Recently, I purchased a book on Japanese derived from Buddhism. The book is divided into 5 chapters with about 10 everyday Japanese words and their roots in Buddhism explained. The most recent entry that I read explained the root of the Japanese word genkan (玄関), interpreted by modern speakers of Japanese to mean entrance or entryway to a building or residence. I would like to take the time to share this root with my readers. Enjoy.
Genkan derives from the the first kanji of the first word (玄妙) and last word (関門) in the phrase genmyou na michi ni hairu kanmon (玄妙な道に入る関門). Some relate the phrase as genmyou na michi e hairu kanmon (玄妙な道へ入る関門), where the ni is replaced with e and really makes not much of a difference in meaning. Either way, the phrase essentially means the same thing. The translation of this phrase might be slightly difficult, but plainly put it means "the gate to the path of Buddhism".
The phrase first came to Japan with the transmission of Zen Buddhism. It referred to the entrance of Zen Buddhist temples. Over time, the word was applied to porches built on the homes of court nobles where the carriages would pick them up. This transmitted further to the warrior class, whose homes also had porches built on them to settle disputes, and with the introduction of modern architecture and the spread of Buddhism to the common people, the entrance to modern buildings and residences has come to be called a genkan (玄関) in Japanese.
Among the other tidbits the book offers, many may also be surprised to learn that words like arigatou (ありがとう), daijoubu (大丈夫) and anshin (安心) also have their roots in Buddhism. I will save their explanations for future posts, however.
Sources
Monday, February 1, 2016
Etymology #4: Work is suffering
Have you ever felt that your job is suffering? If so, you aren't alone.
Ancient Roman records attest to the existence of a torture device called the trepalium, later called the tripalium. This device name means three stakes and resembled something like this. Victims were attached to the stakes, then presumably set on fire. Not many records exist before 582 AD, so we don't know much about this device. But from this word sprang the Latin verb tripaliare with the meaning of 'to suffer', which took two roots into its daughter languages: in French it became travail (work) and in Spanish, first trebajo and then trabajo, trabajar (work, to work). The French word passed into English as trevail and then travel, initially referring to a long, tiring journey, but later taking its meaning in referring only to a journey.
Sources
Tripalium Image
Ancient Roman records attest to the existence of a torture device called the trepalium, later called the tripalium. This device name means three stakes and resembled something like this. Victims were attached to the stakes, then presumably set on fire. Not many records exist before 582 AD, so we don't know much about this device. But from this word sprang the Latin verb tripaliare with the meaning of 'to suffer', which took two roots into its daughter languages: in French it became travail (work) and in Spanish, first trebajo and then trabajo, trabajar (work, to work). The French word passed into English as trevail and then travel, initially referring to a long, tiring journey, but later taking its meaning in referring only to a journey.
Sources
Tripalium Image
Friday, July 26, 2013
Etymology #3: To be or not to be?
The copula be is such an integral part of any language that we hardly think about it. We couldn't be without, well, be. What are its origins in English, Spanish and Japanese? Fasten your seat belt as we prepare for take off...
If we examine the Modern English copula, we notice that it has eight forms in total:
1. Be (used for the infinitive, subjunctive, imperative)
2. Am (used for the present first person singular)
3. Are (used for the present second person singular and all plural forms)
4. Is (used for the present third person singular)
5. Was (used for the past first and third person singulars)
6. Were (past second person singular and all past plurals and the past subjunctive)
7. Being (progressive, present participle and gerund)
8. Been (perfect participle)
Compared to other verbs in English, be seems like a hot mess. This is because it's been through one hell of a journey. The modern forms derive from a combination of what's called the B-ROOT (for forms like be, being, been) and the S-ROOT (forms like am, are, is) and within the S-ROOT, the W-BASE, which gave life to was/were forms. You've probably noticed that the forms directly below the S-ROOT node appear to have no "s" in them other than was or is, but don't worry: you're not crazy. These forms changed in a way that I will explain in a minute. First, let's examine the B-ROOT below.
