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Indo-European Hygiene | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Superking Diglot Groupie United States polyglutwastaken.blo Joined 6431 days ago 87 posts - 194 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 17 25 January 2012 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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And see, for me as an English/Spanish speaker, the distinction is natural and obvious, even though there's some overlap. For me, wash is a subset of clean, but clean is not a subset of wash. You can clean something without washing it (dusting, for example, is a rather dry, washless activity), however you cannot wash something without it being cleaned. I understand that this is not true in practice (my old laundromat is proof positive of that), but semantically it's the relationship I have formed in my head.
Same thing with lavar and limpiar in Spanish. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5516 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 10 of 17 26 February 2012 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Polish you would use the word "myć". You can "myć" hands, teeth, hair, a car, floor and so on and so forth. I never realised that before :)
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| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5654 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 12 of 17 26 February 2012 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
I had a different reaction. I was just mentioning this to my wife. I said that I thought Dutch was much like the Argentinean language, in that it has "wassen" but that "schoonmaken" was really a made-up verb for "to make clean" and not quite a totally unique verb for "to clean". I know this is splitting hairs, but there may have been a time when there was only one Dutch/German word for this, "wassen". As the Germanic tribes became more civilised, they started to worry about being "clean". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 13 of 17 26 February 2012 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Seems like in both languages the word soap is derived from this root. (in Russian it works for everything you mentioned except teeth:D) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5516 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 14 of 17 26 February 2012 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had to think long and hard about it, but you're right, it does imply water. Anything dry you would "czyścić", very similar to the Russian word already mentioned in this thread.
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| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4454 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 15 of 17 17 March 2012 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Moving outside IE, here's a nice website with verbs of cleaning in Thai:
http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/housetalk-learn-basic-th ai-cleaning-instructions/ The main distinction seems to be between laang (high tone) for washing hands, plates etc, and sak (high tone) for clothes. Notice that there is a special verb for washing your hair - I wonder if this is because it's associated with the head? (This is sometimes a significant distinction in Thai.) The most likely translation for "clean", however, would be the phrase "tham khwaam sa-aat" or literally "make cleanliness". Generally this is a hot and sticky country, and many Thais seem obsessed with keeping clean, so I'm not surprised that they have developed this vocabulary. A little like eskimoes and snow? Edited by viedums on 17 March 2012 at 3:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| manish Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5334 days ago 88 posts - 136 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 17 17 March 2012 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Romanian has the distinction: "a spăla" for washing, "a curăţa" for cleaning.
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