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Word LoreOrigins of Words from the Threads of Inquiry |
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Word LoreOrigins of Words from the Threads of Inquiry |
What language are we speaking? It is English. Why is it called that? It is the language which is spoken by English people who live in England. Even though we are not English, our language is still called English because it is very similar to the language that English people speak in England.
In fact, American English is slightly different from British English. Hundreds of years ago, the first English speaking people came to America from England. Since that time, the English language has been spoken both in America and in England, but it has changed just a little bit--and in different ways--in both countries. Now there is enough of a difference between the languages spoken in America and England that sometimes people call the English spoken in American American English and the English spoken in England British English.
Over long periods of time, the language a people speaks changes very slowly. Usually, these changes take place so gradually that the people speaking the language probably won't notice the changes. But after hundreds of years, the changes become apparent--just has they have with British English and American English. Eventually a language can change so much that it can't really be called the same language anymore. Perhaps one day American English will be so different from British English that we won't call the language spoken in America "English" anymore.
Even before there was a special kind of English spoken in America, the English language in England had been slowly changing for a very long time indeed--over a thousand years! If we had a time machine that would allow us to meet and talk with people who lived in England six hundred (600) years ago, we might have a lot of trouble understanding them. Today we call their kind of English Middle English. If we used our time machine and went back to talk to people who spoke English one thousand (1000) years ago years ago, their English would be so much different from ours that we could hardly understand them at all. We call their kind of English Old English, and you can listen to what it might have sounded like here. Before that time, the language was so different that we don't even call it English.
Any language can change so much that it needs a new name. Sometimes a language will change differently in different places, and it will need two or more new names. It is possible to draw a picture like a family tree showing how languages change. This link shows a tree with the English language on it. This language family tree shows the Germanic languages. About two thousand (2000) years ago there was a language we call Germanic. It was spoken a little differently in different places, and slowly turned into a number of different languages, including English. Just as English is descended from Germanic, Germanic is descended from another language we call Indo-European. Indo-European was spoken perhaps six thousand (6000) years ago, and here is another language family tree showing it. Germanic and English are both shown on this family tree diagram.
We can learn many different things by looking at how a language changes. Below are a number of terms and vocabulary words taken from the Threads of Inquiry, each of which has a brief discussion about its history and the folklore associated with it. By introducing such concepts, we find that the subjects we investigate are all interconnected.
Unlike modern English, most languages (including Old and Middle English) have few or no "silent letters". Thus the Norwegian word time is not pronounced at all like the English word "time"--the Norwegian word is pronounced something like "TEE-meh".
The letter i is usually pronounced "ih", although in the North Germanic languages í and i are often pronounced "ee". In general, e is pronounced "eh" in most of the sample languages, and a is pronounced generally closer to as in English "father" while o is pronounced generally closer to as in English "box"--though "long o" (ó or ô) is pronounced as in English "note". On the other hand, "o umlaut" (ö) and "slashed o" (ø) are pronounced like the "ea" sound in English "earn". The letter y is often pronounced with one's mouth in position to say "oo" (as in "boot"), but then trying to make an "ee" sound without changing the position of one's lips (similar to German ü).
Some letters or letter combinations have special sounds. The ch sound as in Scottish "loch" or the name of the composer "Bach" is represented by the following letter combinations:
In Old English, sc was pronounced like modern English "sh"--Dutch and German sch are pronounced the same way. In every Germanic language except English, j is pronounced like the consonant "y" in "yellow" "(except in Dutch ij which sounds like "ee"). In High German, s is pronounced like English "z", and w like English "v", while High German ei sounds like the English word "eye". Italian ce and Spanish che sound something like "chay".
"Sun" is a very old word. This is because people have always needed a word to describe that big, fiery thing that appears to move across the sky.
People who spoke Indo-European six thousand (6000) years ago might have used a couple of different words for "Sun". Even then, language had changed enough in different places where Indo-European was spoken that we can't find just one word for "Sun"! Some people might have said something like "suen", while other people said something like "sáwel". Both these words start with similar sounds (su-/saw-), but have very different endings (-n or -l).
