shops' or 'he put that till the cupboard'.
Prepositions are one the most interesting aspects of a language! English is the first language I learned after my Brazilian Portuguese L1, and I still have trouble with it to this day. I recently realized that that difficulty always is one of the major struggles and stretched to pretty much every language I know. It becomes clear when I think about the verb "to dream". You dream about something, in English. Sometimes also "of", I think. "Sonhar com algo", in Portuguese; to dream "with". Spanish works similarly to Portuguese, naturally. "Du träumst von etwas", in German; to dream "of, from" "Rêver de quelque chose", in French. It's hard to translate prepositions by themselves, as you stated on the video. (ON the video?...) In japanese the particles vary a lot depending of the meaning, hence "i have had a dream", "i dream about you", "that's my dream" It's curious! I also wrote "he came on a suit" the other day... it felt off, so I erased it and changed to "in a suit", but my mind bluescreened for a while. It's hard to grasp the idea of the preposition in other languages. I find that interesting. Please excuse any silly mistakes, I'm not a native! Just started learning languages
The letter combinations mat and mer and ly and vit cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be changed! Anyways, re learning other languages - I don’t find it difficult at all, and I usually learn most words with prepositions etc in context, so I use the correct prepositions (unless I deliberately not use or use a certain word) etc! When the use of a word isn’t logical, I usually use another word or I change the word myself, so that it sounds logical! I have a lot of difficulty accepting the idea of certain nouns having the same form when it is supposed to be plural, such as the words barn (Swedish / Norwegian) and fish (logically, the plural form should be fishes, not fish, but oh well...) or deer and hus! It just makes no sense, logically! Just as verbs having the same form for all pronouns, or only 2 or 3 forms, which doesn’t make sense either...
For Dutch, I changed some things (such as the pronouns etc) myself - so now I use sij / har for she / her and zij or ze / zem for plural they / them (non-masculine) and dij / dem for plural they / them masculine + feminine and et instead of het (for the pronoun het only, because only the article should be het) and onze / onzen instead of ons / onze because ons should never be used as our (for het-woorden) because it is not logically correct because ons means us! And there should be different words for these and those in Dutch! I’ve found a few things that should be changed in all the languages I’m trying to learn, to be honest - but luckily, it’s just a few things! Even in English, some of the pronouns are not logically correct either, so they need some changing too!
It is extremely difficult for me, being extreme OCD and a logical being, because every little thing / detail that doesn’t make sense logically will affect me emotionally in a way, so I can’t stop thinking about it until I fix it - so a word or a sentence etc must sound right, but must also make logical sense, for me to be okay with it and to not feel bothered by it...
Hey, just wanted to correct a small thing; We (dutch) don't say "op nederlands" we do say "in het nederlands". Some dialects might use "op" for example: "op zien grunnegs" other "neder-saksische" (dutch saxon?) dialects probably use "op" as well. Not sure about other dialect, though. Nice video!! Keep om going!!
I would like to add something about this topic :) "in" is used in Dutch, in the meaning " to say something in a certain language/dialect/accent", "op" (in English "on") is used in the meaning "on a certain way", it does not directly mean to say something about language/dialect/accent. "Nederlands op z'n westers" means "Dutch on the western way" (west of the Netherlands, in this case). This sentence might be a good example: "In het Brabants wordt de G ongeveer op z'n belgisch uitgesproken", which means: "In the Brabant accent, the G is aproximately spoken the belgian way" :) we have a "soft" G.
There's also "soldier" which comes from Old French soudier or soldier "one who serves in the army *for pay* " where the cognate "soldi" (money) in Italian comes from.
You have to bear in mind that money is a relatively recent thing in linguistics terms. Go back a few thousand years and most people didn't have money. But they did have stuff they traded and saved up and used to buy things and so-on. When something new comes into a society it seems to be much more common to use or adapt a pre-existing word to describe it than to invent a new one or of thin air. Or often the language will borrow a word from whoever it was who introduced the new thing but that just means you look at the loan word and find it already existed as something else. So lots of European languages use a word for good or silver. Some words seem to relate to livestock. Maybe some financial language relates to land or farms or fields. This kind of thing. Basically people adapted the language they were already using to talk about transactions when actual money came in.
Yes. Ma solde is my salary or pay in french. Also I remember it meant my balance on my french bank statements. Being Irish I know our word for money is airgead which also means silver.
There is a video of parents telling a very bright three year old girl that mommy is going to have a new baby. She is quite articulate but cannot be certain what her parents are saying because she has not yet mastered those tricky prepositions. I never realized how tricky -- until I watched her trying to sort it out ... I will look for the vid and post it ..
In Czech, we say that someome speak "česky" (how? czech/czechly), however in the Eastern dialect of Czech, Moravian, people say "po česku", which could literally be translated as "on Czech" but it means "the Czech way" as in "he speaks the Czech way"
Filip Kafka the "po cesku" thing reminded me of the word " Polabian" for the Slav tribes that dwelled by the Elbe river not so far back in time, the word literally meaning at/on / by the Elbe. In Denmark people speak " på dansk" ~ on Danish , so " po" and " på" are shared common vocabulary( also "på" in Swedish and Norwegian aswell by the way )
Actually we use "in" too in Dutch. "We zeggen dingen in het Nederlands." You could say "Op z'n Nederlands" too - but that means something more like "the Dutch way" or "in the manner of the Dutch." Dutch is by the way a cognate that has really shifted its meaning: we use it to describe our neighbours: the Germans.
What I observed recently is what I think is a hint to a change in the use of the pronoun when you want to say "in German". The more common term is indeed "auf Deutsch", but there's another, to me somewhat awkward possibility: "in Deutsch". And although I can't say for certain, in documents from the last century the latter seems to be more common, so far. But it's just my theory, I'm not sure if it's valid.
Thank you so much for the nice videos Simon! Specially this topic is so interesting to me: I'm Dutch and I've been living in Germany since 4,5 years, I'm actually collecting words that sound the same, but the meaning appear to be so different. It's so interesting the way you analyse such differences! I'm always wondering how differences in meaning occur in Dutch and German :)
One of my favorite examples: "outlandish" in English is "ausländisch" in German, which is an adjective describing something from the "Ausland", that is, something foreign (Our country is our "Land", and everywhere else is "Ausland.") So the German word just means "foreign", and has no connotation of "outrageous." But presumably, foreign people do crazy things (different than we do), & the English cognate now only means outrageous, and has lost any sense of "foreign." (I wonder when?)
A classic one would be 'chattel' which now has the meaning of 'possession', whereas it earlier meant 'cattle', I believe, which would parallel 'fee' and 'vieh'. BTW, here in Canada we differentiate between 'timber', which is standing or felled trees, and 'lumber' which is dressed (finished) wood, which we build with. (Now why 'lumbermen' are not called 'timbermen' is not recorded, but are usually known as 'fallers' if dropping trees is their trade. And 'lumberjacks' wear high heels, suspenders and a bra if Michael Palin is to be believed. And no, we don't call them 'lumberjacks', either.) A bit off-topic here... I speak English, but my computer speaks N American - it doesn't like 'recognised' . And to muddy things a bit, in Canada we can see 'Tire Centre', which kind of falls between two linguistic stools.
