Hyboria - More of the same?

[Desdichado]

Useless Trivia: While Welsh (Celtic language) and Swedish (Germanic language) are largely unrelated, they share a nearly identical term for 'window' (fönster in Swedish).

More Useless Trivia: Actually, Celtic and Germanic languages are related; both having descended from Proto-Indo-European. Not that the word for window is a surviving cognate, or anything.

 

[Henry]

More Useless Trivia: Actually, Celtic and Germanic languages are related; both having descended from Proto-Indo-European. Not that the word for window is a surviving cognate, or anything.

Swedish: fönster
Latin: Fenestra
German: Fenster

 

[Snoweel]

More Useless Trivia: Actually, Celtic and Germanic languages are related; both having descended from Proto-Indo-European.

Hence my use of the qualifier 'largely' immediately preceding 'unrelated'. I mean, while they're (Welsh and Swedish) ultimately related, they're not related in the way that Irish and Welsh are or that Swedish and English are or even that Suomen kieli and Magyar are related. Y'know?

 

[S'mon]

Quite possible, although what I was getting at is that you don't "devolve" into what you were millions of years ago and then "re-evolve" back into what you were. Evolution, no matter exactly what model of it you subscribe to, doesn't work that way.

Yes, I agree that "devolve" is a misleading term and not one a scientist would use. OTOH it's fair to say that eg orang-utans & chimpanzees appear a lot more like each other than chimps & humans do, even though chimps & humans are much more closely related. If, as seems to have happened, chimps' ancestors passed through a bipedal hominid stage (the human/chimp common ancestor), then became non-bipedal brachiators again, once more looking more like their pre-bipedal, orang-utan like ancestors, it kinda seems like "devolution" in the sense Howard meant it - close enough for a fantasy world, anyway.

 

[Desdichado]

Swedish: fönster
Latin: Fenestra
German: Fenster

Henry, you da man! You've shown me up on one of my other hobbies!

 

[Snoweel]

Swedish: fönster
Latin: Fenestra
German: Fenster

Ahh, there you go!

Celts and Germans must've picked the term up from the Romans.

I guess the biggest mystery then is how the English ended up with their own term for window, given their penchant for drawing words from all sources willy-nilly, like some kind of poorly house-ruled d20 campaign.

 

[Desdichado]

Celts and Germans must've picked the term up from the Romans.

I guess the biggest mystery then is how the English ended up with their own term for window, given their penchant for drawing words from all sources willy-nilly, like some kind of poorly house-ruled d20 campaign.

Or Celts, Germans and Romans all inherited it jointly from Proto-Indo-European. The English word, by the way, is derived from "wind + eye." It was a kenning that somehow became common usage.

 

[hong]

Howard's world is not a place, it's a mood.

I recall hearing the same thing said about Newark. I think it was in a Reader's Digest.


Hong "unforgettable Kalamazoo" Ooi

 

[mmadsen]

The English word, by the way, is derived from "wind + eye." It was a kenning that somehow became common usage.

I learn something new every day...

 

[Snoweel]

Or Celts, Germans and Romans all inherited it jointly from Proto-Indo-European.

No chance.

That's about as likely as man -> ape -> man evolution. Nouns don't last long in an isolated language group. Look at the differentiation between the Germanic languages' terms for 'queen':

German: königin
Dutch: koningin

Swedish: drottning
Icelandic: drottning
Norwegian: dronning
Danish: dronning (and can you believe the future queen of Denmark is a Tasmanian?)

English: queen (related to the old Saxon word 'cwene')

Flemish: reine

Afrikaans: dam

If a translation can vary so wildly between such closely related languages, it's quite a stretch to postulate that 'window' survived the millennia to remain intact in languages from 3 different groups.

The English word, by the way, is derived from "wind + eye." It was a kenning that somehow became common usage.

"Check out the big brain on Brad! You a smart m*****f*****."

In fact, I'd like to "pick your brain", American Beauty style.