# Loans for basic concepts?



## ThomasK

Maybe this is too broad a question, but I'd be interested to hear about basic concepts that are named using words that are loans from other languages because I find it surprising. I did find some interesting considerations about that at a 'baby' thread, but now I'd prefer to focus on very concrete examples; the background does not matter that much, but any comment is welcome. This question was triggered by learning that the Finnish words for 'table' and 'chair' are based on Swedish loans. 

If teh root of a word is Latin, it is not really a loan, I suppose, and that makes me wonder whether I am asking the right question --- again ;-(. [_The moderator is allowed to move the thread to the Café if such is deemed necessary...]
_
As for me I'd be interested in collecting a list of such basic concepts/ words based on loans (even Latin).

*Table*/ is not German by origin, but Latin (_tabula_), 
*Tisch *(German)/ *dis *(Dutch) refer to Latin _disc_. 
*Cheese/* _kaas _in Dutch: formerly more like _Quark_, curds, I believe, but a change was induced because the Latin/.... caseus type cheese replaced a former method leading to Quark, curds, so I believe.


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## ThomasK

Gavril pointed out some (of the numerous other) links with Latin and I suppose he is right. 

I had been thinking about this Latin or Greek background, but then thought that is *evolution, not loan*. But I suppose that distinction will be hard to hold... As for 'cheese' for example I understood that the old word was supplanted by a new one as that new _caseus _technique became more popular than the old cheese-making. In that case I'd consider it a loan.


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## Stoggler

I always thought it was odd that the Welsh word for window, ffenestr, is a loan from Latin.  Surely the abodes of the Ancient Britons had some sort of openings other than doorways?

Perhaps more strange is that the Welsh word for fish, pysgod, is also a Latin loan (the original Brittonic word for fish was *_ēskos_).  It's not as though fish was an alien concept to them (the original Brittonic word lives on in place names).  Equally, the word for milk (llaeth) is also a Latin loan.


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## Hulalessar

The question has also puzzled me. If something new is introduced one can understand the word for it being the word used by the people who introduced it. But what made the English adopt words like _table _and _chair _when they had adequate words for both?


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## Gavril

ThomasK said:


> I had been thinking about this Latin or Greek background, but then thought that is *evolution, not loan*. .



I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean that (e.g.) the words meaning "table" or  "chair" did not have these meanings when they were taken into English, but developed them later?

As far as I know, _chaise_ did mean "chair" in French when this word was transferred into English_. table_ apparently meant "board" when it first entered English,  so you may have a point there, although I am not sure exactly what  Finnish_ pöytä_ (or rather, the ancestor thereof) meant when it was first acquired from Germanic.

(NB -- I originally posted this on a different thread, where it seemed that ThomasK was contrasting the example of Finnish _tuoli_ "chair" and _pöytä_ "table" (both of which come from Germanic) with the example of English _chair _and _table _(both from French).)


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## ahvalj

I don't think any generalizations are possible in this matter. The entire picture is composed of millions of particular cases. In your examples with furniture, the borrowing may be explained by the introduction of a new kind of objects, or by the fact that a certain borrowed word originally meant a special kind of this particular furniture and was then generalized; sometimes a poetic synonym replaces the original word (_window_<_vindauga_<"wind eye"). There are even cases when a related word in one language influences the inherited word in another one, e. g. the Slavic word for "milk", *_melka_ (modern _moloko, mleko _etc.) shows the Germanic _k_ and non-acute _e _instead of the expected Slavic _z_ and acute _ē_ (preserved in the verb *_mēlztēı̯_ "to milk" and in several derived words).


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## ThomasK

Thanks very much for these contributions. I am mainly interested in these different evolutions, indeed. The technical question (evolution vs. loan) is strictly speaking of minor importance. I am mainly wondering about (and searching for) this kind of stories about 'basic' things, like the ones mentioned before, especially maybe regarding sudden switches, name changes... 

As for what Gavril asked (and I apologize for not referring to the source) I did think that some words were the 'original' words and then developed further, phonetically and maybe semantically. But then some new words appear to have supplanted the old ones, like _cheese_, or _window _vs. _fenêtre/ venster, _or door/ window openings...