The B-ROOT is a root conjectured to have been *bheue- in the mother tongue to languages like English and Spanish, Proto-Indo-European or PIE for short. *Bheue- meant "be, exist, grow, come into being" and gave life to the Proto-Germanic (mother tongue of English and other Germanic languages like German or Dutch) *biju- "I am" or "I will be". Old English inherited beon, beom and bion (be, exist, come to be, become, happen). In Old English, the forms of 'be' derived from this B-ROOT had no past tense. Their sole function was as the future tense to the verbs am and was (Similarly, the imperfect Russian verb быть, 'be', when conjugated with the present endings actually means 'I will be' and not 'I am', etc.) and had a rather rocky history in taking root in English. Late in the 13th century, the B-ROOT served as the infinitive, imperfect and participle forms of am/was. By Middle English, its plurals we beth, ye ben, they be had taken hold and transitioned into the singular forms I be, thou beest, he beth before being taken over by the S-ROOT are form in the 1500s.
What about this S-ROOT business? For this, we turn to am, from the Old English eom 'to be, remain'. This sprang from the PIE *esmi-, itself from the PIE root *es-; thus, the S ('es') of S-ROOT. Am expressed the present tense of be, and initially appeared in two plural forms: sind/sindon (cf. German third person plural sind) and earon/aron (cf. are). In the early 13th century, the s- eroded and be replaced its function. Aron (aren, arn, are, probably derived from the Proto-Germanic *ar-, a variant of the PIE root *es-) lived on and as the be-am paradigm emerged, it took the role of some functions previously covered by be, becoming the standard form by the early 1500s. Art became archaic in the 1800s.
With the present and the future tenses covered, was/were took on the past tense meanings. Before the 13th century, this *wes- root tended to express "existence" while beon likely meant "come to be". Let's look at the development of was and were.
Was finds its roots in the Old English wesan "to remain" from the Proto-Germanic *wesanan, itself from the PIE root *wes-, 'remain, abide, dwell'. Within the verb, a sound change called Verner's Law (named after Danish linguist Karl Verner) took place, shifting 's' to 'z' and then 'z' to 'r' to create the forms waeron, the past plural indicative of wesan and waere, the second person singular past indicative. In the 1500s, the form wast for the second person singular was formed on the analogy of be/beest and displaced were, which came to be represented as wert in literature from the 17th and 18th centuries before were reclaimed its post.
With all of this information in mind, let's take a look at the Old English paradigm for the verb be:
Present: ic eom/beo, thu eart/bist, he is/bith, we sind(on)/beoth, ge sind(on)/beoth, hie sind(on)/beoth
Preterite: ic waes, thu waere, heo waes, we waeron, ge waeron, hie waeron
Preterite Subjunctive: ic waere, thu waere, heo waere, we waeren, ge waeren, hie waeren
The S-ROOT (*es-) didn't stop with English. It gave life to forms in other languages, such as the Latin esse. In Latin, this verb expressed be, but it also had a rocky transition into life in the daughter languages. In Spanish, students are often put off by the existence of two verbs for be, ser and estar. The traditional, general explanation is that ser expresses permanent states while estar expresses impermament states. These copulas derive from a combination of three verbs. Estar springs from the Vulgar Latin *estare, likely an intermediate form of the Latin stare 'to stand'. Ser is divided among two verbs, sedere ('to sit') and the original sum-esse paradigm, likely following one of two paths:
1. ESSE -> èssere (as in Italian) -> ésser (as in Catalan) -> ser
2. SEDERE -> *seder -> seer -> ser
As I mentioned previously, the tendency in the phonetic evolution of Latin to Spanish was to drop voiced medial consonants (b, d, g) in addition to the final -e characteristic of Latin verbs. The entire conjugation paradigm for ser appears to be split among these two verbs. For example, the present indicative appears to derive from esse while the present subjunctive appears to derive from sedere; thus:
Present Indicative
(Latin > Spanish)
Sum > Soy
Es > Eres
Est > Es
Sumus > Somos
Estis > Sois
Sunt > Son
Present Subjunctive
(Latin > Spanish)
Sedeam > Sea
Sedeas > Seas
Sedeat > Sea
Sedeamus > Seamos
Sedeatis > Seais
Sedeant > Sean
The present indicative first person singular form had rival forms sujo and sojo in Spain (thus the form soy). It also adopted both eres from Latin's second person future eris and sois from an eroded form of estis, *sutis. The subjunctive seems to be a confusion of sedeam forms with the Vulgar Latin *sedja in the Iberian Peninsula, and gave way to seya in Old Spanish and this further reduced to the Modern Spanish sea.
