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’Bottom up’ comparative etymology | ||
Tags: Etymology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 5 04 June 2006 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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When you study languages from the same linguistic group (for instance French, Italian, Spanish, or the other offsprings of Latin), you are of course amazed by the large number of similar words or 'cognates'.
The regular, sensible, academic approach is to go from the common ancestor, a well-documented one in my example, and see how the Latin word survived in the various Romance languages. That would be a top-bottom approach. But one can also go from one language to its brother, without having to resort to the ancestor. Then one can speculate or research the common ancestor, but the lateral comparison (between two offsprings of the same language) is fun and rewarding. It just happened to me, I was discussing with a friend the french institution of contracting out the collection of taxes to private companies known as 'fermiers généraux'. It dawned on me that in English one would speak about 'farming out' the tax collection, which led me to think that the farm as we know it today must come from a Latin word that was related to renting or subcontracting am activity. I'm wondering if other forum members have made similar 'bottom up' explorations. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 5 04 June 2006 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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For those academically inclined, farm in the sense used above comes from Medieval Latin firma, fixed payment.
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| omicron Senior Member United States Joined 7121 days ago 125 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 5 09 June 2006 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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This got me poking around in The Online Etymology Dictionary, and it looks like your guess is correct.
It turns out 'farm' and 'firm' (as in a Business Firm) come from the same Latin root. Anybody know of a similar online Etymology dictionary for French? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6903 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 4 of 5 15 June 2006 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was very surprised that hospital and hotel come from the same Latin root.
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| Alfonso Octoglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 6861 days ago 511 posts - 536 votes Speaks: Biblical Hebrew, Spanish*, French, English, Tzotzil, Italian, Portuguese, Ancient Greek Studies: Nahuatl, Tzeltal, German | Message 5 of 5 29 June 2006 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||
For those who want to "bottom up" the Romance linguistic family, there is an extraordinary book about this subject: TAGLIAVINI, Carlo Le origine delle lingue neolatine Introduzione alla filologia romanza ISBN: 8855504657 For more details, here's a link:Le origine delle lingue neolatine There's a German and Spanish version of it. I haven't found an English version to share in this forum though. Maybe it has not been traslated into English yet. Edited by Alfonso on 29 June 2006 at 5:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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