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## DrWatson

Interestingly enough, Finnish has also borrowed some basic kinship terminology denoting females:

_äiti _'mother' < Gothic _aiþei _(> Estonian _eit _'old woman'). Original word for mother, _emä _now means 'animal mother'
_morsian _'bride' < Baltic, cf. Lith _marti _'daughter-in-law', Latv _mārša _'sister-in-law'
_sisar _'sister'< earlier Baltic *_sesor_, cf. Lith _sesuo _'sister'

Then again, _anoppi _'mother-in-law', _miniä _'daughter-in-law' and _käly _'sister-in-law' appear to be of Uralic origin.


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## ahvalj

DrWatson said:


> Interestingly enough, Finnish has also borrowed some basic kinship terminology denoting females:
> 
> _äiti _'mother' < Gothic _aiþei _(> Estonian _eit _'old woman'). Original word for mother, _emä _now means 'animal mother'
> _morsian _'bride' < Baltic, cf. Lith _marti _'daughter-in-law', Latv _mārša _'sister-in-law'
> _sisar _'sister'< earlier Baltic *_sesor_, cf. Lith _sesuo _'sister'
> 
> Then again, _anoppi _'mother-in-law', _miniä _'daughter-in-law' and _käly _'sister-in-law' appear to be of Uralic origin.


Also _tytär_ "daughter". I don't think, however, that the origin of _äiti/aiþei _is clear: it has no etymology within Gothic and may be in its turn a borrowing from the speech of e. g. pre-Germanic inhabitants of southern Scandinavia (and hence Finnish may have borrowed this word from the same source independently).


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## ahvalj

By the way, this is of course pure speculation, but there is an opinion that the IE Baltic speech in what is now Latvia, Estonia and south-western Finland may have actually preceded the Baltic-Finnic one, which would explain the borrowing of words for female relatives (among dozens or hundreds of others) from the Baltic women who were left alive by the newcomers and became mothers for the new generations of Baltic-Finnic speakers. Again, pure speculation, but with some archeological (Corded Ware findings in Estonia) and anthropological background (high R1a percentage among Estonians — though this obviously implies IE male heritage).


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## berndf

Stoggler said:


> I always thought it was odd that the Welsh word for window, ffenestr, is a loan from Latin.  Surely the abodes of the Ancient Britons had some sort of openings other than doorways?


I am not to sure about Brittonic houses but Germanic houses didn't have anything close to a window. English took the word _window _from from a ventilation hole under the roof, the _wind-eye_. German took its word for window from Latin (_Fenster_).


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## Ben Jamin

ThomasK said:


> Gavril pointed out some (of the numerous other) links with Latin and I suppose he is right.
> 
> I had been thinking about this Latin or Greek background, but then thought that is *evolution, not loan*. But I suppose that distinction will be hard to hold... As for 'cheese' for example I understood that the old word was supplanted by a new one as that new _caseus _technique became more popular than the old cheese-making. In that case I'd consider it a loan.



Any word that has been imported from another language, and not "homemade" of existing elements in the language is a loan, even if it has changed the meaning later.

Also, most languages are full of "basic" words that are loans from other languages. Finnish is specially abundant in such loanwords, but their background is obscured because they were imported such a long time ago that they sound completely different now.


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## Stoggler

berndf said:


> I am not to sure about Brittonic houses but Germanic houses didn't have anything close to a window. English took the word _window _from from a ventilation hole under the roof, the _wind-eye_. German took its word for window from Latin (_Fenster_).



You're right - the Ancient Britons lived in round houses where the only openings were a doorway, so the idea of having an opening elsewhere would have been a new concept.


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## fdb

Hulalessar said:


> The question has also puzzled me. If something new is introduced one can understand the word for it being the word used by the people who introduced it. But what made the English adopt words like _table _and _chair _when they had adequate words for both?



It is delusion to think that languages only borrow words for which they have no “adequate” equivalent. The Romans knew all about war, and had a perfectly adequate word for it; nonetheless, the Romance languages have dropped “bellum” and replaced it by the Germanic loan word “guerre, guerra” etc. The Japanese have even adopted the Chinese names for the cardinal numbers, although they have “adequate” names for them in Japanese.


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## Gavril

One possible mechanism whereby basic (and non-basic) vocabulary can be loaned is ”expressiveness”: a word is adopted as an exotic (and therefore more colorful or emphatic) alternative to existing words, even when it is otherwise synonymous with them, and eventually edges them out.