Finally, we have the Japanese copula です desu, which came into use during the Edo period (1603-1868). The development of this verb is rather clear compared to many other Japanese verbs. Initially the Japanese verb おはします／おわします ohashimasu/owashimasu was used, but with the advent of kanji, the characters 御座 were applied with the reading goza. 御座 goza is defined by the Yahoo!辞書 as:
ごーざ【御座】
１ 座を敬っていう語。貴人の席。おまし。ぎょざ。
２ 貴人がおいでになること。
Essentially, it referred to the seat of a noble person, which transferred it to the idea of the noble person's coming, going or being. From there it was only a matter of time and increased usage for it to gain its current form, to which あり ari was added to give 御座あり gozaari. The forms collapsed into a single unit, 御座り gozari, resembling the modern dictionary form ござる gozaru of ございます gozaimasu. This was prefixed with で de- to give で御座り degozari, thus sending it on its evolutionary journey: でござります degozarimasu -> でござんす degozansu -> であんす deansu -> でえす deesu -> です／だ desu/da.
The English 'be' and the Latin 'be' appear to have derived from roots with the meaning of "become" or "come to be" or "exist", while the Spanish and Japanese roots refer to a state of sitting (sedere -> ser, degozari -> desu) or standing (stare -> estar). Could this be a trend among the languages of the world? I'd be curious to hear how other verbs developed.
On a side note, the B-ROOT mentioned earlier gave life to 'be' verbs in other Indo-European languages as well. For example, the German bin, bist (< Old High German bim, bist), Old Church Slavonic byti ('be'), Greek phu- ('become'), Old Irish bi'u ('I am'), Lithuanian bu'ti ('be'), Latin perfective tenses of esse: fui ('I was'), etc. It also gave the Sanskrit bhavah ('becoming') and bhavati ('becomes, happens'), and bhumih ('earth, world').
And that concludes our tour, ladies and gentlemen. If you have any further comments, questions, or details you would like to add, please feel free to add a comment below. We thank you for traveling with us today and hope to see you again soon!
If we examine the Modern English copula, we notice that it has eight forms in total:
1. Be (used for the infinitive, subjunctive, imperative)
2. Am (used for the present first person singular)
3. Are (used for the present second person singular and all plural forms)
4. Is (used for the present third person singular)
5. Was (used for the past first and third person singulars)
6. Were (past second person singular and all past plurals and the past subjunctive)
7. Being (progressive, present participle and gerund)
8. Been (perfect participle)
Compared to other verbs in English, be seems like a hot mess. This is because it's been through one hell of a journey. The modern forms derive from a combination of what's called the B-ROOT (for forms like be, being, been) and the S-ROOT (forms like am, are, is) and within the S-ROOT, the W-BASE, which gave life to was/were forms. You've probably noticed that the forms directly below the S-ROOT node appear to have no "s" in them other than was or is, but don't worry: you're not crazy. These forms changed in a way that I will explain in a minute. First, let's examine the B-ROOT below.
The B-ROOT is a root conjectured to have been *bheue- in the mother tongue to languages like English and Spanish, Proto-Indo-European or PIE for short. *Bheue- meant "be, exist, grow, come into being" and gave life to the Proto-Germanic (mother tongue of English and other Germanic languages like German or Dutch) *biju- "I am" or "I will be". Old English inherited beon, beom and bion (be, exist, come to be, become, happen). In Old English, the forms of 'be' derived from this B-ROOT had no past tense. Their sole function was as the future tense to the verbs am and was (Similarly, the imperfect Russian verb быть, 'be', when conjugated with the present endings actually means 'I will be' and not 'I am', etc.) and had a rather rocky history in taking root in English. Late in the 13th century, the B-ROOT served as the infinitive, imperfect and participle forms of am/was. By Middle English, its plurals we beth, ye ben, they be had taken hold and transitioned into the singular forms I be, thou beest, he beth before being taken over by the S-ROOT are form in the 1500s.