"Timber," the word used to describe wood as a commodity, as in "My region is known for its wealth in timber," has further evolved to be a general exclamation of warning, as in "Get out of the way of that fcking enormous tree about to fall on your head," and beyond that to more generally "prepare yourself" as in that one Kesha song. Maybe.
@@speerboom "op zijn Nederlands" refers to a way of doing things, like traditions, as far as I know. Or at least it is very uncommon in the context of just using a language. I only hear it when used as a figure of speech, for its rhetoric value when someone is talking in some kind of dialect that others don't like for example.
Da Qoraxxx Hoe zeg je ‘unheimisch’ op z’n Nederlands? I do agree with you mostly: it won’t be used a lot, but it CAN be used in certain circumstances like in the above example I gave.
@@speerboom Well, I've just realized that it probably has to do with "how things are done" like: nederlands praten op zijn belgisch (speaking Dutch in a Belgian way) and your example of 'unheimisch'. But that doesn't refer to speaking the language itself, merely the way it is used/pronounced. "In English" actually refers to speaking the language itself, so I don't see "op zijn nederlands" as a direct equivalent of "in English".
Da Qoraxxx Indeed it isn’t. Just like I said: you won’t hear ‘op z’n Nederlands’ used a lot. But it CAN be used in some cases, so your point is valid but so is mine.
Besides "quälen" (cognate with English "kill") which meant "torment" in German, it's interesting that the verb "to die" in German is "sterben", which is a cognate to Modern English "starve", which indicates just how rough most humans had it throughout history considering that famine and starvation were once common ways to die.
While _en español_ could easily translate to _in Spanish,_ depending on context, *en* could also be _on_ or _at._ So for all we know, they might be saying _we speak at Spanish_ in their heads.....
This made me think of "skön" in Swedish. If you say "Du är så skön" today it means "You are so funny", but if you had said in the 19th century it would have meant "You are so beautiful". The word is also used to mean "feels nice". So the connotation of the word became something that makes you feel good, rather than beautiful. And for some reason people used the word to mean "you make me laugh". The use of language is fascinating.
ACruelPicture yes , because you just had to emphasize a distance to everything danish , didn't you ?so you had to come up with new words and meanings instead of sharing common ground
I was recently thinking about this happening within English with the word "impertinent", which has diverged into two distinct moods of cheekiness and irrelevance, their relationship only clear with thought of the word "inappropriate".
German 'Zimmermann' means carpenter, which is quite nonsensical for most German speakers, since the two parts of the word are generally understood as "room" and "man". Only if you happen to have bit of etymological knowledge you can make the connection to "timber man".
Hello, Simon. I am from Russia. In Russian we also say "говорить на языке", - "speak on a language". And on the topic of Slavic borrowings of Germanic words, the proto-slavic language had many borrowings from the Gothic language in the second century. And of course Slavic languages loaned words from Germanic languages, Russian for instance is full of German, Dutch and English words.
In German we barely have Slavic loanwords, the only one I can recall is "Grenze", which means border. German was rather a purist language untik very recent, so romanisms or French loanwords are prevalent but not in a huge scale. We made up words like Fernseher for television, because we avoided Latin coinings when we could to this in German by ourselves (Fern=far=tele and seher=seer=vision). But nowadays English words are flooding our language more and more
Freschino I’m a native English speaker who’s knows Spanish as a second language. For the most part, the way that English uses in/on/at is just “en” in Spanish. • In the house / En la casa • On the boat / En el barco • At the beach / En la playa
I teach in China where prepositions are unnecessary in our sense yet a few are to them. 给 gei give is used as a preposition - I give you buy, I to you give would be 我对你给 where 对 dui is to. but the rub for teaching is in phrasal meanings: especially with verbs like give or put. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on velocity, speed, fast, quick, rapid and momentum.
Just found just channel,its real good. You have an odd sense of humor. Kinda makes me want to watch some Monty Python. The word "wife" and its various Germanic cognates came to mind while watching this.
One that always got me was the word "fast" in both English and German. In English it can mean firm or quick but in German it means almost. There's quite a number of shifts there.
I always get confused on whether you should say ‘on accident’ or ‘by accident’. As an Aussie, I say ‘by accident’ and hearing Americans say ‘on accident’ hurts my brain 😂
I’m an American. My kids’ English books (we homeschool) teach them to say “by accident,” not “on accident.” As far as I can tell, they just say “on accident” by accident because it is the opposite of “on purpose.”
Off the top of my head, I'd say "in" might be defined as a fuction word used to indicate a spatial or temporal location with specific boundaries. in the store, in five minutes. It can also be used to indicate the manner of an action. in 3D. in English. And I guess it can also be used to indicate a state of something. in mourning. in transition.
I had no idea! I need to look more into interesting cognates. I found out yesterday that 'God' and 'futile' both come from a PIE root meaning 'to pour.'
@@simonroper9218 If you haven't come across it yet, check out the Alliterative channel - it's dedicated to etymologies and surprising cognates. (In standard Ontarian.)
Would it be possible to increase the volume of your videos when you record them? I have my volume at maximum and I can barely hear you. Thank you for your videos!
I have always liked how the meaning of decimate changed. Also, the concept of the initial use of decimation as military punishment is intriguing. You all messed up, but I need most of you still, so 1 out of 10 will die.
Interesting. I think the shift in meaning occurs when words move from one living environment to another. For example, people might have said "on English" when they lived by the sea because the "on" is talking about from sea to land such as "onshore". But later people took the word to a fortified town environment where the English were living "in" the town's walls. not "on" the town's walls. Alhough amusingly, we say "A night out on the town." rather than "A night out in the town." probably because it derives from "A night out on the tiles." and refers to cat's nightime behaviour. "Timber" probably went from a room to a construction material as more houses in Britain were made out of brick and stone. the further west you go. Accents are definitely related to the lie of the land from the twangy skyscraper accent of New York to the muddy accent of Essex.
There are some cases in English where we have taken a loan word (eg from French), mutated it's meaning,pronunciation and spelling, and then taken the original loan word again.