 I suspect that this is part of the reason why English adopted words such as *just* and *very *from French. (I mean _just_ in the sense of ”only”, ”exactly”, etc., not in the sense of ”righteous” or ”fair”.) Many other non-Romance languages have adopted the word _just_ with this meaning: e.g., colloquial Finnish_ o__len __*just*__ syönyt_ ”I've just eaten”.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> I am not to sure about Brittonic houses but Germanic houses didn't have anything close to a window. English took the word _window _from from a ventilation hole under the roof, the _wind-eye_. German took its word for window from Latin (_Fenster_).


In Norwegian dialects and Nynorsk the form is *vindauga*, which shows very well the origin. Possibly the English word originates from the Norse.


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## Ben Jamin

Gavril said:


> One possible mechanism whereby basic (and non-basic) vocabulary can be loaned is ”expressiveness”: a word is adopted as an exotic (and therefore more colorful or emphatic) alternative to existing words, even when it is otherwise synonymous with them, and eventually edges them out.
> 
> I suspect that this is part of the reason why English adopted words such as *just* and *very *from French. (I mean _just_ in the sense of ”only”, ”exactly”, etc., not in the sense of ”righteous” or ”fair”.) Many other non-Romance languages have adopted the word _just_ with this meaning: e.g., colloquial Finnish_ o__len __*just*__ syönyt_ ”I've just eaten”.


*Just *came to Finnish through Swedish *just *(second hand loan). Swedish has also the word *sjyst*.


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## Ben Jamin

Gavril said:


> One possible mechanism whereby basic (and non-basic) vocabulary can be loaned is ”expressiveness”: a word is adopted as an exotic (and therefore more colorful or emphatic) alternative to existing words, even when it is otherwise synonymous with them, and eventually edges them out.
> 
> I suspect that this is part of the reason why English adopted words such as *just* and *very *from French. (I mean _just_ in the sense of ”only”, ”exactly”, etc., not in the sense of ”righteous” or ”fair”.) Many other non-Romance languages have adopted the word _just_ with this meaning: e.g., colloquial Finnish_ o__len __*just*__ syönyt_ ”I've just eaten”.


A very striking example is the dominance of the French word *trist *in Norwegian, which has almost completely replaced the native adjectives in everyday speech.


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## ThomasK

Can you give me older Swedish words for *just *(we in Dutch still have net (like the word for 'neat')) and for _*trist *_in Norwegian?


Ben Jamin said:


> Any word that has been imported from another language, and not "homemade" of existing elements in the language is a loan, even if it has changed the meaning later.


 Does everyone agree with this statement? I am quite willing to, but then I'd still be inclined to distinguish loans and later loans? 

Just BTW: what could be 'authentic' Germanic words? I think most of them somehow refer back to Indo-European, and thus are linked with Latin, without really being borrowed, or am I wrong in this?


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## Ben Jamin

ThomasK said:


> Can you give me older Swedish words for *just *(we in Dutch still have net (like the word for 'neat')) and for _*trist *_in Norwegian?
> Does everyone agree with this statement? I am quite willing to, but then I'd still be inclined to distinguish loans and later loans?
> 
> Just BTW: what could be 'authentic' Germanic words? I think most of them somehow refer back to Indo-European, and thus are linked with Latin, without really being borrowed, or am I wrong in this?


I must admit that I don't know Swedish well enough to find such a word. All synonyms I know are loans like *precis*, *exakt.
*The older, Germanic, words for *trist *in Norwegian are: *vemodig*, *bedrøvelig*.
You can of course distinguish between older and newer loans, but they are not inherited words or made up from inherited elements. I can't give you any sources, but all the way I studied etymological dictionaries the distinction was clear.
Words can be cognates, that is descendants of the same word in a common ancestor language, and there are many of them in all related langauges like in the Indo-European family, and these are not loans.


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## ThomasK

I recognize _wemodig _(weemoedig, pain-mooded) and _bedr/velig _(droevig, sad, linked with troubled, I believe). 

The question for me is about 'inherited elements'. Those must then very idiomatic, language-specific things, I guess. But in the end too many things can be traced back to an older source, I suppose, to call them 'inherited'...


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## ThomasK

Could you give examples of inherited Germanic words? Can cognates always be clearly distinguished from loans?


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## ahvalj

My personal experience with this topic is the English word _relevant_, which is absent in any other language I am familiar with (its present-day meaning has developed within English) and which expresses a very useful concept. On the other hand, I must confess, while I know the words _explicit_ and _implicit_ since 1990 (I even remember the book where I met them for the first time), I have learnt (as I think) the meaning of the former only a couple of years ago and still have no idea what the latter means.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> My personal experience with this topic is the English word _relevant_, which is absent in any other language I am familiar with (its present-day meaning has developed within English) and which expresses a very useful concept.