What about this S-ROOT business? For this, we turn to am, from the Old English eom 'to be, remain'. This sprang from the PIE *esmi-, itself from the PIE root *es-; thus, the S ('es') of S-ROOT. Am expressed the present tense of be, and initially appeared in two plural forms: sind/sindon (cf. German third person plural sind) and earon/aron (cf. are). In the early 13th century, the s- eroded and be replaced its function. Aron (aren, arn, are, probably derived from the Proto-Germanic *ar-, a variant of the PIE root *es-) lived on and as the be-am paradigm emerged, it took the role of some functions previously covered by be, becoming the standard form by the early 1500s. Art became archaic in the 1800s.
With the present and the future tenses covered, was/were took on the past tense meanings. Before the 13th century, this *wes- root tended to express "existence" while beon likely meant "come to be". Let's look at the development of was and were.
Was finds its roots in the Old English wesan "to remain" from the Proto-Germanic *wesanan, itself from the PIE root *wes-, 'remain, abide, dwell'. Within the verb, a sound change called Verner's Law (named after Danish linguist Karl Verner) took place, shifting 's' to 'z' and then 'z' to 'r' to create the forms waeron, the past plural indicative of wesan and waere, the second person singular past indicative. In the 1500s, the form wast for the second person singular was formed on the analogy of be/beest and displaced were, which came to be represented as wert in literature from the 17th and 18th centuries before were reclaimed its post.
With all of this information in mind, let's take a look at the Old English paradigm for the verb be:
Present: ic eom/beo, thu eart/bist, he is/bith, we sind(on)/beoth, ge sind(on)/beoth, hie sind(on)/beoth
Preterite: ic waes, thu waere, heo waes, we waeron, ge waeron, hie waeron
Preterite Subjunctive: ic waere, thu waere, heo waere, we waeren, ge waeren, hie waeren
The S-ROOT (*es-) didn't stop with English. It gave life to forms in other languages, such as the Latin esse. In Latin, this verb expressed be, but it also had a rocky transition into life in the daughter languages. In Spanish, students are often put off by the existence of two verbs for be, ser and estar. The traditional, general explanation is that ser expresses permanent states while estar expresses impermament states. These copulas derive from a combination of three verbs. Estar springs from the Vulgar Latin *estare, likely an intermediate form of the Latin stare 'to stand'. Ser is divided among two verbs, sedere ('to sit') and the original sum-esse paradigm, likely following one of two paths:
1. ESSE -> èssere (as in Italian) -> ésser (as in Catalan) -> ser
2. SEDERE -> *seder -> seer -> ser
As I mentioned previously, the tendency in the phonetic evolution of Latin to Spanish was to drop voiced medial consonants (b, d, g) in addition to the final -e characteristic of Latin verbs. The entire conjugation paradigm for ser appears to be split among these two verbs. For example, the present indicative appears to derive from esse while the present subjunctive appears to derive from sedere; thus:
Present Indicative
(Latin > Spanish)
Sum > Soy
Es > Eres
Est > Es
Sumus > Somos
Estis > Sois
Sunt > Son
Present Subjunctive
(Latin > Spanish)
Sedeam > Sea
Sedeas > Seas
Sedeat > Sea
Sedeamus > Seamos
Sedeatis > Seais
Sedeant > Sean
The present indicative first person singular form had rival forms sujo and sojo in Spain (thus the form soy). It also adopted both eres from Latin's second person future eris and sois from an eroded form of estis, *sutis. The subjunctive seems to be a confusion of sedeam forms with the Vulgar Latin *sedja in the Iberian Peninsula, and gave way to seya in Old Spanish and this further reduced to the Modern Spanish sea.
Finally, we have the Japanese copula です desu, which came into use during the Edo period (1603-1868). The development of this verb is rather clear compared to many other Japanese verbs. Initially the Japanese verb おはします／おわします ohashimasu/owashimasu was used, but with the advent of kanji, the characters 御座 were applied with the reading goza. 御座 goza is defined by the Yahoo!辞書 as:
ごーざ【御座】
１ 座を敬っていう語。貴人の席。おまし。ぎょざ。
２ 貴人がおいでになること。
Essentially, it referred to the seat of a noble person, which transferred it to the idea of the noble person's coming, going or being. From there it was only a matter of time and increased usage for it to gain its current form, to which あり ari was added to give 御座あり gozaari. The forms collapsed into a single unit, 御座り gozari, resembling the modern dictionary form ござる gozaru of ございます gozaimasu. This was prefixed with で de- to give で御座り degozari, thus sending it on its evolutionary journey: でござります degozarimasu -> でござんす degozansu -> であんす deansu -> でえす deesu -> です／だ desu/da.
