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Italian 'sì', Spanish 'sí' and many more Romance words for "yes" come from Latin 'sīc', which meant "so; thus; like that". In Popular Latin it got an extra meaning: "yes", born out of the sense "like that", i.e. "like you said". French 'oui' has a completely different origin. It comes from Old French 'oïl', a univerbation of 'o il', literally "yes, it (is/does/has etc.)". 'O' stemmed from Latin 'hoc' (this), which became 'òc' (yes) in Occitan, whose name was derived from this very word. The word 'welcome' may be interpreted as 'well-come', like 'well-received' and 'well-deserved'. However, it stems from a Germanic word meaning "desired guest". Perhaps under the influence of French 'bienvenu' ("welcome", literally "well-come"), the perception and the form of the English word and its Germanic cognates were altered. The infographic shows how. 1/ 2/ Due to lack of space, unfortunately I wasn't able to include the North-Germanic forms, such as Icelandic 'velkominn', Danish and Norwegian Bokmål 'velkommen', Nynorsk 'velkomen', and Swedish 'välkommen'. These may be loan translations of Middle Low German/Saxon 'wil(le)komen'. Middle English had multiple other compound words containing 'wil-', such as 'wilspell' ('desired news'), 'wildaȝe' ('desired day'), 'wiltidende' ('desired tiding'), and 'wilgomen' ('pleasant sport').  Over the centuries, English lost many Germanic words. A lot of these were replaced by borrowings from French, while German, Dutch and Frisian often preserved their Germanic cognates. What would the lost English words look like if they still existed? Here are twelve of them:
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@yvanspijk  @yvanspijk well, well, well, I never took English for the little family traitor it seems to be! 😆 @yvanspijk stomach reminds me of French words in Turkish. I am sure you understand: istasyon , şarküteri , ruj , jeton, fondöten, istatistik , otel, sütyen and so on… The word 'hen' stems from the same root as 'charm', 'to chant' and 'chanson'. This root, *k(e)h₂n-, meant "to sing". 'Hen' is a feminine derivation of a word that meant "rooster". The Germanic ancestor of this word must have originally meant "singer". Here's more: @yvanspijk There is a word in Australian English 'hoon' which describes someone who drives a car, usually a young male, irresponsibly fast and loudly. As far as I know, nobody knows where the word came from - but it wouldn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination to connect it with a strutting noisy rooster. :) |
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@yvanspijk Hence: Languedoc
@yvanspijk is there a classic latin word for just “yes” anyway? Or would they use a longer confirmative sentence construction?
@yvanspijk Thanks for this, very interesting as always!
What would be the origin of yes/ja?
Couldn't French "ainsi" be some kind of derivative from Spanish "así"?