I don't understand your point. How do you see English _relevant _to be different in meaning form the same word in French, Italian, German, ....


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## ThomasK

The other question I'd ask is whether it is that vital. We have one word in Dutch, 'terzake', [belonging/referring]to the issue, meaning about the same, I'd say...


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> I don't understand your point. How do you see English _relevant _to be different in meaning form the same word in French, Italian, German, ....


Dictionaries say that this meaning has developed within English and is very late (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=relevant), so this is not one of the countless international words that originated in an unspecified language (medieval Latin or French by default) centuries ago to spread then across other languages in this cultural areal. As far as I understand, before French, Italian, German ... borrowed it from English in the last couple of centuries (or in the last century), they had no words for this kind of meaning.


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## ahvalj

ThomasK said:


> The other question I'd ask is whether it is that vital. We have one word in Dutch, 'terzake', [belonging/referring]to the issue, meaning about the same, I'd say...


So, Dutch fortunately has it. I didn't know. I like the concept of relevance alot. Russian, for example, has no word for it.


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## fdb

"Pertinent" has this meaning in English and French.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> "Pertinent" has this meaning in English and French.


I may be wrong, but I think that _relevant_ has a special meaning not covered by _approprié, adéquat_ and _judicieux_ indicated as synonyms of _pertinent_ here: http://www.cnrtl.fr/lexicographie/pertinent Is it indeed 100% equivalent of the English word?


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## ThomasK

you may have a point there: "terzake" means to the point, and "relevant" is 'important with respect to this point'. However, I'd never put it in a list of 'basic oords'...


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## Hulalessar

fdb said:


> It is delusion to think that languages only borrow words for which they have no “adequate” equivalent. The Romans knew all about war, and had a perfectly adequate word for it; nonetheless, the Romance languages have dropped “bellum” and replaced it by the Germanic loan word “guerre, guerra” etc. The Japanese have even adopted the Chinese names for the cardinal numbers, although they have “adequate” names for them in Japanese.



I do not doubt that languages borrow words "they do not need" - it would fly in the face of overwhelming evidence to deny it. What interests me is why they do it.


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## francisgranada

Hulalessar said:


> I do not doubt that languages borrow words "they do not need" - it would fly in the face of overwhelming evidence to deny it. What interests me is why they do it.


Not languages do it but people. For example in some Eastern Slovakian dialects _father _is "apa" (from Hungarian _apa_)  instead of the Slavic _otec/ocec_. I do not know how and why this borrowing happend, but I can imagine that "at the beginnig" there was only one concrete person in that region who used to call his father _apa _(for whatever reason, e.g. he was of Hungarian origin).His children called him automatically _apa _as well, and later on other children learned from them to call their fathers the same way and so this word has gradually spread to all the region ... 

The idea is that borrowings can happen also casually, without any "deeper" reason.


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## ThomasK

I guess these notes from a thread on _manger/ mangiare _have to do with the topic as well : 


> There is also
> - _*volere*/vouloir_ (instead of *querer*),
> - _*tavolo*/table_, from _tabula_ (instead of _mesa_ from *mensa*, which there is also in Italian, _mensa_, but with another meaning) or
> - _*parlare*/parler_, from _parabolare_ instead of *falar/hablar*, from _fabulare_.


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## vince

People already mentioned "just" and "very".

There's also the word "because".

I'm curious to know what the native Tai-Kadai numbers are, since they seem to use a dual set of Sinitic and Indo-European numbers.


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## Gavril

The numerals listed on this page may be the native Thai numerals, although the word for "zero" looks a lot like the Indic term (cf. Hindi _s'uunya_ "zero").

_because_ is formed from an English preposition ("by") and a French noun ("cause"), so maybe it is an example of how an originally foreign word can be popularized through its use in a phrase. Or perhaps "cause" was already an entrenched word in English when the phrase "by cause" was first formed.



vince said:


> People already mentioned "just" and "very".
> 
> There's also the word "because".
> 
> I'm curious to know what the native Tai-Kadai numbers are, since they seem to use a dual set of Sinitic and Indo-European numbers.


