The CBB

k1234567890y wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 08:09

shimobaatar wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 00:17

k1234567890y wrote: ↑30 Jul 2018 21:40

Pabappa wrote: ↑30 Jul 2018 21:16 Apparently it survives as "even steven" .... I'd always assumed that that was just a rhyme based on the proper name.

how so?

What's unclear?

was wondering what made him/her think the proper noun possibility at first

They likely made that assumption, as I did myself, because the name "Steven/Stephen" and this "steven" are pronounced identically, at least in my variety of English. Additionally, the name is far more common, especially given that it appears that, at least in most dialects, "steven" only survives, as Pabappa said, in the phrase "even steven".

thanks, yeah. i just took it to be one of those phrases like "okey-dokey" where the first part is meaningful but the second is just a rhyme. one other example that surprised me is "willy-nilly", where both parts are meaningful.

Vielfraß is interesting, because that has led to the use of the word glutton in English as a synonym for wolverine. a folk etymology that got translated.

shimobaatar wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 14:45

k1234567890y wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 08:09

shimobaatar wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 00:17

k1234567890y wrote: ↑30 Jul 2018 21:40

Pabappa wrote: ↑30 Jul 2018 21:16 Apparently it survives as "even steven" .... I'd always assumed that that was just a rhyme based on the proper name.

how so?

What's unclear?

was wondering what made him/her think the proper noun possibility at first

They likely made that assumption, as I did myself, because the name "Steven/Stephen" and this "steven" are pronounced identically, at least in my variety of English. Additionally, the name is far more common, especially given that it appears that, at least in most dialects, "steven" only survives, as Pabappa said, in the phrase "even steven".

In fact, how would the average person who hasn't specifically learnt it as a matter of trivia, even know that there ever was a common noun "steven"?

Imralu wrote: ↑01 Aug 2018 04:11

shimobaatar wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 14:45

k1234567890y wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 08:09

shimobaatar wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018 00:17

k1234567890y wrote: ↑30 Jul 2018 21:40

Pabappa wrote: ↑30 Jul 2018 21:16 Apparently it survives as "even steven" .... I'd always assumed that that was just a rhyme based on the proper name.

how so?

What's unclear?

was wondering what made him/her think the proper noun possibility at first

They likely made that assumption, as I did myself, because the name "Steven/Stephen" and this "steven" are pronounced identically, at least in my variety of English. Additionally, the name is far more common, especially given that it appears that, at least in most dialects, "steven" only survives, as Pabappa said, in the phrase "even steven".

In fact, how would the average person who hasn't specifically learnt it as a matter of trivia, even know that there ever was a common noun "steven"?

Wiktionary seems to indicate that it isn't obsolete in some dialects in northern England and Scotland, but for those of us who don't speak those dialects, exactly. How would we know?

English -s and Tsez -z (oblique plural ending)

English kid and Tsez kid "girl"

If the Glottalic Reconstruction of PIE is right, it bears a striking resemblance to the stop system of Modern Korean.

Shemtov wrote: ↑09 Aug 2018 03:39 If the Glottalic Reconstruction of PIE is right, it bears a striking resemblance to the stop system of Modern Korean.

Okay, I guess these threads we have here have more or less demonstrated that pretty much anything counts as a false cognate or unfortunate coincidence or whatever in somebody's opinion... but still, I think this one's a bit of a stretch. By definition, "cognates are words that have a common etymological origin", and phonological inventories aren't words. What we'd have here would be a case of a parallel phonological structure, which are quite common cross-linguistically - and indeed, the fact that there are apparently very few if any known parallels for the usual reconstruction of the PIE stop inventory is the main reason why alternative theories like the glottalic one are so tempting.

This might be a stretch, depending on your dialect's semantic spread of the first term:
Adviser, Vizier

lace, lasso
leash

While all three words can ultimately be traced to Latin, "lace" and "lasso" both come from laqueus, and "leash" descends from the verb laxo.

Sinosphere words for "signal" derived from Chinese 信號(Chinese /ɕin⁵¹ xɑʊ̯⁵¹/, Korean /ˈɕʰiːnβo̞/, Japanese /ɕĩŋɡo̞ː/) v.s. words for "signal" in a variety of European languages derived from Late Latin signālis

Wow, Japanese is especially interesting.

Creyeditor wrote: ↑31 Aug 2018 17:07 Wow, Japanese is especially interesting.

yes lol

and the words bear the same meaning.

There seem to be vast numbers of false cognates in basic English words for geography.

Two that just surprised me:
gill/ghyll vs. gully.
Given that -y is a common diminutive, and that u/y is a common ablaut alternation, these words, which mean the same thing in most places (though in the weald, 'ghyll' is a word for the brook itself, rather than for a gully that may or may not hold a brook), look virtually certain to be related. But they're not - 'gill' is Germanic, via Norse, while 'gully' is Latin, via French.

cot/cote/cottage vs. cot.
"Cot", and more commonly the feminine form "cote", are words for the place where an animal sleeps; they're also an old English term for a house. The same term, with a suffix, comes to us via French as "cottage", again a word for a house. So you'd think that "cot", a place where a human infant sleeps, was in some way related to these words. But it's not - it's from Sanskrit, via Hindi.