The English 'be' and the Latin 'be' appear to have derived from roots with the meaning of "become" or "come to be" or "exist", while the Spanish and Japanese roots refer to a state of sitting (sedere -> ser, degozari -> desu) or standing (stare -> estar). Could this be a trend among the languages of the world? I'd be curious to hear how other verbs developed.
On a side note, the B-ROOT mentioned earlier gave life to 'be' verbs in other Indo-European languages as well. For example, the German bin, bist (< Old High German bim, bist), Old Church Slavonic byti ('be'), Greek phu- ('become'), Old Irish bi'u ('I am'), Lithuanian bu'ti ('be'), Latin perfective tenses of esse: fui ('I was'), etc. It also gave the Sanskrit bhavah ('becoming') and bhavati ('becomes, happens'), and bhumih ('earth, world').
And that concludes our tour, ladies and gentlemen. If you have any further comments, questions, or details you would like to add, please feel free to add a comment below. We thank you for traveling with us today and hope to see you again soon!
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Etymology #2: Mirar and Miru?
For those of you who've studied or speak both Spanish and Japanese, one word will strike you as particularly interesting: the verb for 'look', 'see' or 'watch', which translate into mirar in Spanish and 見る miru in Japanese. With the resemblance of the first three letters in the stems, mir-, I couldn't help but wonder whether there may have been a shared history(!) and began researching it.
Mirar derives from the deponent Latin verb miror, mirari, miratus sum, a verb meaning "be astonished/amazed at, marvel at, admire". This has left traces in most descendant languages: Catalan, Occitan and Portuguese mirar; Italian and Sardinian mirare (Sardinian also has mirai); Romanian mira; and French mirer. In Spanish, the stem has extended to give forms like milagro (miracle), admirar (to admire) and all its derivatives. In fact, you will notice that the English words resemble their Spanish equivalents, precisely because they also derive from the same root; for example, miracle and milagro both trace their roots back to the Latin miraculum (< Vulgar Latin *mirare < Classical Latin miror, et al.), with the greatest difference being that Spanish changed the c to g and it metathesized (switched places) with l (I will discuss this in another post, but this isn't an unusual process in languages: Spanish has done so with words like peligro or palabra; English, with horse and wasp; and Japanese, with 新しい atarashii). English has additionally derived the word mirror from this root as well! The Spanish espejo (= mirror) claims its roots in speculum instead.
"That's all well and good," you say. "But what about the Japanese verb 見る miru?" For those of you who are familiar with the composition of kanji, one of the many scripts used to write Japanese, you will notice that Japanese uses a kanji composed of 目 'eye' on top and 人 'person' on bottom. This kanji actually provides a clue as to the origin of the verb 見る miru. 目 is read me (think 'meh' and not 'me' as in "me myself") from the even older reading ma (which gave life to other words like 眼, manako < 目な子 and 前 mae < 目辺 mahe/maye(?)), which is believed to be the stem of this verb. In fact, this verb also gave life to the future tense in Old Japanese. In Modern Japanese, the future tense is expressed by using the dictionary form of the verb, or--in more formal situations--by attaching -masu to the conjunctive form of the verb; thus, to express "I will speak" in Japanese, modern Japanese use either 話す hanasu or, in contexts calling for more politeness, 話します hanashimasu (= conjunctive stem 話し hanashi- plus ます -masu). Speakers of Old Japanese, on the other hand, resorted to a different method: they suffixed む -mu to the end of the negative stem of the verb--in this case, 話さ hanasa- (Modern Japanese usage would allow the suffixes ない -nai to give 'do not speak' or 'will not speak', れる -reru for 'is/will be spoken (about)', せる -seru for '[will] make ~ speak' or '[will] force ~ to speak', and せられる -serareru for 'is/will be made to speak (about)') to give 話さむ hanasamu. The forces of erosion gradually wore the word down (話さむ hanasamu --> 話さん hanasan --> 話さう hanasau --> 話そう hanasou) to give the conjunctive form of the verb, used in Modern Japanese to express the ideas "let's speak", "shall we speak?" (話そうか？ hanasou ka?), "I shall speak", and "I'm thinking I will speak" (話そうと思っています hanasou to omotte imasu).