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## fdb

Gavril said:


> The numerals listed on this page may be the native Thai numerals, although the word for "zero" looks a lot like the Indic term (cf. Hindi _s'uunya_ "zero").



śūnya is indeed Sanskrit. The other numbers in the list are all borrowings from an early stage of Chinese.


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## Wolverine9

fdb said:


> śūnya is indeed Sanskrit. The other numbers in the list are all borrowings from an early stage of Chinese.



Is it unusual for a language to borrow the simple numbers one through ten as Thai did from Chinese?


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## fdb

Japanese and Korean did the same.


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## vince

Yes but the difference is that, in addition to Sinitic numerals, both Japanese and Korean have a native number system. I can't seem to find what the native Tai-Kadai number system is.


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## vince

Oh, and back to the OP, for English, the word "second", as in after "first" and before "third".

German has zweite and Dutch as tweede. But English doesn't use "twoth".


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## Gavril

vince said:


> Oh, and back to the OP, for English, the word "second", as in after "first" and before "third".
> 
> German has zweite and Dutch as tweede. But English doesn't use "twoth".



A possible reason why _second_ was adopted from French is that Old English used the same word for "second" and "other" (Icelandic _annar_ still has both these meanings). A familiar foreign word (French _seconde_) could have been an attractive option for disambiguating these meanings from each other.


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## ThomasK

Gavril said:


> _Because_ is formed from an English preposition ("by") and a French noun ("cause"), so maybe it is an example of how an originally foreign word can be popularized through its use in a phrase. Or perhaps "cause" was already an entrenched word in English when the phrase "by cause" was first formed.


Does anyone know what the 'predecessor' of _because _was? (We use _omdat _in Dutch: _om _[around] + that)


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## N'importe-qui

ThomasK said:


> Does anyone know what the 'predecessor' of _because _was? (We use _omdat _in Dutch: _om _[around] + that)


Equivalent expressions of "for that" were used. In OE, it was "for þon þe", "for þæm þe" or even "for þy þe". The "þe" was not obligatory and simply meant "that". So the whole expression meant something like "for the [reason] that". There were also variations using "hwy" instead of "þy" and "hwon" instead of "þon", basically substituting "why" for "that". This is like in Spanish and French, with "porque" and "pourqoui", respectively. This continued into Middle English as "forthy", "forthan" or "forwhy", but they disappeared in favor of "because", "since" and "for".


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## ThomasK

Thanks.  

I just remembered *swear words*. They must be very basic too. They have hardly changed in Dutch the past 50 years, or not that much, but now lots of younger people around here use English four-letter words. They are imitating the English 'culture', I'd say; that seemed to be more 'fashionable', or more modern...


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## N'importe-qui

vince said:


> Oh, and back to the OP, for English, the word "second", as in after "first" and before "third".
> 
> German has zweite and Dutch as tweede. But English doesn't use "twoth".


Or "other", for that matter, which is the original form in the old Germanic languages. Both the German and the Dutch forms are innovations as well, albeit from elements within each respective language, rather than via borrowings.


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## ahvalj

By the way, in both French (_second_) and Spanish (_segundo_), this word is borrowed from / influenced by Latin as well. Naturally developed, they should have sounded **_sound_ and **_segondo_.


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## ahvalj

A correction to my French "reconstruction": the expected form is probably **_sond_ (_sēcūrus_>_sûr_ + _unda_>_onde) —_ it appears that _o_ didn't change to _ou_ when nasalized).


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## Evgeniy

Let us take an analogy of a chemical reaction: for some time, a compound molecule made with the source molecules exists, which quickly disintegrates into the product molecules of the reaction. Suppose in a language there is some basic word, and for some reason the speakers of this language have to refer to _the way how the speakers of the other language refer to this concept_, so they use a different word for that: because that foreign word participates in knowledge which became important for the speakers of the source language. For example, it might participate in definition: of civil regulations, of state regulations, of trade mechanisms, of building or manufacturing conventions, of philosophic systems, even of ways of joking.* At some time, both words are present in the language; however, this situation may turn to represent an unstable compound. Two words may appear for the speakers too similar to be used both in the same language, but since there is always some difference between the words, one of them wins the hearts of people for being more like what they have the mind to say. It may be either word. I must confess, I have no idea how this mechanism might work in the case of cardinal numbers (see fdb's intervention here).

* there are legends, whether true or not I don't know, about words imported via people using them for a joke; according to a legend I heard, the Russian word for an eye has this origin, it stems from the German "Glas" which means the same thing as in English.