While we're at it, a couple that are perhaps less surprising, but still easy mistakes:
chit and child - both meaning 'child', but the former is native alternative to 'kid' (young goat), while the latter isn't.
cull (an individual of low worth) and cull (a foolish individual). Many culls are culls, but the former is from the verb 'to cull' (that which is unworthy of saving from culling) and the latter is from the Latin word for a testicle.
cull (to kill) and kill (to kill). Although culling is a form of killing, and killing a form of culling, and although u/i alternations are common, the words are actually unrelated - 'cull' is from Latin (ultimate 'to collect') and 'kill' is a deformed variant of 'quell'.
Middle Dutch kollen (to knock down, to hit on the head) vs killen/kellen (to kill) - again, the latter is probably related to 'quell', while the former is from a word for 'head'.
Norse kollr ('head') and Latin collus ('neck')
Norse kollr ('mountain top') and Latin collis ('hill')
Icelandic kollur (affectionate address to a child) and Norwegian kull (litter of young born at one time)
cull (selection or set of animals or plants) and Norwegian kull
cull (mass killing of animals) and Scottish Gaelic coll (destruction)

tick (tiny parasite), tick (small mark), tick (coarse fabric covered in small marks and home to tiny parasites) and tick (placename element meaning 'goat')
tick (tiny parasite), Middle English tichen (baby goat), and titch (very small thing). The latter in fact indicates 'similar in size to Harry Relph, a comedian who looked something like Thomas Castro, who was widely believed to be Roger Tichbourne, but was imprisoned for actually being Arthur Orten'. As I'm sure you knew, or could easily have guessed.
Any of the above, and tyke (impudent child). Also the latter vs tyro. The latter is from the Latin word for a young soldier, while the former is from the Norse word for a bitch.

fawn (young of an animal) vs fawn (seek to please, be obsequious to).

coop vs cubby vs cubicle

And bothy (small house) isn't related to... well OK, I can't find a modern reflex that sounds like it, but it's somehow not related to Germanic *bo:thla (house). The latter gives, depending on dialect, English 'bold' (not that 'bold', the other one) or 'bottle' (not that 'bottle', the other one), though I think it 'ought' to give 'bothel'.

This might be a stretch, which is why I hadn't posted it yet: Nota bene /bina/ "Understanding"

Salmoneus wrote: ↑04 Sep 2018 01:14 And bothy (small house) isn't related to... well OK, I can't find a modern reflex that sounds like it, but it's somehow not related to Germanic *bo:thla (house).

Isn't bothy (together with booth) from Old Norse búð (< PG *būþō ~*bōþōn)? If this is the case, then both bothy and bold, bottle (and their predecessors) are ultimately derived from *bō⁄ūwaną.

Tristan Radicz wrote: ↑21 Sep 2018 21:39

Salmoneus wrote: ↑04 Sep 2018 01:14 And bothy (small house) isn't related to... well OK, I can't find a modern reflex that sounds like it, but it's somehow not related to Germanic *bo:thla (house).

Isn't bothy (together with booth) from Old Norse búð (< PG *būþō ~*bōþōn)? If this is the case, then both bothy and bold, bottle (and their predecessors) are ultimately derived from *bō⁄ūwaną.

You reckon búdh comes from búana? Where does the -dh come from, then? Not the same place as the fricative in bóthla, because that's the PIE -tlom instrument suffix. You think it's a -ithó abstract noun with the -i- mysteriously vanishing, maybe?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you're right, you know more than me (which isn't hard, but makes it hard for me to respond...)...

[Actually, I hadn't thought of a connexion at the level of Proto-Germanic, or indeed in this case (because apparently the bothla form is a PIE derivation) PIE itself. More just that there wasn't any immediate connexion between them.]

Salmoneus wrote: ↑22 Sep 2018 00:32 You reckon búdh comes from búana? Where does the -dh come from, then? Not the same place as the fricative in bóthla, because that's the PIE -tlom instrument suffix. You think it's a -ithó abstract noun with the -i- mysteriously vanishing, maybe?

I quoted the form *būþō ~*bōþōn after V. Orel's Handbook of Germanic Etymology, which lists búð as a reflex of it together with German Bude (< MHG buode) and MLG bōde; now I checked wiktionary and I see this is a mistake, as búð is an i-stem noun. So, *būþiz indeed (buode and bōde, on the other hand, look definitely as if from *bōþō(n), but that change of the stem must be secondary and by analogy with something).

And yes, you have a point, they're not cognates in the strictest sense (as in "derived from the same form"); they only share their root.

銭 sen (obsolete unit of currency, equal to 1/100 of a yen)
cent (1/100 of a dollar)

Earth (and Erde) - أَرْض 'ard "earth"

I'm sure this one has been brought up many times before, but I just read it in a book about Arab history and that's just weird. I mean, how can they not be related? One has to wonder...