Unfortunately (fortunately?), my research did not prove any relation between the forms; rather, they just showed how these forms can coincidentally develop, much in the same way that the aboriginal Australian language Mbabaram developed dog with the same meaning as the English dog with no English language contact (comparisons with other aboriginal languages showed forms like gudaga, guda, gurraa and gudaa). Future research and discoveries could prove otherwise, however!
Sources
1. El Almanaque
2. Wiktionary
3. Mbabaram language - Wikipedia
4. Takuya Okimori 沖森卓也, 初めて読む日本語の歴史 (Hajimete yomu nihongo no rekishi) (available for purchase at Amazon Japan)
Mirar derives from the deponent Latin verb miror, mirari, miratus sum, a verb meaning "be astonished/amazed at, marvel at, admire". This has left traces in most descendant languages: Catalan, Occitan and Portuguese mirar; Italian and Sardinian mirare (Sardinian also has mirai); Romanian mira; and French mirer. In Spanish, the stem has extended to give forms like milagro (miracle), admirar (to admire) and all its derivatives. In fact, you will notice that the English words resemble their Spanish equivalents, precisely because they also derive from the same root; for example, miracle and milagro both trace their roots back to the Latin miraculum (< Vulgar Latin *mirare < Classical Latin miror, et al.), with the greatest difference being that Spanish changed the c to g and it metathesized (switched places) with l (I will discuss this in another post, but this isn't an unusual process in languages: Spanish has done so with words like peligro or palabra; English, with horse and wasp; and Japanese, with 新しい atarashii). English has additionally derived the word mirror from this root as well! The Spanish espejo (= mirror) claims its roots in speculum instead.
"That's all well and good," you say. "But what about the Japanese verb 見る miru?" For those of you who are familiar with the composition of kanji, one of the many scripts used to write Japanese, you will notice that Japanese uses a kanji composed of 目 'eye' on top and 人 'person' on bottom. This kanji actually provides a clue as to the origin of the verb 見る miru. 目 is read me (think 'meh' and not 'me' as in "me myself") from the even older reading ma (which gave life to other words like 眼, manako < 目な子 and 前 mae < 目辺 mahe/maye(?)), which is believed to be the stem of this verb. In fact, this verb also gave life to the future tense in Old Japanese. In Modern Japanese, the future tense is expressed by using the dictionary form of the verb, or--in more formal situations--by attaching -masu to the conjunctive form of the verb; thus, to express "I will speak" in Japanese, modern Japanese use either 話す hanasu or, in contexts calling for more politeness, 話します hanashimasu (= conjunctive stem 話し hanashi- plus ます -masu). Speakers of Old Japanese, on the other hand, resorted to a different method: they suffixed む -mu to the end of the negative stem of the verb--in this case, 話さ hanasa- (Modern Japanese usage would allow the suffixes ない -nai to give 'do not speak' or 'will not speak', れる -reru for 'is/will be spoken (about)', せる -seru for '[will] make ~ speak' or '[will] force ~ to speak', and せられる -serareru for 'is/will be made to speak (about)') to give 話さむ hanasamu. The forces of erosion gradually wore the word down (話さむ hanasamu --> 話さん hanasan --> 話さう hanasau --> 話そう hanasou) to give the conjunctive form of the verb, used in Modern Japanese to express the ideas "let's speak", "shall we speak?" (話そうか？ hanasou ka?), "I shall speak", and "I'm thinking I will speak" (話そうと思っています hanasou to omotte imasu).
Unfortunately (fortunately?), my research did not prove any relation between the forms; rather, they just showed how these forms can coincidentally develop, much in the same way that the aboriginal Australian language Mbabaram developed dog with the same meaning as the English dog with no English language contact (comparisons with other aboriginal languages showed forms like gudaga, guda, gurraa and gudaa). Future research and discoveries could prove otherwise, however!