I am forever fascinated by the meaning of words and which are appropriate in the circumstances. A month ago I was in the Scottish borders and I had a discussion with one of the locals about what the appropriate word is for a valley in that region. Valley is a Norman French import and because most places had already been settled by the Norman Conquest it is not that common in place names. Straight off I can think of Valley on Anglesey, Chad Valley in Birmingham, and Vallis, which is straight from the Latin original, near Frome. I am now struggling to think of any others. We discounted Glen because it is a Gaelic word and Gaelic was never widely spoken in the Scottish Borders. Further south in Yorkshire and the Lake District a valley is usually called a Dale because both regions are heavily influenced by Norse / Danish incomers. We settled on Dale by default because the two major valleys in the area I was staying are Eskdale and Liddesdale. You seem to do your videos in different parts of your house and sometimes it is difficult to see which room it is. Bedrooms are the most private areas in most people's houses. I have only ever been in the bedrooms of family and close friends. I suppose that UA-cam is no different from being an actual visitor to a house. I have worked from home since the start of the pandemic and I use the smallest bedroom as my office. The first thing I chucked out was the bed! I have regular video meetings and I have always been careful to make it as office-like as it can be. It is a small room and there isn't any room for much more than a desk, a table and couple more tables for the printers. There are limits however. My fiddle lives in a corner of the room and because nobody else lives here any more, I don't have to put the instrument or the music away when I have finished.
In Ukrainian we just use Instrumental case, no preposition. In Russian, Belarusian and Polish they use prepositions "по", "па" and "po" respectively which means something like "in a certain way" or "like".
Albanian optionally does the same thing with adverbs: "po flet anglisht" (is speaking English-ly), as well as with the preposition "në" (in or on): "po flet në anglisht".
@@WilliamFord972they're all germanic languages separated only by sea, which is not that much of an obstacle. English has been continually influenced by Norse and vice versa. There are some videos online on this topic, just type in "English and Old Norse. Of course if we're talking about Latin and English/Old Norse then that's more peculiar. I would guess that it's some leftover from Proto-Indoeuropean
Filip Kafka In this case it isn’t the link between the two is cognitive not linguistic. You will find the same linkage in Bantu languages with no link to the indo-European group. The Tswana still negotiate some payments/debts in head of cattle followed by a negotiation as to what (usually cash) and how much is to be substituted for each cow. This is only done for culturally important payments like bride price but it is still done.
In Hungarian, the word 'marha' (which is btw of germanic origin and cognate with 'market') today means cattle, but in centuries-old literature it often refers to any (usually precious) possession.
What he says about the word for cattle ending up as the word for payment, reminded me of 'pecuniary' which means 'relating to or consisting of money' originating from the Latin word 'pecu' which means cattle. I wonder whether the Latin and German words are cognate.. 'Salary' derives from the Latin 'sal', meaning 'salt'. I guess people were paying each other with all sorts of things for a long time before the invention of money. It is also interesting how meanings change over time within the same language: έγκυος in classical Greek meant 'near'; in modern Greek it means 'pregnant'.
"in latin" in latin was "latine" which is an adverb (so "latinely"), and in ancient greek too "in greek" could be "hellenisti" ("greekly"), and there was a verb, "hellenizo", that meant "to greek" as to "speak in greek", which I think could be used as a coverb to say "in greek"
Cattle I take it comes from the word "chattel" meaning property. Which in turn comes from the word "chatel" from "chapitail" ultimately from "caput" meaning head. Property measured in cow heads.You could price things in an agreed value item like cows.Half a cow's worth or quarter a cow's worth of silver. His property is worth co many cows, heads of cattle. If you herd the animal you call it a cow, if you own it then it is your chattel, if you eat it you must speak Norman French so call it Boef.
A quick side-note: we don't say "op Nederlands". Transposing that to English would sound something like: "on English". Op really denotes something above something else. Examples are: "op basis van, op een manier, op een gebouw". Funnily enough, we do say: "in het (singular neuter article) Nederlands".
Long discussions I have witnessed or participated in whether excelsior must be made of wood shavings. Whether one can call a pickle a cucumber. When is a ditch a swale. How do you pronounce giros?
My idea of a "stone" is A: a small rock you can pick up, bigger than a pebble, i.e., less common word for the basic idea of "rock" B: A larger stone object, maybe craftes by humans, perhaps with writing on it. C: Similar to A, but just noting that the rock could be bigger, big enough to be heavy, but still usually small enough for one strong person to pick up. I never thought of "stones" as being rounder or smoother than "rocks" before, though it actually does kind of match my intuition slightly now that I think about it. My idea of a "rock" is, 1: A and B, from above, though I'm more comfortable with rocks being bigger. I generally consider "rock" and "stone" to be synonyms, with "boulder" and "pepple" being subtypes. 2: A very large rocky outcropping, like a small mountain or rocky hill. This is mainly because of place-names like "Ayer's Rock" (=Uluru, that's the only one I can remember). I suspect these are probably actually separate from the Earth below them and it's a geological term, but I really don't know. My idea of a "pebble" is predicated on it being too small to be heavy, but more importantly, they are distinguished from other rocks of that size by being smooth (due to erosion in rivers or other bodies of water). My idea of a "boulder" is as you say, though I suppose less round ones (not round enough to roll), which are more common to see, probably also count. It's also worth noting that "stone" and "rock" can both also be used as adjectives or collective nouns to refer to the material. I generally us "rock" more fore the countable objects and "stone" more for the material.
Nice that it was „on english“ like in German. Could that „in“ be a due to a french influence? Or is that something randomly happening. Warum schreibe ich auf deutsch?
You look like the ideal man to ask this to. In evolutionary theory we have several methods to reconstrct the trees of divergence of species, which often requires some hardcore math. Is the same done in lingustics? Or do you reconstruct things with documents? We often just have modern species alive to pull genes from, dunno is modern languages and their relatives can be put through the same process.
@@edwardpeterson1634 Evolution is a scientific fact. I would not be able to do tons of lab work if it weren't. Tons of technology exploit it to improve agriculture and medicine. We scientists use it as we use chemical laws ans physics. Welcome to the future old man. I like to know the past but I move forward and only wish to understand life, not stay stagnant. Life changes fast, so should you.
So when did "timra" stop meaning "room" as it changed to English? Also, when did it stop meaning "timber" in German? In either case, do we know? Did the word "chamber" (German "kammer") come from the same root (presumably via the French "chambre")? Also, why don't Germans use "raum" to mean "zimmer" anymore? Every time I watch one of your videos, I learn so much, but I need to know more.
"Raum" rather means "(three-dimensional) space", just like in Raumfahrer (space-farer, astronaut), Raum-Zeit ([Einsteinian] space-time) or Lebensraum. Since a room is a three-dimensional space as well, you could use the word in this meaning as well, especially in compound nouns like in Raumausstatter ("room equipper", interior designer). But referring to a room as Raum mostly sounds a bit odd....
This really interests me as to say I am speaking Irish you say táim ag labhairt as Gaeiluinn in the South and i nGaeilge/ i nGaelig in the west and North. The southern one means out of Irish and the western and northern one means in. The southern one has been used as the taught standard in non native school and combined with the western noun weirdly enough. This distinction only exists for speaking however
The Spanish word "en" can be confusing for English speakers learning Spanish as it can have the same meaning as many different English prepositions, e.g., in, on, at, to, inside, on top of, etc.