Both these words for sun were still used in Germanic, about two thousand years ago. People who spoke Germanic might have said something like "sunnón" or "suól". English (and other West Germanic languages) are descended from the language used by Germanic-speaking people who said "sunnón". One thousand (1000) years ago, the people who spoke Old English said "sunne". Other Germanic languages descended from those used by Germanic speakers who said "sunnón" (mostly West Germanic languages) have words for "Sun" which look a lot like the English word "Sun":
Languages descended from those used by Indo-European speakers who said "sáwel" (and from Germanic speakers who said "suól" (mostly North Germanic languages) have words for "Sun" which look like these:Today we usually think of the sun as an "it". Sometimes people might refer to the sun as if it were a person, and often they will speak of it as if it were male (as in, "The sun is shining, and his rays are very warm."). However, people thought of the Sun as "she" for a very long time--up until the 1500s, about five hundred years ago.
Look at the words "shade" and "shadow". What do you notice about them? One thing students might notice is that they start with the same letters: shad-. They might also notice they have similar meanings: casting a shadow makes shade. If they think these words are related, they are right!
A thousand (1000) years ago, people who spoke Old English said "sceadu". This word basically meant "shade". Six hundred (600) years ago the people who spoke Middle English used the word "schade" which eventually turned into our word "shade".
There were other forms of Old English "sceadu", though, including the oblique case form "sceadwe". 1 This eventually turned into our word "shadow". Since both "shade" and "shadow" come from one word (Old English "sceadu"), their meanings are very, very similar. In fact, you can try making sentences using only one of the words, and then try substituting in the other to see if the sentence still makes sense. Most of the time it will make sense, although it might sometimes sound a little funny. People tend to use "shade" and "shadow" slightly differently even though they mean almost the same thing. See if the students can figure out how they use both words.
About two thousand (2000) years ago, people who spoke Germanic might have said "skaðwoz" or "skadwaz" to mean "shade" (or "shadow"). 2 About six thousand (6000) years ago people who spoke Indo-European might have said "skotwós" or "skotos". This turned into words with related meanings in different later languages; the Greek word for "darkness" is very similar: "skotos". Here are words meaning "shade" or "shadow" in other Germanic languages--most only have one word for "shade" and "shadow":
What in the world does the word "world" mean? In these Threads we mostly use it to refer to the planet Earth, which we live on. But sometimes we can use the word world with slightly different meanings. We might use it to refer not only to the planet Earth, but to include the people who live on it, or the plants and animals who live on it, or even inanimate things like lakes, rivers, and oceans.
The word "world" exists only in the Germanic languages. The reason for this is that is actually the combination of two words. The first part of the word is "wer-", from Germanic "weraz" or "wiraz" which means "man"--this same element gives us the "were-" in "werewolf", which means "man-wolf". The second part of the word was from "alda", which means "old" or "age". So, when put together in Germanic, as it might have been used two thousand (2000) years ago, "werald" means "the age (or life) or man". Eventually the word came to mean "things that have to do with humanity" and the original meaning began to become less important. Later, it eventually came to refer to the planet Earth and everything in it.
People who spoke Old English one thousand (1000) years ago might have said "weorold" or "worold". Here is how the old Germanic word "werald" turned out in other Germanic languages:
Where on Earth does the word "earth" come from? "Earth" is another word which is found almost exclusively in the Germanic languages. Probably people speaking Germanic about two thousand (2000) years ago said something like "erþó" or "erþâ".
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This word already meant "earth" even then, and no one has any certain ideas what the word might have been like earlier or what it meant. About one thousand (1000) years ago people speaking Old English might have said "eorðe".
The word "earth" can be used to mean a number of different things. It can simply mean "dirt". This may have been one of the earliest meanings. What do we stand on? If you are inside you are probably standing on a floor, but if you are standing outside you are often standing on dirt. Perhaps, people came to think of the whole area they were standing on as "dirt" or "earth". By the time people were speaking Old English, about one thousand (1000) years ago, "earth" could already mean the world on which people live. It took longer for "earth" to come to mean "Planet Earth"--until around 1400 CE or so. Here is how the old Germanic word ""erþó"" turned out in other Germanic languages:
"Light" is another word common to all the Germanic languages. About six thousand years (6000) ago, people who spoke Indo-European all used words having to do with shining or being white-colored that began with the sound "leuk-", although in different areas they may have used different endings for the word--already at that time the word was changing! People speaking Germanic about two thousand (2000) years ago probably said something either like "leuktom" or "leuksa" which meant "light". People speaking West Germanic used "leuktom", and by about one thousand (1000) years ago, people speaking Old English had changed this word to "léoht". This word slowly changed to "leht", then "liht", and finally to Middle English "light", which was spelled the same way as our word "light". Here is how "leuktom" turned out in other West Germanic languages:
"Dark" is a strange and rare word for such a common concept. Everyone needs a word to describe the absence of light, but there are a number of different words in the Indo-European languages to describe this concept! Sometimes people make special words to describe concepts which are frightening or disturbing. Perhaps some students will admit to being afraid of the dark--such feelings may have been quite common long ago, before electric lighting allowed us to reduce the amount of dark so easily.
