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Curiously, Kinder and children are completely unrelated. Child comes from the Proto-Germanic kelþaz which further came from the Proto-Indo-European stem gel-. O
by kmm 8y ago
Curiously, Kinder and children are completely unrelated. Child comes from the Proto-Germanic kelþaz which further came from the Proto-Indo-European stem gel-. On the other hand, "Kind" comes from Proto-Germanic kinþa, which comes from a Proto-Indo-European stem ǵenh₁- meaning "to produce, to give birth", whence also "genesis", "genealogy" and "gonad".
German definitely did not cause those curious plurals. We know for sure Old English had them itself from Proto-Germanic, and it makes a lot more sense for a language to retain irregular forms for words that are used very often, than to loan grammar, which is a relatively rare occurrence.
EDIT: How do you type asterisks here? Escaping with a backslash doesn't work, nor does using three in a row
- posterboy 8y agoI don't *know
- posterboy 8y agoFor the uninitiated: That's highly speculative for reference cold https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/gel- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... call, cry, (yell?) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/g%CA%B0el- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/child https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/child from PIE g(')elt- (“womb”) from Proto-Indo-European gel- (“to ball up, amass”). according to the PGmc page https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/kel%C3%BEaz https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... but https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dolphin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dolphin says from δελφύς (delphús, “womb”), which says from From Proto-Indo-European gʷelbʰ- (“womb”) I'd offer German "Quälgeister" as modified reflex of the latter. Also "Quell" is synonym for off-spring. Well, spring is a direct translation of "Quelle", i.e. source. Coincidence? Cry fits in, too. I do not believe the dolphin theory, though. I guess tail-fish is more likely. they have a penis after all, which is way funnier in general, perhaps to funny for low brow scribe type doctors. Ancient Greek δελφίς (delphís) lends itself for φίς (phís) > fish. cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fin IMHO any questions?
- Sharlin 8y ago> EDIT: How do you type asterisks here? Escaping with a backslash doesn't work, nor does using three in a row You can't, if you want to use more than one in the same comment. A workaround is to use a similar glyph such as UNICODE SMALL ASTERISK ﹡.