Sources
1. El Almanaque
2. Wiktionary
3. Mbabaram language - Wikipedia
4. Takuya Okimori 沖森卓也, 初めて読む日本語の歴史 (Hajimete yomu nihongo no rekishi) (available for purchase at Amazon Japan)
Monday, July 22, 2013
Etymology #1: Eat
At first glance, the English word eat and its Spanish equivalent comer may not resemble one another, but their history is more closely related than meets the eye.
The Modern English eat derives from the Old English etan, a class V strong verb whose past tense was aet (think ate) and past participle was eten (= eaten). Its original meaning was "to eat, devour, consume" and it shares its roots with other Germanic tongues: cf., Old Frisian ita, Old Saxon etan, Middle and Modern Dutch eten, Old High German ezzan, Modern German essen, Old Norse eta and Gothic itan. All of these forms spring from the Proto-Germanic *etanan.
(Asterisks indicate unattested forms)
Comer, on the other hand, took root from a combination of the prefix com- (meaning 'with') plus edere (= 'eat'). According to Sebastián Covarrubios Orozco (1539-1613), author of Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española, "comedere has the suffix con- to remind us that we shouldn't eat alone". Comedere actually meant 'to eat everything' or 'to devour', much in the same way that the con- of consume meant 'to take everything'. Vulgar Latin chose comedere over edere, thus causing its disappearance. Then, through phonetic evolution rules that transformed Latin to Spanish, voiced medial consonants such as b, d, and g disappear, as does the final e, thus reducing the form to comer (cf. sedere --> ser, videre --> ver and cadere --> caer).
Both of these stem from the Proto-Indo-European root *ed-, whose meaning was 'to eat' or 'to bite'.
Unrelated but similarly of interest is the Japanese equivalent, 食べる (taberu). 食べる (taberu) traces its history to 賜ぶ・給ぶ (both read tabu), an honorific verb equivalent to Modern Japanese お与えになる (o-atae ni naru) （from 与える ataeru） meaning "to give". It was originally used as a humble verb with the meaning 'to receive from a superior', from which the modern meaning of 'receive and eat or drink' evolved.
Sources
1. Online Etymological Dictionary
2. Origen de las Palabras
3. 語源由来辞典 Gogen Yurai Jiten
The Modern English eat derives from the Old English etan, a class V strong verb whose past tense was aet (think ate) and past participle was eten (= eaten). Its original meaning was "to eat, devour, consume" and it shares its roots with other Germanic tongues: cf., Old Frisian ita, Old Saxon etan, Middle and Modern Dutch eten, Old High German ezzan, Modern German essen, Old Norse eta and Gothic itan. All of these forms spring from the Proto-Germanic *etanan.
(Asterisks indicate unattested forms)
Comer, on the other hand, took root from a combination of the prefix com- (meaning 'with') plus edere (= 'eat'). According to Sebastián Covarrubios Orozco (1539-1613), author of Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española, "comedere has the suffix con- to remind us that we shouldn't eat alone". Comedere actually meant 'to eat everything' or 'to devour', much in the same way that the con- of consume meant 'to take everything'. Vulgar Latin chose comedere over edere, thus causing its disappearance. Then, through phonetic evolution rules that transformed Latin to Spanish, voiced medial consonants such as b, d, and g disappear, as does the final e, thus reducing the form to comer (cf. sedere --> ser, videre --> ver and cadere --> caer).
Both of these stem from the Proto-Indo-European root *ed-, whose meaning was 'to eat' or 'to bite'.
Unrelated but similarly of interest is the Japanese equivalent, 食べる (taberu). 食べる (taberu) traces its history to 賜ぶ・給ぶ (both read tabu), an honorific verb equivalent to Modern Japanese お与えになる (o-atae ni naru) （from 与える ataeru） meaning "to give". It was originally used as a humble verb with the meaning 'to receive from a superior', from which the modern meaning of 'receive and eat or drink' evolved.
Sources
1. Online Etymological Dictionary
2. Origen de las Palabras
3. 語源由来辞典 Gogen Yurai Jiten
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Maridos in Marriage?
I recently purchased for my Kindle and re-read the Israeli linguistician, Guy Deutscher's, "Unfolding of Language". This book was a great source of inspiration for me. I never had the courage to break into linguistics until I had read his book. With my fascination with the etymology of words and the histories of languages in general, it was the perfect fit for me -- and explained in a very concise and clear manner so that even amateurs with little linguistic background could easily pick it up and understand it.