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In any case, about five hundred (500) years ago people who spoke Middle English said "derk", which was changed from the word "deorc" used by speakers of Old English about one thousand (1000) years ago.
No one knows exactly where the Old English word "deorc" came from. There is a similar word found only in Old High German (which was spoken in southern Germany about one thousand years ago) "tarchanjan", meaning "to hide" or "to conceal". You can see how the start of this word, tarch-, is similar to "dark". Perhaps speakers of Old English described the absence of light as that which hid things or concealed them. It is possible that both "tarchanjan" and our word "dark" come from a West Germanic word like "darknjan" which was used two thousand (2000) years ago.
How do we know when it is day? When the Sun is visible in the sky. This explains the origin of our word day, which seems to have come from an Indo-European form "dhegh-" or "dhegwh" which had to do with heat, burning, and times when it was warm. For example, the Sanskrit word "dah" means "to burn" and Albanian "djek" means "burnt, while Lithuanian "dagas" means "hot season".
About two thousand years (2000) ago, people speaking Germanic said "dagoz", meaning "day". People speaking Old English about one thousand (1000) years ago said "dæg". There were many different forms of this word used by speakers of Middle English about six hundred (600) years ago, including "dag", "daw" "daig", and "dai". Eventually these were simplified into our word "day". Here is how the Germanic word "dagoz" turned out in other Germanic languages:
Compared with the word "dark", the word "night" is a surprisingly common one. Words very much like "night" appear in many Indo-European languages. Six thousand years ago, people who spoke Indo-European may have used a word like "nokt". By the time people were speaking Old English one thousand years ago, this word had only changed a little, to "neaht" or "niht". People speaking Middle English (about six hundred (600) years ago had changed the word to "nyght", which is very similar to our word "night". Here is how the Indo-European "nokt" turned out in various Germanic and non-Germanic Indo-European languages:
What is time? It's a thing which is so basic to our existence, that it is very hard to describe well! We all know time as the thing which a clock measures the passing of, but what it is, really? Perhaps the simplest way of describing time is to call it the system of sequential relations between events. We might also call time a period of continued existence.
Meanings like these have to do with dividing up a sequence of events into sections. Not surprisingly our word for "time" goes back to an ancient Indo-European form used about six thousand (6000) years ago: "dai-". By the time people were speaking Germanic, about two thousand years ago, "dai-" was being used in two Germanic words: "tídiz" (meaning "a division of time", and "tímon" (meaning something like "an appropriate time [at which to do something]").
The "tídiz" word became Old English "tíd" and our word "tide". In our modern English we usually use "tide" to mean the way the ocean rises and falls over periods of time (as in "high tide" and "low tide"). See how this meaning is linked to the concept of time? One thousand (1000) years ago, Old English had no one word for the ocean's tide--instead people referred to "flód" (flood or high tide) and "ebba" (ebb or low tide). A few centuries later, during the time people in England were speaking Middle English, northern Germany (where people then spoke Middle Low German) was an important center for sailors, shipping, and nautical technology. There was a Middle Low German word "getîde" which had acquired meanings which originally belonged to the ancient Germanic word "tímon" : "fixed time, proper time, opportunity". Middle Low German "getîde" also came to refer to times of the ocean's tides (which happened at fixed times, and were opportunities to use their power to help move a ship). This new meaning was borrowed for the regular Middle English word "tide" (meaning "time") in the early 1300s, when "tide" in English could refer to the time at which the ocean's tides took place. Within the next hundred years, by the 1430s, the English word "tide" had c