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Latin "desertum" and Egyptian "dšr.t" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 5 20 July 2012 at 10:55pm | IP Logged |
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I'm deeply amused to discover that the Middle Egyptian word for desert is dšr.t, from
dšr, "red". Presumably there were once some vowels in that word. The English word "desert", however, comes from the Latin "desertum", which in turn comes from the proto-IE *ser-. So there's no connection between the two, as far as I can tell. Still, it's a pretty charming coincidence. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4871 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 2 of 5 21 July 2012 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
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Crazy. Cool.
Especially when you consider that the *ser leads to "serere" which means to sow, which is all the more ironic. Of course the "de-" is the same one in "deactivate." So maybe not so absurd in that context, but even so I had never made the connection before. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4652 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 3 of 5 06 March 2013 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
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Hmm, what about Africa and Asia? They are both Latin in origin, but Arabic has them too. Was there any linguistic contact between Latin speakers and Arabic speakers?
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| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 4 of 5 06 March 2013 at 7:47pm | IP Logged |
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Ah yes, false cognates, gotta love them (well, I would if they weren't so frequently used to justify crackpot ethnolinguistic theories). My personal favourite is the pair of Japanese "gaijin" and Romany "gadjo", both essentially meaning "outsider". If you stretch it a little, you can continue the row with the Hebrew "goy", the Cantonese "gwailo", the Turkish "giaour/gâvur", the Latin American Spanish "gringo", the Peninsular Spanish "guiri" and probably a few more words beginning with "g".
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 5 of 5 06 March 2013 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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That reminds me of something I read some time ago. Apparently the word for "dog" in an Australian Aboriginal language is *drumroll*: "dog"! It's no loan from English, so you can make up some theories to explain that.
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