|
Everybody loves pronouns! Here are the words for "he" and "she" in some languages. Etymologies get quite complicated with some of these, I don't think there is total agreement about everything among linguists, and Wiktionary sometimes contradicts itself - so, caveat!, there are bound to be mistakes here. #etymologidag #linguistics #language #languages 3 comments
One fun thing is that the Romanian word for "she" - "ea" - is the same as the Latin word for "she" - "ea". But, even though Romanian is descended from Latin, the Romanian "ea" is not descended from the Latin "ea"! Another thing is that the neighbouring languages Irish and English have the exact same word for "she" - that is, it's pronounced exactly the same, although written differently - but the two words are not at all related. Apparently. In a similar vein, Finnish "hän" obviously looks a lot like Swedish and Norwegian "han", but again, this is a complete coincidence. Although, apparently, the origins of Old Norse "hann" are not entirely certain. |
Gregory's Server
I haven't actually been able to find anything on the etymology of the Iranian languages - Persian, Kurdish and Ossetian. I don't know if they are actually related or not. All corrections welcome!
In Greenlandic, as far as I understand, there are distinct pronouns, not for "he" or "she", but for "this person here" and "that person there" - more or less. On the map is the word for "this person here".