In a section on erosion, economy and expressiveness, he explains how languages have historically gone through cycles of words collapsing into single units to create new words derived from a need for economy and from habitual usage of words together. The erosive process must also work in the reverse, though: what destroys language must also build language. When our words collapse into a single unit, they have already lost their expressiveness. We are numb to the expressive force they once contained and simply accept them as the required components of our language to express our most basic ideas. We therefore beef up our words to create new ones, such, as he cites, with the English negation 'not'. Deutscher draws the example that the initial adverb of negation in English was the same as the French 'ne'. This gradually lost its expressive force, so English speakers built it up with -a-wiht (read: 'a bit'): ne-a-wiht. The forces of economy and erosion didn't lurk far behind: ne-a-wiht eroded to 'naht' (also spelled 'naught') and came to be written 'not'.
In his journey to prove this point, he stumbles upon the formation of nouns from verbs and draws on the English word 'marriage.' This was derived from Old English, 'mariage', which came from the French 'mariage', which in turn was derived from the stem of the verb 'marier' (to give in marriage, to marry), mari- and suffixing -age (equivalent to the English -hood, cf. Old English '-had' or 'had', "person" or "state"). If we trace this root further back, we find it derives from the adjectival 'maritus' (nuptial or matrimonial) turned noun pair 'maritus-marita' (husband-wife), itself derived from 'maritare' (to marry, to give in marriage).
Deutscher stops there, but in my reading, it hit me that this verb stem, mari-, looked awfully like a word I knew in another language: marido (husband) from the Spanish language. When I researched it, low and behold, it, too, derives from 'maritus'. I couldn't believe it was so obvious, and yet, I had never considered it!
By the way, when I researched this further in Proto-Indo-European dictionaries and with reliable sources, 'maritare' and 'maritus' appear to derive from an earlier 'mas, maris' (young man), which is speculated to have derived from the Proto-Indo-European *mari- or *mori-, which originally meant: 'young woman'! How quickly a word can change its appearance and meaning, leaving no traces behind unless we're lucky enough to have enough written records to recognize its past.
In a section on erosion, economy and expressiveness, he explains how languages have historically gone through cycles of words collapsing into single units to create new words derived from a need for economy and from habitual usage of words together. The erosive process must also work in the reverse, though: what destroys language must also build language. When our words collapse into a single unit, they have already lost their expressiveness. We are numb to the expressive force they once contained and simply accept them as the required components of our language to express our most basic ideas. We therefore beef up our words to create new ones, such, as he cites, with the English negation 'not'. Deutscher draws the example that the initial adverb of negation in English was the same as the French 'ne'. This gradually lost its expressive force, so English speakers built it up with -a-wiht (read: 'a bit'): ne-a-wiht. The forces of economy and erosion didn't lurk far behind: ne-a-wiht eroded to 'naht' (also spelled 'naught') and came to be written 'not'.
In his journey to prove this point, he stumbles upon the formation of nouns from verbs and draws on the English word 'marriage.' This was derived from Old English, 'mariage', which came from the French 'mariage', which in turn was derived from the stem of the verb 'marier' (to give in marriage, to marry), mari- and suffixing -age (equivalent to the English -hood, cf. Old English '-had' or 'had', "person" or "state"). If we trace this root further back, we find it derives from the adjectival 'maritus' (nuptial or matrimonial) turned noun pair 'maritus-marita' (husband-wife), itself derived from 'maritare' (to marry, to give in marriage).
Deutscher stops there, but in my reading, it hit me that this verb stem, mari-, looked awfully like a word I knew in another language: marido (husband) from the Spanish language. When I researched it, low and behold, it, too, derives from 'maritus'. I couldn't believe it was so obvious, and yet, I had never considered it!
By the way, when I researched this further in Proto-Indo-European dictionaries and with reliable sources, 'maritare' and 'maritus' appear to derive from an earlier 'mas, maris' (young man), which is speculated to have derived from the Proto-Indo-European *mari- or *mori-, which originally meant: 'young woman'! How quickly a word can change its appearance and meaning, leaving no traces behind unless we're lucky enough to have enough written records to recognize its past.
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