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## Evgeniy

Gavril said:


> A possible reason why _second_ was adopted from French is that Old English used the same word for "second" and "other" (Icelandic _annar_ still has both these meanings). A familiar foreign word (French _seconde_) could have been an attractive option for disambiguating these meanings from each other.


People do not need to disambiguate terms so badly as to borrow words, disambiguation is seldom needed in practice. I would search for a reason somewhere else. People by default do not plan how they use a language, so most of such choices must be irrational and follow the rules of the nature, not the rules of reason. Perhaps, the word for 'other' was not perceived to be 'in the row' of other numerals, while the habit of abstract thinking, even where such thinking was not necessary, grew with the advent of civilisation.


			
				ahvalj said:
			
		

> 14716964]On the other hand, I must confess, while I know the words _explicit_ and _implicit_  since 1990 (I even remember the book where I met them for the first  time), I have learnt (as I think) the meaning of the former only a  couple of years ago and still have no idea what the latter means.


When you say _explicitly_ that John went fishing, then you imply _implicitly_ that John went to a river, lake, pond — anything that in Russian is called "водоём"; saying something implicitly means that the listener should follow a mental operation to recover the implied meaning, and that this operation proceeds with necessity. This must be inheritance of the Ancient Greek (Aristotelian?) tradition of discussing such mental operations that happen with necessity. Russian has very exact translations for these terms, "сказать что-то явно" and "сказать что-то неявно", though these terms lack the vivid character of the original Latin terms, as they play the role of such terms being somewhat "не в своей тарелке", as we say: i.e. feeling no ease because of being in a non-natural situation (no idea how to translate it idiomatically). I am sure you already encountered such explanation (here, for example), so is there anything non-fit with those terms? You must be joking, I believe, I only don't see what this joke might be, I am sorry.


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## Ben Jamin

Evgeniy said:


> * there are legends, whether true or not I don't know, about words imported via people using them for a joke; according to a legend I heard, the Russian word for an eye has this origin, it stems from the German "Glas" which means the same thing as in English.



There *are *words that originated as a joke! The Italian word *testa *and French *tête *come from a Latin word meaning *cooking pot*.


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## ahvalj

As I had written in the beginning of this thread, this question consists of a myriad of particular cases. We can discuss them as long as this forum exists. Well, to add my share to the entropy:

French _jambe_ "leg" comes from Latin _gamba_ "hoof".

Common Slavic *_nagā_ (modern _noga/noha_) "foot, leg" is related to Lithuanian _naga_ "hoof" and both are related to _nagas_ (Lithiuanian) / *_naguts_ (Common Slavic, modern _nogot'/nehet/paznokieć/nokat_ etc.) "nail".

Balto-Slavic *_galwā_ (Lithuanian and Latvian _galva_, Slavic _golova/głowa/glava/hlava_) "head" is related to Common Slavic *_galas_ (modern _gol/goły/holý_) "naked" and originally meant something naked, probably "baldness" or "scull".

Balto-Slavic *_rankā_ (Lithuanian _ranka_, Latvian _roka_, Slavic _ruka/roka/ręka_) "hand, arm" is related to the Lithuanian _rinkti_ "to collect" and originally was most probably an ironic epithet (Russian «грабли, руки загребущие»).


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## francisgranada

Evgeniy said:


> ... I must confess, I have no idea how this mechanism might work in the case of cardinal numbers ...


An example from a Romani (Gipsy) dialect spoken in Eastern Slovakia. 

The numbers above seven usualy have two forms: one "original" and one borrowed from Slovak dialects. The Slovak numbers are (or better _were_) used in combination with loanwords of Slovak origin, otherwise the original terms were used.  For example _eňa _óri, but _dzevec _hodzin - both mean "nine hours", where _eňa _is the original word and _dzevec _the Slovak dialectal one for "nine"; _óri _(from  Hung.) and _hodzin _(from Slovak, genitive pl.) mean "hours". 

So it seems, that "at the beginning" not the separate numbers were adopted from Slovak, rather whole expressions containing numbers (that's why "hodzin" in my example maintains the Slovak genitive case, while  "óri" is in nominative plural). According to what I've read, nowadays the people tend to prefer the Slovak numbers in general and many original numbers (esp. above 10) are no more used at all, so there's a clear tendency to get rid of the duplicity.