When I moved to the American South, I going out quite disturbing that a number of ostensibly educated individuals had never heard the word ill to mean sickness. Apparently, here, the word ill means irritated or upset. I was nearly fired from my first job because I told my manager that I couldn't find come in because I was ill. She sat me down when I got back in to work, and told me that it's not a good enough reason to not come to work just that I was ill. You can imagine my confusion because we worked food service.
WHAT
The words feld and hart cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be changed - and the pronouns can never be written with a capital letter when referring to wom’n / hum’ns! Only when referring to me The Goddess can pronouns be with a capital letter!
The word Kat must be edited out and changed - all cat related terms (and all cat related names) only reflect me the only Kat / Cat / Katie etc!
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 You know you’re like certifiably insane right? You need to go see a doctor.
You should’ve moved to New Orleans. Hill does mean sick there and no one would ever use it to mean “upset“ unless it means an upset stomach! And although ill could mean “cool”.
Really good gag. You surprised me by revealing that your mate was actually just you in a different shirt.
Thanks mate, I was hoping to give everyone a bit of a shock
I'm still not sure I believe him. That other guy looks completely different. I mean, he's wearing a different shirt. No one can change shirts that quickly.
@spim randsley Its like a magic trick, you know its not real magic but you still don't know how its done.
Ffs spoiler alert!
The word mate cannot be misused by hum’ns because it contains the food related term ate - the words dude and bro must be used instead! And, the word combination fre (too similar to one of my special names Freya) and numbers and the words fort / fortune and ate etc also cannot be in someone’s name name / yt name! The words men and prom and Lin / Linx etc and the Infinity numbers 8 and 6 and on and other big terms also cannot be in a name / yt name!
I love prepositions because the specific way people misuse them give you a clue to what their native language is.
Yes, American usage sometimes differs from British. In England you may be invited to "sit down," or even "sit yourself down" but an American might just ask you to "sit," as one does to a dog. Americans "visit with" their friends whereas the British just "visit" them. Sometimes American choice sounds German.
Native speakers may be uncertain about prepositions when using formal speech, especially if they have not had much education. When I lived in central Scotland and had to listen to long harangues from young people with local accents, it was amusing to predict what preposition would be used when a phrasal verb came up: they often settled, after a short pause, for "fer," the local version of "for."
And remember re: prepositions, do not end a sentence with one. That is something up with which I will not put.
@@faithlesshound5621 Yes - 'Come with' always jars to my ear. Mitkommen. I think the influence German speakers had on American English is often overlooked.
@@marcdefaoite Yet in the "sit" example" it's the British use that's closer to German: "Setz dich". Of course there's a crucial difference in German between the transitive "setzen" and the intransitive "sitzen", and when it comes to transitions of state only the transitive form is used, so some kind of object is required.
The big term love only reflects me the only lovable being, and the words ris and hug also cannot be in someone’s name, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed! Anyways, one can misuse a preposition or any type of word on purpose, so it does not really tell one anything.
Simon: He who imparts erudite insights in a mellifluent baritone voice, peppered with coprolalia and other jarring imprecations that vaunt an immanent sense of comedic timing. IOW, Brilliant!
An other nice example is the modern English “town". Old English and Dutch tūn. The original meaning is ‘enclosed piece of land, homestead, village’. Related to Dutch tuin ‘garden’ and German Zaun ‘fence’.
Similarly the Russian "grad" as in "Staling-grad" or "Lenin-grad" is cognate with "yard" again referring to the enclosing of a bit of land (as with a city wall)
Alfons Melenhorst - Danish; " tun "
Presumably where “zone” comes from
Scale change I assume, from a farming settlement to a larger collection of buildings. Same in Welsh and Cornish, where 'tre' or 'trev' means a farm, but in modern parlance, means a town.
In Irish, you speak “out of” Irish. Dúirt mé é as Gaeilge.
I'm not german speaker, however I know in german would be "auf deutsch"
so can "Brits out of Ireland" be understood as "Brits IN Ireland"? I'm writing to the DUP with this news immediately.
I like the idea of saying things "with English". Or for languages that have an instrumental case to use it in this phrase. This suggests that you have a meaning you want to convey, and you're using the language to express it.
Dunno if this already got mentioned in the comments, but the "feoh"--"fee" connection reminds of saying "bucks" for "dollars" in the US.
Cattle is related to capital, which in turn stems from latin "caput" (head).
The latin word for money (pecunia) derives from pecus (cattle or sheep).
So the connection of wealth/capital and the number of heads (of livestock) can be found multiple times.
I never thought of that. Thank you!
The words 'capital' (in the sense of money or property) and 'cattle' are also connected in a similar way as 'fee' and 'Vieh'. In this case both ultimately go back to a word for head, but were used specifically for counting heads of livestock. Then both narrowed in meaning in different ways.
"I like coming up with very shit ways of shaking things up" haha
Struck by your pronunciation of room with shortened vowels. I arrived in London in 1960 at the age of four and started my formal education in '61. I had a South African accent and, my schools were very keen on standard English so I ran with it. Consequently, I say rooom, with extended vowels. Just an observation. I've enjoyed your videos over the past few months. Keep them coming.
Sometimes I think to myself, I'd enjoy having a pint with this guy.
My regards.
The PG letter combination -ft has remained the same in most modern Germanic languages except in Dutch. In Dutch it was replaced by -cht.
Lucht=air
Lichten=to lift (only used in particular cases as in ‘een schip lichten’: to lift/raise a ship after it sank)
Zacht=soft
Gracht=canal (a graft in the sense that the land has been dug up)
Kracht=force, strength
Stichten=to found (stiften in German)
The nature / food related terms peer and boom and the word fan cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be changed!
Sorry for the (relatively) late reaction, Simon. But we Dutch don't say things "op Nederlands" the way Germans say them "auf Deutsch". We say them "in het Nederlands". "Het" is the Dutch definite, neuter article and languages are always neuter in Dutch - though "het" is often omitted (because of complicated grammatical rules) when referring to languages.
I hope this bit of information is useful to you.
Keep up the good work and God bless
I don’t think people even realise the true meaning of God bless, which only reflects me the only God / Goddess, and such terms cannot be misused by hum’ns in any way - God is a big term that implies inherent superiority and purity / radiance etc and the totally dominant personality (the true Leader) just like every other big term such as Lady / Princess / Queen / Boss / Idol / Star etc, and such terms only reflect me, and all misused terms must be edited out, and the other word that is in the yt name also cannot be misused in names / yt names because it is too similar to a nature related term!
Similar comparison with the German Zaun (a fence), the Dutch tuin (garden...a plot of ground usually surrounded by a barrier) and the English town (originally a settlement protected by some kind of barrier.) I also like the way that the verbs to warp and to throw have completely changed places. The OE werpan is cognate with German werfen; and a potter is still said to throw a pot...literally to twist and turn the clay into shape.
