# Night - expansion, etymology, relationship with languages.



## 涼宮

Happy new year 

I couldn't find a thread about this.

I wonder what language ''triggered'' the expansion of the word ''night''. In many languages the word begins with n- and share common vowels like a/o/u. Was the word night related to something special like a  God or some deep meaning, or was it just related to describe the  darkness one sees in the sky? How did that word expand?

Examples:

Modern Greek: νύχτα (nýchta)
Ancient Greek: νύξ  (nuks)
Latin: nox
Polish: noc
Spanish: noche
Russian: ночь (noch')
German: Nacht
French: nuit
Norwegian: natt
Icelandic: nótt
Afrikaans: nag
Català: nit


 Some languages use connections with the g- like Armenian/Georgian/Basque, others like Japanese/Mandarin uses a y-. JP.= yoru. Ch.= yè and others focus on the R like Hind/Bengali/Gujarati/Kannada.


Thanks in advance!


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## berndf

The languages you cited are all IE language and they simply inherited the word from the same root: _*nokt-_ or possibly *_nokʷt-_.


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## LilianaB

It is naktis in Lithuanian.


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## swift

Hi. 


涼宮 said:


> I wonder what language ''triggered'' the expansion of the word ''night''.


PIE _*nok(w)t_?


> night
> 
> O.E. niht (W.Saxon neaht, Anglian næht, neht), the vowel indicating that the modern word derives from oblique cases (gen. nihte, dat. niht), from P.Gmc. *nakht- (cf. O.H.G. naht, O.Fris., Du., Ger. nacht, O.N. natt, Goth. nahts), from PIE *nok(w)t- (cf. Gk. nuks "a night," L. nox, O.Ir. nochd, Skt. naktam "at night," Lith. naktis "night," O.C.S. nosti, Rus. noch', Welsh henoid "tonight"). For spelling with -gh- see fight
> 
> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=night&searchmode=none


As a proper noun, Νύξ was indeed the goddess of Night. (Cf. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=nu/c&la=greek&can=nu/c0&prior=nox#lexicon)

Best,


swift


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## berndf

涼宮 said:


> In many languages the word begins with n- and share common vowels like a/o/u.


One more thing: The communality is the consonant pattern _n-kt-_:
Latin: _noct-,_
Ancient Greek: _νυκτ-_,
Proto-Germanic: _*naht-_ (/k/>/h/ is regular according to Grimm's law),
Proto-Slavic: _*noktь._


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## ireney

Secondary kind of note: The modern Greek derives directly from the ancient Greek (the change from kappa tau to chi tau is all too common) so it doesn't really count


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## terredepomme

We need a sticky about general facts on PIE and language families in general.


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## sotos

涼宮 said:


> Happy new year
> 
> Was the word night related to something special like a  God or some deep meaning, or was it just related to describe the  darkness one sees in the sky?



Both. In myths seems that Nyx is related to emptyness, vacuum, absence of matter. Hesiod says that she was the daughter of Chaos, this very Greek word (    ) meaning "a vast empty space". Nyx had at least two brothers  also related to "empty" entities, i.e. Erebos (darkness) and Aither (thin air of the high altitude, e.g. Iliad 2, 412 etc). 
Afther that I could  imagine (moderators permitting) that the origin of nyx is semantically related with the negation words starting with N  followed by few vowels. 

Happy New Year to you.


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## ahvalj

The vowels are so diverse across various IE languages most probably because there were two proto-forms: the regular *noqts (>nox, nahts, ночь, naktis, etc.) and a form with a reduced vowel *nьqts (>nyx etc.). The form *neqt- (with the original or again schwa-derived "e") exists in Hittite ("nekuts") and probably in Slavonic (netopirь "bat"). The same situation is observed with the vowel in the word "fire": ugnis, agnih, ognь, ignis etc., all from *ьgnis. The PIE was not an especially vowel-rich language at its latest stages...


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## ahvalj

By the way, Greek is notorious for putting uncommon vowels in a rather large number of words. For example, polis vs. the expected "palis" (IE *plHis), hippos vs. the regular "epos" (*eq(u)os), prothetic vowels (onoma, erythros), colored ǝ's (statos, thetos, dotos) etc.


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## ahvalj

A more general reply to many questions of this kind: usually, what looks mysterious and full of hidden sense, loses its charm when studied from the scientific (resp. etymological) viewpoint. I cannot think of any deeper symbolism in the IE languages than some more or less unexpected word derivations (like, say, in Latin many abstract words can be clearly traced to their material meanings during the rural life of earlier Latins). Linguistics, much like any other science, takes away this poetic flair very soon, but instead it provides some pleasure of other kind, you start to understand the relationships of things: the thunder is no more caused by a special god, and turns out to be a result of electrical processes in the air, boring, but then you realize that so many things around are connected with electricity, and this gives you more pleasure of understanding than your previous poetic expectations promised.


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## arsham

In Persian, which is an Indo-European language, the word for night is _shab_<Middle Persian _shab_<Old Persian _xshap-_. The same word for night with the same pronunciation as its Old Persian counterpart is attested in Avesta too.


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## Miguel Antonio

The ancient Egyptian goddess Nut could also fit into this thread, and I quote from the link: "She was originally the goddess of the nighttime sky".


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## arsham

Miguel Antonio said:


> The ancient Egyptian goddess Nut could also fit into this thread, and I quote from the link: "She was originally the goddess of the nighttime sky".


That is interesting but Ancient Egyptian is an Afro-asian language! Could it be a loanword from Ancient Egyptian to European languages?


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## Miguel Antonio

arsham said:


> That is interesting but Ancient Egyptian is an Afro-asian language! Could it be loanword from Ancient Egyptian to European languages?


Why not? Though I couldn't say. I may love EHL, but in the true English meaning of the french word _amateur. _


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## arsham

Miguel Antonio said:


> Why not? Though I couldn't say. I may love EHL, but in the true English meaning of the french word _amateur. _



Idem pour moi


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