Unanswered Questions
94 questions with no answers
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Is anything known about the origin of the hard "g" in "guénti" in Santiago, Cape Verdean Creole?
There is a word "guénti" /'gɛn ti/ in the Santiago dialect of Cape Verdean Creole, which is used to mean "people" or "you people/you all". It clearly comes from the ...
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7
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Why is the word "wherefore" not "whatfore" and the word "therefore" not "thatfore" and related anomalies
There is a pronominal adverb in many germanic languages that is a conjunction of the descendants of the proto-germanic words *hwar (where) + *furi (for/fore) which means something very similar to "for ...
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6
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Comparative markers coming from low degree markers ("attenuatives")? (List such languages.)
Which languages have a marker of the comparative degree of adjectives that coincides with a marker of a low degree? ...or which has evolved from such a low degree marker?
(A message asking for the ...
5
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Etymology of initial "g-" in Sicilian "giurana" (frog)
Most Romance words for "frog" derive from Latin rana (e.g. es. rana, it. rana, pt. rã. See also va. renoc ("toad")).
However, an unexpected initial g- appears in the cognates of several Gallo-:
fr. ...
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5
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History of Danish "nd" and "ld"
Danish orthography often has "nd" and "ld" instead of "nn" and "ll", often in cases where it is not etymologically justified. Does anybody know more about this, like when this kind of spelling started ...
5
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160
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Are L. arvix and L. aries cognates?
arvix
sacrificial ram
aries
From a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "jump, spring," cognate with Old High German irah (“ram”), Old Irish heirp (“kid”), Ancient Greek ἔριφος, Armienian ...
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4
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What is the origin of the short future tense of imperfective verbs in Ukrainian (e.g. "читатиму" instead of "буду читати")?
The other Slavic languages I know of require a construction of "<future form of "be"> + verb" (which is also permitted in Ukrainian), so I suspect it is a new evolution and ...
- 31.1k
4
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0
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Origin of Italian plurals
Some sources say that italian plurals come from the nominative case, so "italiano" has the plural "italiani", and "italiana" has the plural "italiane".
However ...
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4
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0
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253
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Why does "also" in German and in English denote different things?
There are some words in the German language that may seem to be familiar to a native English speaker, but in the end, it turns out that they are so-called "false friends" and have different meanings.
...
- 115
4
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Relation between keltoi and galatai?
The ancient Greeks used both words and appeared to have originated both. The first form appears first in 517BC by Hecateus of Milietus. The word is still known in the 12th century AD where it's used ...
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3
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History of words for a thing - the opposite of etymology?
What is a term that describes which words were used to describe a thing in the world?
Answering the question "How did people refer to ...?"
Is this a sub-discipline of linguistics?
Is it ...
- 31
3
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0
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98
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Darwin's "I am" example
In The Descent of Man when comparing biological evolution to linguistic evolution, Darwin discusses the concept of 'linguistic fossils' (rudiments):
"The frequent presence of rudiments, both in ...
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3
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87
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Etymology of Persian suffix 'ـش-' (-eš)?
This suffix equivalent to English '-tion' or '-ment' occurs in many Persian words such as ستایش (setâyeš, "glory"), etc. But its ultimate etymology cannot be found anywhere. Wiktionary stops ...
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Related words persisting longer in a language than their etymology would otherwise suggest
I was considering the “a” prefix as in afoot, aflame, alight. That prefix is largely in disuse in conversational English. But two notable exceptions, “asleep” and “awake” make me wonder if there’s a ...
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Origin of "viking"
Is there any reason to discount a connection between "viking" and the Greek transliterated word "oikos"?
The Norse word shoes up in English words such as sandwich, and the Greek ...