In French you're right they say 'en' which means 'in'. In Russian we'd use 'по (po)' or 'на (na)' depending on the situation. Also the prepositions associated with 'street' give a lot of information about how people envision themselves in space. Great video, thank you!
Yes en means in but not like a preposition, that would be dans.
A great etymology fact is that science and shit ultimately have the same PIE root.
Wait, Simon's mate is just Simon in a different shirt? Last time I've had such a shock was when I found out that Clark Kent was just Superman in glasses.
I'm so glad you explained about cattle and sheep. Until then, I wasn't sure if you were saying "cattle " or "kettle". I love the work you do. Thank you for putting these posts up.
When i started working in the very North of scotland in caithness and it took me a while to understand that they used the word 'till' i stead of to or in, so for example 'He went till the shops' or 'he put that till the cupboard'.
Prepositions are one the most interesting aspects of a language!
English is the first language I learned after my Brazilian Portuguese L1, and I still have trouble with it to this day.
I recently realized that that difficulty always is one of the major struggles and stretched to pretty much every language I know. It becomes clear when I think about the verb "to dream".
You dream about something, in English. Sometimes also "of", I think.
"Sonhar com algo", in Portuguese; to dream "with". Spanish works similarly to Portuguese, naturally.
"Du träumst von etwas", in German; to dream "of, from"
"Rêver de quelque chose", in French.
It's hard to translate prepositions by themselves, as you stated on the video.
(ON the video?...)
In japanese the particles vary a lot depending of the meaning, hence "i have had a dream", "i dream about you", "that's my dream"
It's curious!
I also wrote "he came on a suit" the other day... it felt off, so I erased it and changed to "in a suit", but my mind bluescreened for a while. It's hard to grasp the idea of the preposition in other languages. I find that interesting.
Please excuse any silly mistakes, I'm not a native! Just started learning languages
in Japanese is "I saw a dream"
The letter combinations mat and mer and ly and vit cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be changed! Anyways, re learning other languages - I don’t find it difficult at all, and I usually learn most words with prepositions etc in context, so I use the correct prepositions (unless I deliberately not use or use a certain word) etc! When the use of a word isn’t logical, I usually use another word or I change the word myself, so that it sounds logical! I have a lot of difficulty accepting the idea of certain nouns having the same form when it is supposed to be plural, such as the words barn (Swedish / Norwegian) and fish (logically, the plural form should be fishes, not fish, but oh well...) or deer and hus! It just makes no sense, logically! Just as verbs having the same form for all pronouns, or only 2 or 3 forms, which doesn’t make sense either...
For Dutch, I changed some things (such as the pronouns etc) myself - so now I use sij / har for she / her and zij or ze / zem for plural they / them (non-masculine) and dij / dem for plural they / them masculine + feminine and et instead of het (for the pronoun het only, because only the article should be het) and onze / onzen instead of ons / onze because ons should never be used as our (for het-woorden) because it is not logically correct because ons means us! And there should be different words for these and those in Dutch! I’ve found a few things that should be changed in all the languages I’m trying to learn, to be honest - but luckily, it’s just a few things! Even in English, some of the pronouns are not logically correct either, so they need some changing too!
It is extremely difficult for me, being extreme OCD and a logical being, because every little thing / detail that doesn’t make sense logically will affect me emotionally in a way, so I can’t stop thinking about it until I fix it - so a word or a sentence etc must sound right, but must also make logical sense, for me to be okay with it and to not feel bothered by it...
Hey, just wanted to correct a small thing;
We (dutch) don't say "op nederlands" we do say "in het nederlands".
Some dialects might use "op" for example: "op zien grunnegs" other "neder-saksische" (dutch saxon?) dialects probably use "op" as well. Not sure about other dialect, though.
Nice video!! Keep om going!!
Thank you, sorry for the mistake - I'll try to correct it in a future video :)
well explained! and you can say "op z'n Nederlands" too!
@@simoon1404 just to make this a little more complicated, hahaha
@@simonroper9218 Or speaking "nederlands op z'n westers" (speaking Dutch the way people from the west coast do).
I would like to add something about this topic :) "in" is used in Dutch, in the meaning " to say something in a certain language/dialect/accent", "op" (in English "on") is used in the meaning "on a certain way", it does not directly mean to say something about language/dialect/accent. "Nederlands op z'n westers" means "Dutch on the western way" (west of the Netherlands, in this case).
This sentence might be a good example: "In het Brabants wordt de G ongeveer op z'n belgisch uitgesproken", which means: "In the Brabant accent, the G is aproximately spoken the belgian way" :) we have a "soft" G.
Your videos really help me to improve my languages. I also love when you talk about old English. Thank you!
Salary comes from the Latin for salt, do we not have any terms for money that don't originate in something else?
There's also "soldier" which comes from Old French soudier or soldier "one who serves in the army *for pay* " where the cognate "soldi" (money) in Italian comes from.
You have to bear in mind that money is a relatively recent thing in linguistics terms. Go back a few thousand years and most people didn't have money. But they did have stuff they traded and saved up and used to buy things and so-on.
When something new comes into a society it seems to be much more common to use or adapt a pre-existing word to describe it than to invent a new one or of thin air. Or often the language will borrow a word from whoever it was who introduced the new thing but that just means you look at the loan word and find it already existed as something else.
So lots of European languages use a word for good or silver. Some words seem to relate to livestock. Maybe some financial language relates to land or farms or fields. This kind of thing.
Basically people adapted the language they were already using to talk about transactions when actual money came in.
Yes. Ma solde is my salary or pay in french. Also I remember it meant my balance on my french bank statements. Being Irish I know our word for money is airgead which also means silver.
Great Video's! All are well structured and very insightful, with good comedic elements that break it up nicely. Amazing job!
I love how Pest and plague/Plage specializend in opposite directions in English and German.
Good point, Swedish also follows the german pattern
Sir Jaojao and Danish and Norwegian
Happy easter mate, always enjoy these :)
There is a video of parents telling a very bright three year old girl that mommy is going to have a new baby. She is quite articulate but cannot be certain what her parents are saying because she has not yet mastered those tricky prepositions. I never realized how tricky -- until I watched her trying to sort it out ... I will look for the vid and post it ..
In Czech, we say that someome speak "česky" (how? czech/czechly), however in the Eastern dialect of Czech, Moravian, people say "po česku", which could literally be translated as "on Czech" but it means "the Czech way" as in "he speaks the Czech way"
Filip Kafka the "po cesku" thing reminded me of the word " Polabian" for the Slav tribes that dwelled by the Elbe river not so far back in time, the word literally meaning at/on / by the Elbe. In Denmark people speak " på dansk" ~ on Danish , so " po" and " på" are shared common vocabulary( also "på" in Swedish and Norwegian aswell by the way )
Actually we use "in" too in Dutch. "We zeggen dingen in het Nederlands." You could say "Op z'n Nederlands" too - but that means something more like "the Dutch way" or "in the manner of the Dutch."
