wombat@ccvaxa.UUCP (01/05/85)
/**** ccvaxa:net.nlang / neal@druny / 12:54 pm Jan 3, 1985 ****/ I would be especially interested to have people point out English "guide words" for the ones I have listed. I am also interested in the origins of these words (their etyma), or what other languages they appear in. Any pointers would be appreciated. /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Remember that Zahmenhoff(?) was a Pole. For many cases having no easily recognized Germanic or Romance cognate the word comes from Greek or a Slavic language. This is especially true with prepositions and such. Not knowing any Slavic languages, I can't help you there, but I noticed a few things that do have English cognates. I'm no serious student of language either, so they may be false cognates, but some guesses come at the end. Does anyone know how much the speaker's native language affects the inflections used and picked up? Are Esperantists any more likely to be affected since it's such an "easy" language (e.g., by getting sloppy about cognates that are really a little too far off in meaning)? If so, this could make for neat poetry that, for example, could have interesting but fairly different intepretations depending on the reader's native language, limited only by the writer's knowledge of and ability to work in various languages. a^ceti buy acquire doloro pain dolorous flegi nurse fledge, fledgling fu^si botch confuse iri go Isn't "ir" the Spanish infinitive of go? meti put mete? paroli speak parley, from French "parlez?" pravi right Russian "pravda" (truth)? provi try "prove", in the sense of "test" voli will volition zorgi concern sorrow, sorry anka^u also believe this is Greek ankora^u still this too preska^u almost and maybe even this, too tro too much French "tre"? Wombat "I am not, nor have I ever been, jan howard finder" ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!wombat
mcdonald@smu.UUCP (01/06/85)
Just a few notes: 'acheter' (ahsh-tay) is French for 'to buy'. 'bruit' is not only French but also archaic (say last century) English for 'noise'. 'brassiere' is also a cognate for 'arm' (sorry I've blanked out on Esperanto spelling). It was originally a euphemism meaning (roughly) 'arm-holder'. 'devoir' is French for 'to have to' and is related to 'duty' and 'due'. 'dolor' is an English word, I think; I know 'dolorous' is. In any case it is Spanish. 'fermer' is French for 'to close'. The French cognate for 'gross', 'gros', literally means 'fat'. 'ir' is Spanish for 'to go'. 'manquer' is French for 'to lack'. 'voli' has English cognates in 'volition', 'volunteer', etc. 'pres-que' (presk) is French for 'almost'. 'sur' has a cognate in most European languages, meaning 'on' or 'on top of'. English has it as a prefix (surpass, etc.), but not as a separate word. Disclaimer: Not only am I not a linguist, I don't even have a dictionary near me. Please correct me if I need it. McD
grass@uiucdcsb.UUCP (01/08/85)
<munch> I looked over the list and saw very little that looked Slavic to me. The few I did see: pravi right Russian: pravyj - right (direction or correct) pravo - right (entitlement, justice) provi try Russian: probat' - to try related to the word "prove"? voli will Russian: vol' - will (as in "by force of ... ") krom besides Russian: krome - besides, in addition to preska^u almost related to the French: presque - near??? This kind of etymology is kind of suspect. I once had a friend (a linguist, who should have known better) try to demonstrate that Russian was related to Latin on the basis of some similar vocabulary between Italian and Russian. I am still not sure she could have been serious. Since Esperanto is a manufactured language, I supposed its inventor could have told us how he compiled a vocabulary, if he were around to ask. - an ex-linguist/ slavicist Judy Grass at Univ. of Illinois - Urbana uiucdcs!grass
ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (01/11/85)
From Judy Grass: >I looked over the list and saw very little that looked Slavic to me... > >... I once had a friend >(a linguist, who should have known better) try to demonstrate that >Russian was related to Latin on the basis of some similar vocabulary >between Italian and Russian. I am still not sure she could have >been serious. > Indeed, esperanto appears to have an extremely strong bias towards the Romance languages, with occasional Teutonic stems. Slavic, Semitic, Sino-Tibetan and Japanese seem to be totally unrepresented. As to the relationship between Latin and Russian, that has been verified beyond any shadow of doubt for perhaps a hundred years or more. Consult any elementary text on comparative philology. Latin and Russian derive from dialects of a postulated proto-indo-european language. The similarity goes deeper than just collections of `core' vocabulary, such as words for close relatives, basic verbs, numerals, pronouns, and so forth. These are revealing since they are the least likely to be replaced by loan-words, as they are acquired at such an early age. What I find most striking is the similarity in the inflections, particularly in nouns/pronouns. Check out grammars for Lithuanian (which allied to, yet more archaic than, the Slavic family), ancient Greek (similar, but more archaic than, Latin) and Sanskrit someday. I bet you'd find many old acquaintances lurking about.. -michael
polard@fortune.UUCP (Henry Polard) (01/11/85)
In article <10500037@uiucdcsb.UUCP> you write: >This kind of etymology is kind of suspect. I once had a friend >(a linguist, who should have known better) try to demonstrate that >Russian was related to Latin on the basis of some similar vocabulary >between Italian and Russian. I am still not sure she could have >been serious. She was. Latin and the language that Russian, Polish, and the other Slavic languages came from were (metaphorically) cousins. The parent language is called Proto Indo-european. Look it up in a good encyclopedia. A good introduction to the family is _Indo-european Philology_ by Lockwood, pub. by Longman's. BTW, >provi try Russian: probat' - to try > related to the word "prove"? >voli will Russian: vol' - will (as in "by force of ... ") supports the relationship - prove comes from the Latin probare via Old French prover; vol- is a good Latin root for wishing or willing, and shows up e.g, in voluntary, from voluntas, choice. There's a fascinating language family out there - check it out! -- Henry Polard (You bring the flames - I'll bring the marshmallows.) {ihnp4,cbosgd,amd}!fortune!polard N.B: The words in this posting do not necessarily express the opinions of me, my employer, or any AI project.
rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) (01/12/85)
> ... I once had a friend > (a linguist, who should have known better) try to demonstrate that > Russian was related to Latin on the basis of some similar vocabulary > between Italian and Russian. I am still not sure she could have > been serious. > I think I know what your friend showed you. Here is the phrase 'you [plural] see' in several languages: Language as written in phonemic transcription French Vous voyez vu vwaye Spanish Vosotros veis bosotros beys Italian Voi videte voy videte Russian [no cyrllic in ascii] vy v'id'it'e (' shows palatalization) Look at the pronunciation as reflected in the phonemic transcriptions. This 'shows' that Russian is closer to Italian than any of the three Romance languages are to each other. Actually, this is somewhat of a coincidence. Russian, Latin, and Italian happened to keep rather intact the Proto-Indo-European verb ending for the 2nd person plural (ete, etis), while the Western Romance languages changed it a bit. -- Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell, San Francisco, California {ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,decwrl,amd70,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!pbauae!rob
grass@uiucdcsb.UUCP (01/13/85)
/* Written 11:34 am Jan 11, 1985 by polard@fortune in uiucdcsb:net.nlang */ >In article <10500037@uiucdcsb.UUCP> you write: >>This kind of etymology is kind of suspect. I once had a friend >>(a linguist, who should have known better) try to demonstrate that >>Russian was related to Latin on the basis of some similar vocabulary >>between Italian and Russian. I am still not sure she could have >>been serious. >She was. Latin and the language that Russian, Polish, and the other >Slavic languages came from were (metaphorically) cousins. The parent >language is called Proto Indo-european. Look it up in a good encyclopedia. I know, and knew that Russian and Italian both came from Proto Indo-European. My friend was arguing that Russian came from Latin, directly. I.e. Russian is a Romance language. Can you defend that proposition? Her argument was based largely on words like "telefon", etc. On the basis of such word borrowings, English looks like a Romance language. Evidently, I did not make myself clear. - Judy Grass, University of Illinois - Urbana {ihnp4,pur-ee,convex}!uiucdcs!grass grass%uiuc@csnet-relay.arpa
mgv@duke.UUCP (Marco G. Valtorta) (01/15/85)
I was told in school that 60% of all English words have a Latin origin. Does anyone know what the percentage for Russian is? To go back to Esperanto, I read a quote by its inventor that invited the students of the language to listen to Italian radio broadcasts. He thought that it would give the students the right "intonation." (Not an exact quote.) Marco Valtorta
grass@uiucdcsb.UUCP (01/21/85)
/* Written 10:21 am Jan 15, 1985 by mgv@duke in uiucdcsb:net.nlang */
I was told in school that 60% of all English words have a
Latin origin. Does anyone know what the percentage for
Russian is?
Marco Valtorta
/* End of text from uiucdcsb:net.nlang */
I don't know what the percentage of Latin roots in Russian would be, but it
would be fairly small. And I imagine most of those would be 19th and 20th
century loan words from French and English.
Russian has a "dual" vocabulary, something like English, with what you
could call a "native Russian" vocabulary for everyday things contrasted
with a Church Slavic derived vocabulary for higher concepts and abstracts.
For example: native russian "golova" = head (a part of the body) vs.
"glava" = head (abstract.. of a company).
Both versions ultimately trace back to Common Slavic, but the "native Russian"
words show typical Eastern Slavic phonological changes, where the Church Slavic
words reflect an earlier stage of the phonology (reflected today in such
South Slavic languages as Bulgarian). The persistence of the C.S. forms have
probably got to do with the fact that most writing in Russia before, say, 1700
was theological in nature and done in Russian Church Slavonic. Native
forms were not all that common in writing until later.
Greek has had a greater influence on Russian, via Orthodoxy, than Latin.
A lot of Greek words were translated morpheme by morpheme into Slavic roots
and imported into Russian. A lot of that occured in preparing Russian
texts of Greek Orthodox theological works.
- Judy Grass, University of Illinois - Urbana
{ihnp4,pur-ee,convex}!uiucdcs!grass grass%uiuc@csnet-relay.arpa