{"id":2115,"date":"2014-04-30T09:07:22","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T13:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=2115"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:25:32","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:25:32","slug":"enjoying-etymology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2014\/04\/30\/enjoying-etymology\/","title":{"rendered":"Ground-Apples, Glow-Pears, and Go-Wheels: Enjoying Etymology in Your New Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Itchy<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I find\u00a0words fascinating. That might be part of why I enjoy learning new languages so much: so many new words! And so many new ways of looking at the\u00a0same<\/em> words; that is to say, different words with the same meaning.<\/p>\n

As I detailed in another one of my comics<\/a>, I felt like some sort of etymological gumshoe after cracking the case of why in German the word for “french fries” is pommes,<\/em>\u00a0which is not a German word – it’s the French word for “apples,” but pronounced “pum-ess.” Why would that be? It wasn’t until I learned more of both German and French that it finally clicked (if you’re competent in those languages as well, it might strike you as a no-brainer, but to me it was a revelation). Language shifts and warps itself in amazing ways to better serve its users.<\/p>\n

German is particularly fun to come at with an outsider’s perspective. To Germans, they’ve never thought twice about the fact that\u00a0Krankenhaus<\/em>\u00a0is just “sick” (krank<\/em>) inside a house (Haus<\/em>). “Sick house!” I love it. Who but the Germans could come up with a more practical, no-nonsense approach to their vocabulary? Of course, we’ve got “lawn mower” and “vacuum cleaner”, but in German it goes far\u00a0beyond household appliances –\u00a0Gl\u00fchbirne<\/em>\u00a0(“lightbulb”) literally translates to “glowing pear,” Fahrrad<\/i> (“bicycle”) means “go-wheel,”\u00a0unsterblichkeit<\/em> (“immortality”) is literally\u00a0“un-dying-able-ness,” and my personal favorite,\u00a0Stinktier<\/em>, which translates to\u00a0“stinky animal,” is the German word for “skunk.”<\/p>\n

At this point, some among you might protest, and rightly so. “Now hang on,” you’re saying. “‘Immortality’ is etymologically no different from\u00a0unsterblichkeit<\/em> if you look at the Latin root,\u00a0immortalis,\u00a0<\/em>which literally means ‘death-less.’ Same with ‘dictionary’ or ‘airplane’ from your comic. They’re just as obvious, if you take it apart. Why pick on the Germans?”<\/p>\n

Well, from an English-mother-language perspective, that’s just it.\u00a0We don’t<\/i> say “death-less” to mean “immortality,” where the Germans would be hard pressed to think of a clearer way to express “un-dying-able-ness” than unsterblichkeit<\/em>.\u00a0English\u00a0borrows from its\u00a0ancestry, while German just lays it all out there on the table, no frills about it. And I sympathize! With apologies to the Belgians and Canadians, look at French, where the simple “potato” becomes a glorified, overly poetic “apple of the earth” (pomme de terre<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Half of English’s ancestry comes from German too, of course. We’ve stolen\u00a0our fair share of words with forehead-slappingly obvious translations: Schadenfreude<\/em>\u00a0(“joy from\u00a0harm”),\u00a0Zeitgeist<\/em> (“spirit of time”),\u00a0Kindergarten\u00a0<\/em>(“children’s garden”),\u00a0Doppelg\u00e4nger<\/em> (“double-goer”), etc. And that’s just my point – English\u00a0doesn’t have its own words\u00a0for these things, so it\u00a0borrows from other languages, putting an extra layer between us and the word’s origin. The etymology is hidden\u00a0to us, where it wouldn’t be to Germans or the French.<\/p>\n

My Italian wife was baffled to hear about spelling bees in the USA – in Italian, words are spelled exactly as they sound and vice versa, so there’d be no earthly reason to hold a competition just\u00a0to see who can spell better. Similarly, it could be that in languages such as German or French, etymology is in fact a completely unrewarding study, as uncovering the origin of most words is a simple matter of\u00a0popping off the prefixes and suffixes and seeing what remains behind. Only in English, the language cobbled together from every other language, would we need to make a hobby\u00a0of it. (German\/French etymologists among the readership, feel free to pipe up and prove me wrong!)<\/p>\n

Hang on, I think we’ve got something here: etymology bees! Kids must correctly\u00a0guess the root and meaning of obscure English words! “Bamboozle”, anyone?<\/p>\n

I know you all speak an impressive variety of tongues. Any etymological curiosities from your own languages that you can throw our way?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

I find\u00a0words fascinating. That might be part of why I enjoy learning new languages so much: so many new words! And so many new ways of looking at the\u00a0same words; that is to say, different words with the same meaning. As I detailed in another one of my comics, I felt like some sort…<\/p>\n

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