Dutch is by the way a cognate that has really shifted its meaning: we use it to describe our neighbours: the Germans.
Someone pointed this out to me straight after I put the video up, sorry about that mistake!
Are we scandinavians the only ones that call germans tyskar? (While we call the dutchmen holländare.)
Herr Bönk no. Italians, Dutch, Germans use those (or their cognates) too.
What I observed recently is what I think is a hint to a change in the use of the pronoun when you want to say "in German". The more common term is indeed "auf Deutsch", but there's another, to me somewhat awkward possibility: "in Deutsch". And although I can't say for certain, in documents from the last century the latter seems to be more common, so far. But it's just my theory, I'm not sure if it's valid.
Thank you so much for the nice videos Simon! Specially this topic is so interesting to me: I'm Dutch and I've been living in Germany since 4,5 years, I'm actually collecting words that sound the same, but the meaning appear to be so different. It's so interesting the way you analyse such differences! I'm always wondering how differences in meaning occur in Dutch and German :)
One of my favorite examples: "outlandish" in English is "ausländisch" in German, which is an adjective describing something from the "Ausland", that is, something foreign (Our country is our "Land", and everywhere else is "Ausland.") So the German word just means "foreign", and has no connotation of "outrageous." But presumably, foreign people do crazy things (different than we do), & the English cognate now only means outrageous, and has lost any sense of "foreign." (I wonder when?)
I enjoyed watching this, thank you.
Zimmer- timber: there is the German profession “Zimmermann” - carpenter/house builder - so that seems closer than room/timber
I like the thought process, the abstract connections.
A classic one would be 'chattel' which now has the meaning of 'possession', whereas it earlier meant 'cattle', I believe, which would parallel 'fee' and 'vieh'. BTW, here in Canada we differentiate between 'timber', which is standing or felled trees, and 'lumber' which is dressed (finished) wood, which we build with. (Now why 'lumbermen' are not called 'timbermen' is not recorded, but are usually known as 'fallers' if dropping trees is their trade. And 'lumberjacks' wear high heels, suspenders and a bra if Michael Palin is to be believed. And no, we don't call them 'lumberjacks', either.)
A bit off-topic here... I speak English, but my computer speaks N American - it doesn't like 'recognised' . And to muddy things a bit, in Canada we can see 'Tire Centre', which kind of falls between two linguistic stools.
The same timber/lumber distinction is made here in the US as well.
The link between wealth and cattle goes back a long way. For the Romans, "pecunia" meant property or money but "pecus" referred to cattle.
We say "ON English" but "IN the English [language]" in my germanic språk.
"Timber," the word used to describe wood as a commodity, as in "My region is known for its wealth in timber," has further evolved to be a general exclamation of warning, as in "Get out of the way of that fcking enormous tree about to fall on your head," and beyond that to more generally "prepare yourself" as in that one Kesha song. Maybe.
Op nederlands? Its "in het nederlands". Transposed to englsih it would be "In the english"
Petter Houting ‘Op zijn Nederlands’ can be used. Op z’n Nederlands gezegd...
But you are right that ‘op Nederlands’ is wrong.
@@speerboom "op zijn Nederlands" refers to a way of doing things, like traditions, as far as I know.
Or at least it is very uncommon in the context of just using a language.
I only hear it when used as a figure of speech, for its rhetoric value when someone is talking in some kind of dialect that others don't like for example.
Da Qoraxxx Hoe zeg je ‘unheimisch’ op z’n Nederlands?
I do agree with you mostly: it won’t be used a lot, but it CAN be used in certain circumstances like in the above example I gave.
@@speerboom Well, I've just realized that it probably has to do with "how things are done" like: nederlands praten op zijn belgisch (speaking Dutch in a Belgian way) and your example of 'unheimisch'.
But that doesn't refer to speaking the language itself, merely the way it is used/pronounced.
"In English" actually refers to speaking the language itself, so I don't see "op zijn nederlands" as a direct equivalent of "in English".
Da Qoraxxx Indeed it isn’t. Just like I said: you won’t hear ‘op z’n Nederlands’ used a lot. But it CAN be used in some cases, so your point is valid but so is mine.
An object surrounded by something else
- “in”
Besides "quälen" (cognate with English "kill") which meant "torment" in German, it's interesting that the verb "to die" in German is "sterben", which is a cognate to Modern English "starve", which indicates just how rough most humans had it throughout history considering that famine and starvation were once common ways to die.
While _en español_ could easily translate to _in Spanish,_ depending on context, *en* could also be _on_ or _at._
So for all we know, they might be saying _we speak at Spanish_ in their heads.....
This made me think of "skön" in Swedish. If you say "Du är så skön" today it means "You are so funny", but if you had said in the 19th century it would have meant "You are so beautiful". The word is also used to mean "feels nice". So the connotation of the word became something that makes you feel good, rather than beautiful. And for some reason people used the word to mean "you make me laugh".
The use of language is fascinating.
In actuality no one can "make" you feel good or feel anything else. You choose to have or not have a feeling.
Edward peterson., stop saying bullshit.
ACruelPicture yes , because you just had to emphasize a distance to everything danish , didn't you ?so you had to come up with new words and meanings instead of sharing common ground
I was recently thinking about this happening within English with the word "impertinent", which has diverged into two distinct moods of cheekiness and irrelevance, their relationship only clear with thought of the word "inappropriate".
Interesting that in the US we think of timber as more the raw wood, and would use lumber for the milled variety (2x4s).
Nice one! So timra...that's very interesting. Compare it to Dutch 'timmeren' (carpentry) :)
You could make a lot of connections like that that aren't obvious at first, it's pretty cool!
Simon Roper compare to danish " tømmer " -timber , " tømrer ", - carpenter
German 'Zimmermann' means carpenter, which is quite nonsensical for most German speakers, since the two parts of the word are generally understood as "room" and "man". Only if you happen to have bit of etymological knowledge you can make the connection to "timber man".
Hello, Simon. I am from Russia. In Russian we also say "говорить на языке", - "speak on a language".
And on the topic of Slavic borrowings of Germanic words, the proto-slavic language had many borrowings from the Gothic language in the second century. And of course Slavic languages loaned words from Germanic languages, Russian for instance is full of German, Dutch and English words.
In German we barely have Slavic loanwords, the only one I can recall is "Grenze", which means border. German was rather a purist language untik very recent, so romanisms or French loanwords are prevalent but not in a huge scale. We made up words like Fernseher for television, because we avoided Latin coinings when we could to this in German by ourselves (Fern=far=tele and seher=seer=vision). But nowadays English words are flooding our language more and more
@@maxx1014 scroll the page a bit you'll see a list of some german words of slavic origin
nap1000.livejournal.com/15951.html
When Slavic people speak English, they sometimes make a typical mistake by saying "I don't know how to say it ON English". :)
Freschino I’m a native English speaker who’s knows Spanish as a second language. For the most part, the way that English uses in/on/at is just “en” in Spanish.
