Semantics and funny facts

dacode

Hi all,

If by any means you're interested in similarities between languages (for instance, the roots of some words), I cannot resist to recommand some books from Umberto Ecco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco). In Europe TV magazines like "karambolage" on ARTE (and almost everything on this channel) spot some funny facts about languages (here mainly german and french).

But to the core, I have in mind an example that shows what I mean :

Let's take 2 words : the french Sirène, and its english translation : Mermaid.

They both mean the same : the myth of creatures, half women, half fish, that sings for sailors..

The first part of Sirene > Si, is pronounced like "Sea" The second half "rene", sounds exactly like "reine" > Queen. It could then translate to a "new" word > La reine de la mer (Queen of the sea)

For Mermaid > the first half is "mer" > sea in french / Maid > lady.

Well, do you have simlilar exemples ?

{name here}

Those are called cognates. Since all european languages are branched as Indo-European languages, there will always be cognates within this group of languages.

For example: The Latin word Orator means the same as it does the English word Orator.
The Gothic Word Stains means stone. It is not pronnounced like the English word "stain" but like "st + ai (as in kaiser) + n + s (as in steel)", which is similar to the modern German word Stein (sh + t + ai (as in kaiser) + n).
Dreiban is another Gothic word, which means to drive. In this case, the b is pronnounced like a v so it is very similar to the English word.
The English Word Day is similar to the Gothic word Dags, which in turn is similar to the German word Tag.
The Latin word cognito means "to recognize" and has made its way into medical terms like "cognitively disabled", and is the origin of the word cognate.
The Ancient Greek word planetas (I don't know if I romanized that correctly) means "wanderer", which was a term used for planets, as they seemed to the Greeks to be stars that wandered the sky. It is the origin of our word "planet".
Another Ancient Gree word galaxias means "milky", and was the name given to Galaxies, which is the origin of the word "Galaxy", and the reason why we call our galaxy the milky way.