P.S. Interestingly, this process of number borrowing is evidently not the first one in the history of the Romani, it already happened earlier in the past as some "original" (not Slovak) cardinal numbers are of Greek origin (_efta - 7, ochto - 8, eňa - 9, tranda -30, saranda - 40_, ...) instead of Indo-Iranian.


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## Ben Jamin

francisgranada said:


> An example from a Romani (Gipsy) dialect spoken in Eastern Slovakia.
> 
> The numbers above seven usualy have two forms: one "original" and one borrowed from Slovak dialects. The Slovak numbers are (or better _were_) used in combination with loanwords of Slovak origin, otherwise the original terms were used.  For example _eňa _óri, but _dzevec _hodzin - both mean "nine hours", where _eňa _is the original word and _dzevec _the Slovak dialectal one for "nine"; _óri _(from  Hung.) and _hodzin _(from Slovak, genitive pl.) mean "hours".
> 
> So it seems, that "at the beginning" not the separate numbers were adopted from Slovak, rather whole expressions containing numbers (that's why "hodzin" in my example maintains the Slovak genitive case, while  "óri" is in nominative plural). According to what I've read, nowadays the people tend to prefer the Slovak numbers in general and many original numbers (esp. above 10) are no more used at all, so there's a clear tendency to get rid of the duplicity.


But the "original" Gypsy numerals for 7, 8 and 9 are actually borrowed from Greek.


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## francisgranada

Ben Jamin said:


> But the "original" Gypsy numerals for 7, 8 and 9 are actually borrowed from Greek.


Yes, but they are earlier borrowings (see P.S. in my previous post). However it is interesting that for the cardinal numbers 1-6 there are no Slovak borrowings, while for the numbers of Greek origin there are (_śidzem, ośem, dzevec, tricec,_ ...).


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## sound shift

"And" is a pretty basic concept. Arabic has "wa" for "and"; Turkish has "ve", and the pronunciation is more similar than the spelling suggests. Just coincidence, or a loan from one to the other?


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## ahvalj

sound shift said:


> "And" is a pretty basic concept. Arabic has "wa" for "and"; Turkish has "ve", and the pronunciation is more similar than the spelling suggests. Just coincidence, or a loan from one to the other?


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ve#Etymology_4


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## sound shift

Ah, thanks. That's interesting. I find it surprising that Turkish should need to borrow a word for a concept as basic as "and".


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## ahvalj

sound shift said:


> Ah, thanks. That's interesting. I find it surprising that Turkish should need to borrow a word for a concept as basic as "and".


Latvian has borrowed its _un_ from the German _und_.


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## Evgeniy

sound shift said:


> … should need to borrow a word for a concept as basic as "and" …


For the same reason again, I believe. Words are all different, so at some point two similar, yet distinct words may come to be used to signify a similar concept at the same time in a language. Then, with time one similar word wins the place of the other similar word; which word is the winner, nobody knows beforehand. By the way, like most (all?) concepts, _and_ cannot be called 'basic', in the sense 'simple': notions can be juxtaposed ('anded') in plenty of ways. First, the two connected words may be implied to be unequal in some way, like the first word may imply or explain, or expand, or necessitate, or include, or whatever the meaning of the second word. Second, such juxtaposition may be apt for different kinds of context: terms in a clause may engage in the same relationships with the rest of terms in the sense of their practical value, of their philosophical virtue, and so on.


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## francisgranada

Evgeniy said:


> For the same reason again, I believe....


There is a plenty of possible reasons, one of them may be also what you have written. In case of "ve" I can also imagine, for example, that this word entered in Turkish as part of Arabic religious expressions and as it was used very frequently in prayers etc., later it became part of the common language as well, regardless of the existence/absence/meaning of a similar word of Turkish origin.


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## Ben Jamin

francisgranada said:


> Yes, but they are earlier borrowings (see P.S. in my previous post). However it is interesting that for the cardinal numbers 1-6 there are no Slovak borrowings, while for the numbers of Greek origin there are (_śidzem, ośem, dzevec, tricec,_ ...).


I forgot to list the number 30, which also is from Greek.
The explanation can be "easy come, easy go", that is numbers not deeply rooted in the langauge (still perceived as borrowings) can be more easily replaced.
It can also be so that the original langauge simply did not have any numbers higher that 6.


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## francisgranada

Ben Jamin said:


> ... It can also be so that the original langauge simply did not have any numbers higher that 6.