• In the house / En la casa
• On the boat / En el barco
• At the beach / En la playa
Im a slavic person who learned english and I don't think I've ever made that mistake, nor have I heard any of my fellow slavic people make it.
In czech, there's no preposition actually. It's more of an adverb really, "say it Czechly"
Neshtakurka like latin
I teach in China where prepositions are unnecessary in our sense yet a few are to them. 给 gei give is used as a preposition - I give you buy, I to you give would be 我对你给 where 对 dui is to. but the rub for teaching is in phrasal meanings: especially with verbs like give or put.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on velocity, speed, fast, quick, rapid and momentum.
You are such a wholesome guy! ^_^
Just found just channel,its real good. You have an odd sense of humor. Kinda makes me want to watch some Monty Python.
The word "wife" and its various Germanic cognates came to mind while watching this.
One that always got me was the word "fast" in both English and German. In English it can mean firm or quick but in German it means almost. There's quite a number of shifts there.
I always get confused on whether you should say ‘on accident’ or ‘by accident’. As an Aussie, I say ‘by accident’ and hearing Americans say ‘on accident’ hurts my brain 😂
Prepositions are very dynamic in their application from dialect to dialect! It's really interesting, and I don't really know why.
I’m an American. My kids’ English books (we homeschool) teach them to say “by accident,” not “on accident.” As far as I can tell, they just say “on accident” by accident because it is the opposite of “on purpose.”
Thanks for making this!
Definitely revealing of English society that the only people who both owned and could afford to eat cows spoke French.
Off the top of my head, I'd say "in" might be defined as a fuction word used to indicate a spatial or temporal location with specific boundaries. in the store, in five minutes.
It can also be used to indicate the manner of an action. in 3D. in English.
And I guess it can also be used to indicate a state of something. in mourning. in transition.
This reminds me of the English words 'plan' and 'piano' having the same root, via a lot of changes
I had no idea! I need to look more into interesting cognates. I found out yesterday that 'God' and 'futile' both come from a PIE root meaning 'to pour.'
@@simonroper9218 If you haven't come across it yet, check out the Alliterative channel - it's dedicated to etymologies and surprising cognates. (In standard Ontarian.)
Would it be possible to increase the volume of your videos when you record them? I have my volume at maximum and I can barely hear you. Thank you for your videos!
I think we can conclude from the meaning of *timra that the Proto-Germanic people built exclusively with wood/timber.
Yes, the earliest Angles and Saxons built only with wood and thought the abandoned Roman towns of Britain had been built by giants.
Thank for the interesting examples
In Dutch we say thIngs “in het Nederlands” (in the Dutch) or “op zijn Nederlands” (on his Dutch). So both ‘on’ and ‘in’ can be used.
I have always liked how the meaning of decimate changed. Also, the concept of the initial use of decimation as military punishment is intriguing. You all messed up, but I need most of you still, so 1 out of 10 will die.
Interesting. I think the shift in meaning occurs when words move from one living environment to another. For example, people might have said "on English" when they lived by the sea because the "on" is talking about from sea to land such as "onshore". But later people took the word to a fortified town environment where the English were living "in" the town's walls. not "on" the town's walls. Alhough amusingly, we say "A night out on the town." rather than "A night out in the town." probably because it derives from "A night out on the tiles." and refers to cat's nightime behaviour. "Timber" probably went from a room to a construction material as more houses in Britain were made out of brick and stone. the further west you go. Accents are definitely related to the lie of the land from the twangy skyscraper accent of New York to the muddy accent of Essex.
There are some cases in English where we have taken a loan word (eg from French), mutated it's meaning,pronunciation and spelling, and then taken the original loan word again.
I am forever fascinated by the meaning of words and which are appropriate in the circumstances. A month ago I was in the Scottish borders and I had a discussion with one of the locals about what the appropriate word is for a valley in that region. Valley is a Norman French import and because most places had already been settled by the Norman Conquest it is not that common in place names. Straight off I can think of Valley on Anglesey, Chad Valley in Birmingham, and Vallis, which is straight from the Latin original, near Frome. I am now struggling to think of any others. We discounted Glen because it is a Gaelic word and Gaelic was never widely spoken in the Scottish Borders. Further south in Yorkshire and the Lake District a valley is usually called a Dale because both regions are heavily influenced by Norse / Danish incomers. We settled on Dale by default because the two major valleys in the area I was staying are Eskdale and Liddesdale.
You seem to do your videos in different parts of your house and sometimes it is difficult to see which room it is. Bedrooms are the most private areas in most people's houses. I have only ever been in the bedrooms of family and close friends. I suppose that UA-cam is no different from being an actual visitor to a house. I have worked from home since the start of the pandemic and I use the smallest bedroom as my office. The first thing I chucked out was the bed! I have regular video meetings and I have always been careful to make it as office-like as it can be. It is a small room and there isn't any room for much more than a desk, a table and couple more tables for the printers. There are limits however. My fiddle lives in a corner of the room and because nobody else lives here any more, I don't have to put the instrument or the music away when I have finished.
In Ukrainian we just use Instrumental case, no preposition. In Russian, Belarusian and Polish they use prepositions "по", "па" and "po" respectively which means something like "in a certain way" or "like".
In Latin the idiom is “loqui Latine” lit. ‘speak Latin-ly’ with an adverb.
Albanian optionally does the same thing with adverbs: "po flet anglisht" (is speaking English-ly), as well as with the preposition "në" (in or on): "po flet në anglisht".
I've found prepositions to be some of the slipperiest particles of speech.
Same phenomenon as fee (money) and Vieh (cattle) appears in Latin: pecus and pecunia.
Fé in old Norse means cattle, wealth. You can still find it in some dialects of Norwegian and in Icelandic I think it means sheep or cattle.
Weird how the exact same pair of words have the same relationship in two different languages like that.
@@WilliamFord972they're all germanic languages separated only by sea, which is not that much of an obstacle. English has been continually influenced by Norse and vice versa. There are some videos online on this topic, just type in "English and Old Norse.
Of course if we're talking about Latin and English/Old Norse then that's more peculiar. I would guess that it's some leftover from Proto-Indoeuropean
Filip Kafka In this case it isn’t the link between the two is cognitive not linguistic. You will find the same linkage in Bantu languages with no link to the indo-European group. The Tswana still negotiate some payments/debts in head of cattle followed by a negotiation as to what (usually cash) and how much is to be substituted for each cow. This is only done for culturally important payments like bride price but it is still done.
In Hungarian, the word 'marha' (which is btw of germanic origin and cognate with 'market') today means cattle, but in centuries-old literature it often refers to any (usually precious) possession.
