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Is Earth always Earth? | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 17 of 21 25 May 2014 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Hungarian:
Föld = "[Planet] Earth" föld = "land (in general), ground" In Turkish: Dünya = "[Planet] Earth" dünya = "world" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5599 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 18 of 21 26 May 2014 at 1:08am | IP Logged | ||
No, that's wrong: It is sōl (sun), but sŏlum (soil). Therefore the two words have different vowel lenghts. "Solis" are homographs, but not homophones. Edited by Cabaire on 26 May 2014 at 1:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 19 of 21 30 May 2014 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank You for the answers. I have been away thus could not participate.
To clarify what my question really was, which was more or less answered anyway, I was wondering if the name for our planet is something OTHER than "Earth", that is to say, that in another language the word used for the planet itself is nothing related to "soil". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 21 30 May 2014 at 10:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I think Irish may be an answer to your question. The main word for the planet Earth or the world is domhan, cré is more concrete - clay/earth/soil, talamh in a wider sense - land/ground, and furthermore saol in a slightly abstract sense (world/lifetime).
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| Ganzpret Newbie United States Joined 4320 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Egyptian | Message 21 of 21 18 June 2014 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, so I've been studying all languages and writing systems since 2001. I have a BA in Linguistics.
All words have the same words, more or less, despite what people say when overwhelmed with nuances when studying just one to five languages. People can argue with this as much as they want, I'm just telling you the truth. The people who need to learn this the most is the so-called "Bible translators" running around the West today. Those idiots can't translate for beans. > Yes, weird title and weird question. But is Earth, the planet, or the concept of "world" always "Earth"? There must be languages where Earth is not earth, but maybe "Forest" or "Green" or "Sand", or "Water/ice"?? All these words you list are all distinct words in every language. But the tricky one is "world", and "earth" is a little tricky too. Which definition of these words in English do you mean? "World" especially is a culture-sensitive word which might not exactly exist in other languages as you know it. It's like "universe" or "everything". But, like, what you're asking, very interesting, but no, I have never ever encountered a natural language where the word for forest, green, sand, water, or ice also doubled as the word for "world". That's bizaare. You even have to know that "earth" is a semantically loaded word. A more neutral word is "land". I avoid "earth" in translations because it doesn't match well. As far as etymologies go, even "world" does not literally mean anything like "earth". English "world" goes back to PIE "place of man" (based on Wikipedia, which I here correct, PIE *wi-ro-). And other etymologies in other language families work like this, too, distinct from the word for "earth", yet still anthrocentric. Some fun : Sanskrit world jagat. Very common word in the inscriptions of Angkor, and in Sanskrit in general. Loka kind-of means "world" too. "World" is not so important to any other epigraphy or dead language, nor is it much of a common word in living languages. "Here" and "there" are more common, Locative particles and conjugations even more so. Ancient cosmologies, upon which modern languages are based in etymology, conceive of existence as being separated into 3-25 or so different realms, like earth, heavens, and hells. So pick your world. The ancient Egyptians called their land "the two lands" or "the black land", in contrast to the desert, which was red. They called the sea to the north of their empire "the big blue". That was its name. Also worth considering is that it's clear today that the Chinese name for China is literally "Middle Kingdom". However, in the etymologies of all languages, the name for the people means "people" or "true people" and where they live is "the center", with like they're the best and the world revolves around them. This is called Anthropology. Huh, what else ? World : German Welt French monde Latin mundus Greek kosmos. My wife's language is Hiligaynon in the Philippines. I think they use mondo from Spanish for "world". The word for "duta" means "land". I'm not super-fluent. [ After this, I went to Wiktionary > Translations for "world" and then my own polyglot dictionary and discussed various sets of synonyms from languages around the world. My response, however, is already too long and embarassing. But here's some highlights : Southeast Asian is a cool Sprachbund : Thai: โลก (th) Vietnamese: trái đất (vi) Khmer: ភពផែនដី (phob phaen dei) Telugu: భూగోళము (te) (bhūgōḷamu), భూమి (te) (bhūmi) Note how they all have a *de thing going on, as well as a *bho- thing. Bhumi is a notable word for "world" in epigraphic Sanskrit, but it's lesser frequency. The Korean reminds us of all the Slavic words for "world" *s-g/w Ewe: xexeme Zulu: umhlaba (zu) class 3/4 Finally, the only African languages, sans Swahili, mit ohne Kiswahili. Xexeme reminds me of the name Zemens, from Old Prussian for "earth", like humus in Latin, kosmos. The initial reduplication is an African thing. Umhlaba is like Latin or Sanskrit *loka place, like English land. Dunia is Swahili for world. Not the first time that you'll find a very clear match-up with the Austronesian. Dünya is Turkish, so maybe it's from Arabic. Indonesian populace rakyat -Wow, looks like Ancient Egyptian for "people". Urartian (KUR)šu-ri/e, universe, world, empire, kingdom Sumerian inhabited world [N] {freq. 3} gu2-kiĝ2 (GU2-KIN) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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