I don't think so as there is _deš _(10) and _biš _(20), for example (_das _and _bis _in Hindi).


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## Gavril

Evgeniy said:


> People do not need to disambiguate terms so badly as to borrow words, disambiguation is seldom needed in practice.



For what it's worth, there are at least a few other cases where the meanings "second" and "other" seem to have been disambiguated:

- Welsh _ail_ (< *_aljos_ "other") means "second", whereas _arall_ (from reduplicated *_alal-no_-) means "other"

- standard Finnish _toinen_ means both "(an)other" and "second", whereas in the spoken language, _toinen_ means "other" and _toka_ means "second"

- if "second = other" was the prevailing pattern in early Germanic (and maybe more widely in IE), then all Germanic/IE languages that have innovated a word for "second" based on the stem of the word for "two" (or another stem) have split these meanings off into different words


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## Gavril

sound shift said:


> Ah, thanks. That's interesting. I find it surprising that Turkish should need to borrow a word for a concept as basic as "and".



The problem (or a problem) is that what we English speakers may view as "one concept" is often divided up into several different concepts in other languages, each with a different corresponding lexeme.

For example, in Finnish, there is a different word for "and" depending on whether you are making a single list of things (_ja_), combining two or more lists (_sekä_), adding numbers together (_ynnä_), and so on.

Similarly, Latin had the isolated word _et_ and the enclitic -_que_, and Greek had both _kai_ and enclitic _te_. In the case of Latin at least, only one of these options survived into later times.

If language X has a more "catch-all" term for something that language Y expresses using several different terms, and the speakers of X have some degree of influence over those of Y, then the speakers of Y may start using X's term at the expense of their own terms. 

If the influence is stronger in the other direction (Y over X), then speakers of X may begin to "diversify" their terminology (through loaning, calquing, etc.) for things that language Y expresses with several different terms. However, maybe the opposite process (simplification) is more likely regardless of the social situation, or maybe it depends on the specific lexical meanings involved.

EDIT: In post #59, Evgeniy may have made essentially the same point as the one above. Sorry for any repetition.


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## ThomasK

Evgeniy said:


> For the same reason again, I believe. Words are all different, so at some point two similar, yet distinct words may come to be used to signify a similar concept at the same time in a language. Then, with time one similar word wins the place of the other similar word; which word is the winner, nobody knows beforehand. By the way, like most (all?) concepts, _and_ cannot be called 'basic', in the sense 'simple': notions can be juxtaposed ('anded') in plenty of ways. First, the two connected words may be implied to be unequal in some way, like the first word may imply or explain, or expand, or necessitate, or include, or whatever the meaning of the second word. Second, such juxtaposition may be apt for different kinds of context: terms in a clause may engage in the same relationships with the rest of terms in the sense of their practical value, of their philosophical virtue, and so on.


I remember you referring to the non-existence of 'basic' concepts. I do not know whether I see those terms as simple, I'd rather call them 'fundamental',or 'elementary'. But maybe I am missing your point, as I do not really see the importance of juxtaposition in this context (I am sorry; it might well have to do with me...). Just by the way, Wierbicka's 'semantic primitives' seem widely accepted, don't they? And that those 'concepts' are somehow vague, I can to some extent agree with.


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## Ben Jamin

ThomasK said:


> I remember you referring to the non-existence of 'basic' concepts. I do not know whether I see those terms as simple, I'd rather call them 'fundamental',or 'elementary'. But maybe I am missing your point, as I do not really see the importance of juxtaposition in this context (I am sorry; it might well have to do with me...). Just by the way, Wierbicka's 'semantic primitives' seem widely accepted, don't they? And that those 'concepts' are somehow vague, I can to some extent agree with.


You may call them "much used in everyday speech".


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## Evgeniy

Gavril said:


> For what it's worth, there are at least a few other cases where the meanings "second" and "other" seem to have been disambiguated:


I might agree their motive could be called 'disambiguation', just the question is, why those people felt like disambiguating them. There were two meanings, one belonged to an abstract theory, the other belonged to the natural desire to draw distinctions between things. That the same word may belong to an abstract theory and to everyday usage happens very often, descriptions of theories simply take existing words and reuse them. But in that case, the ancient people probably felt that something was wrong with this approachment of meanings. Did this approachment confuse them? God knows. Even if it did, it would not mean that there was no way for it not to confuse them: whether it does confuse people or not might depend on the person's approach to things.


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