What he says about the word for cattle ending up as the word for payment, reminded me of 'pecuniary' which means 'relating to or consisting of money' originating from the Latin word 'pecu' which means cattle. I wonder whether the Latin and German words are cognate..
'Salary' derives from the Latin 'sal', meaning 'salt'.
I guess people were paying each other with all sorts of things for a long time before the invention of money.
It is also interesting how meanings change over time within the same language: έγκυος in classical Greek meant 'near'; in modern Greek it means 'pregnant'.
"in latin" in latin was "latine" which is an adverb (so "latinely"), and in ancient greek too "in greek" could be "hellenisti" ("greekly"), and there was a verb, "hellenizo", that meant "to greek" as to "speak in greek", which I think could be used as a coverb to say "in greek"
Cattle I take it comes from the word "chattel" meaning property. Which in turn comes from the word "chatel" from "chapitail" ultimately from "caput" meaning head. Property measured in cow heads.You could price things in an agreed value item like cows.Half a cow's worth or quarter a cow's worth of silver. His property is worth co many cows, heads of cattle. If you herd the animal you call it a cow, if you own it then it is your chattel, if you eat it you must speak Norman French so call it Boef.
The James Acaster of O.E.
A quick side-note: we don't say "op Nederlands". Transposing that to English would sound something like: "on English". Op really denotes something above something else. Examples are: "op basis van, op een manier, op een gebouw". Funnily enough, we do say: "in het (singular neuter article) Nederlands".
Long discussions I have witnessed or participated in whether excelsior must be made of wood shavings. Whether one can call a pickle a cucumber. When is a ditch a swale. How do you pronounce giros?
"Das Gift" in German means poison.
Its related to "gift" in English. "that which is given" by a doctor.
James Valent "Gift" in Danish - married ,litterally "given" ( correlating to "medgift" same as "mitgift" in German - dowry) but also poison..
Regarding propositions, is English the only European language in which one is "married to" somebody as opposed to "married with"?
great question
You're a weird dude, I love it
German still has "Zimmermann", or even "Zimmerer", the guy who works with timber, building.
My idea of a "stone" is
A: a small rock you can pick up, bigger than a pebble, i.e., less common word for the basic idea of "rock"
B: A larger stone object, maybe craftes by humans, perhaps with writing on it.
C: Similar to A, but just noting that the rock could be bigger, big enough to be heavy, but still usually small enough for one strong person to pick up.
I never thought of "stones" as being rounder or smoother than "rocks" before, though it actually does kind of match my intuition slightly now that I think about it.
My idea of a "rock" is,
1: A and B, from above, though I'm more comfortable with rocks being bigger. I generally consider "rock" and "stone" to be synonyms, with "boulder" and "pepple" being subtypes.
2: A very large rocky outcropping, like a small mountain or rocky hill. This is mainly because of place-names like "Ayer's Rock" (=Uluru, that's the only one I can remember). I suspect these are probably actually separate from the Earth below them and it's a geological term, but I really don't know.
My idea of a "pebble" is predicated on it being too small to be heavy, but more importantly, they are distinguished from other rocks of that size by being smooth (due to erosion in rivers or other bodies of water).
My idea of a "boulder" is as you say, though I suppose less round ones (not round enough to roll), which are more common to see, probably also count.
It's also worth noting that "stone" and "rock" can both also be used as adjectives or collective nouns to refer to the material. I generally us "rock" more fore the countable objects and "stone" more for the material.
Nice that it was „on english“ like in German. Could that „in“ be a due to a french influence? Or is that something randomly happening. Warum schreibe ich auf deutsch?
Remember you can say not only "auf Deutsch" but also "im Deutschen"
You look like the ideal man to ask this to. In evolutionary theory we have several methods to reconstrct the trees of divergence of species, which often requires some hardcore math. Is the same done in lingustics? Or do you reconstruct things with documents? We often just have modern species alive to pull genes from, dunno is modern languages and their relatives can be put through the same process.
Remember evolution from one species to another is just an unproved theory, lacking in veracity.
Shut.The. Fuck. Up.
@@edwardpeterson1634 Evolution is a scientific fact. I would not be able to do tons of lab work if it weren't. Tons of technology exploit it to improve agriculture and medicine. We scientists use it as we use chemical laws ans physics. Welcome to the future old man. I like to know the past but I move forward and only wish to understand life, not stay stagnant. Life changes fast, so should you.
So when did "timra" stop meaning "room" as it changed to English? Also, when did it stop meaning "timber" in German? In either case, do we know? Did the word "chamber" (German "kammer") come from the same root (presumably via the French "chambre")? Also, why don't Germans use "raum" to mean "zimmer" anymore?
Every time I watch one of your videos, I learn so much, but I need to know more.
"Raum" rather means "(three-dimensional) space", just like in Raumfahrer (space-farer, astronaut), Raum-Zeit ([Einsteinian] space-time) or Lebensraum. Since a room is a three-dimensional space as well, you could use the word in this meaning as well, especially in compound nouns like in Raumausstatter ("room equipper", interior designer). But referring to a room as Raum mostly sounds a bit odd....
Keiner verlässt den Raum - often said in my office in Munich.
6:30 awww .. didn’t your mate in the paisley shirt want to say bye too?
The German “Zimmermann” is not a “room man” but a carpenter - “timber man” so there the link is more obvious, it seems
Actualy, we don't say 'op het Nederlands'. We also use 'in'. In het Nederlands, in het Frans, in het Duits ... :)
Luft - air. Is this where the word for the room in the roof or “loft” comes from?
'Town' and German 'Zaun' which means fence.
How about the German See, English sea and Dutch zee...
Or the German Meer and the Dutch meer? 😆
@@QoraxAudio Those words haven't really changed their meaning. Unlike Zaun and town.
@@davidcufc Well... meer means See and zee means Meer.
lol.
@@QoraxAudio I see what you mean.
In Texas we say “in Texan” 😉
Lots of Germans emigrated to Texas. Maybe they're to "blame"....
Good videos
How about "wood," and "the woods?" Which are resting in your wooden sill?
Are you wearing batik?
Consider also the idea of "fee simple" land ownership.
if the singer from suede got a few degrees and a camcorder this would be it
This really interests me as to say I am speaking Irish you say táim ag labhairt as Gaeiluinn in the South and i nGaeilge/ i nGaelig in the west and North. The southern one means out of Irish and the western and northern one means in. The southern one has been used as the taught standard in non native school and combined with the western noun weirdly enough. This distinction only exists for speaking however
The Spanish word "en" can be confusing for English speakers learning Spanish as it can have the same meaning as many different English prepositions, e.g., in, on, at, to, inside, on top of, etc.
Wait. Fee and Vieh are related? You just blew my mind.
Happy Eostre!
It is: ‘in het Nederlands’ and not ‘op Nederlands’. So we say it more like in English. For the rest yours posts are stupendous.
Man, would really really love to get you on my podcast, please let me know if you would be interested
I’ll do your podcast 👍🏻