19 ms·
The word “lox” hasn't changed in sound or meaning in 8k years
- dredmorbius 7y ago#ISavedYouAClick: lox
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoAlong the same lines, what I find fascinating is how similar the words for mother and father are across nearly all languages, even non-IndoEuropean ones. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/words-mom-dad-similar-languages/409810/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/wo...
- danans 7y agoThere are 2 main competing hypotheses to explain this. The first one is that these words are historically related. The other one, which is controversial, is that these are the result of Sound Symbolism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism In particular sound symbolism hypothesizes that the initial "m" of many similar "mother" words is related to the sound of a lips sucking milk, like the verb "mamare" in Latin meaning "to suck".
- eridius 7y agoNeither of those match the rather unsurprising answer I've heard before, which is that "mama" and "papa" are two of the simplest sounds babies can make and therefore two of the sounds babies are most likely to start making first as they learn to speak. And us parents naturally assume the baby is trying to talk to us when they start making sounds, so we latched onto "mama" and "papa" (or the various extremely similar sounds in other languages) as being the words the baby was using to refer to us.
- Mvandenbergh 7y agoYes but then we might expect that in some languages "mama" and "papa" are reversed. What is surprising is not just that these simple words seem to be preserved but that they mean the same thing.
- eridius 7y agoI think "ma" generally comes first in baby's lexicon, and historically the gestational parent has been the primary caretaker (and the gestational parent in most cases has the identity "mother"), so it's no surprise that the "ma" sound is associated with mother.
- danans 7y agoThe counter argument is that there are gobs of languages whose names for mother and father sound nothing like ma or pa.
- eridius 7y agoWhat are these "gobs of languages"? I know there are a few, but the sounds there are generally still things that are really easy for babies to say. What's interesting about "mama" is that it's the same (or very nearly) in tons of languages that don't share common roots.
- danans 7y agoJapanese, Many native american languages, Sundanese, Malay, many African languages. Not to say that sound symbolism of the "ma" sound isn't a real thing, but rather that its adoption for the "mother" word is far from universal, but just frequent enough to be interesting.
- eridius 7y agoI didn't say it was universal, but it's extremely widespread, and more importantly, it's widespread among a diverse set of languages that don't share a common root. Incidentally, the Wikipedia page for "Mama and papa" says that in Old Japanese the word for "mother" was papa.
- codr7 7y agoTake that [0], Lisp. 8k years. They wore chest beards back then. http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/the-lox-language.html http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/the-lox-language.html
- RaceWon 7y ago> The only places that call it lox are places that have considerable Jewish populations, even in the US. The first time I heard the word was from my GF's (and future ex-wife's) mom; whose sister was married to a Jewish man. Sadly, due to a then recent bad taste experience with a pickled herring in wine sauce--I never sampled any until years and years after that. Oy vey; a lot of wasted years there!
- glup 7y agoShort, frequent words are more likely to appear genetically related by chance. Source: https://www.pnas.org/content/110/35/E3253 https://www.pnas.org/content/110/35/E3253
- mamcx 7y agoFrom where is the idea that the sound hasn't change, can be? That is a incredible claim. Is common that all the languages across history to have an explanation in how was pronounced or have sound samples of how the people talk about? Because that is the only sure way to do that claim. Just taking in account the changes I see in my own city, is impossible that words not change the sound. Heck, you can bet it change among people in the same HOUSE! ie: I truly want to know how this can be proved...
- hannasanarion 7y agoIt's called "the comparative method" and it has a very robust history of allowing us to view sound changes from the past.
- microtherion 7y agoI don't quite understand the "not changed in sound" part. AFAIK, "lox" came to English through Yiddish, which got the word from German. And in German, the vowel was always "a" not "o" (e.g. https://ia600301.us.archive.org/32/items/etymologisches00klug/etymologisches00klug_bw.pdf https://ia600301.us.archive.org/32/items/etymologisches00klu... traces the word to "lahs"), so the vowel quality and the final consonant appear to have changed.
- telotortium 7y agoIndeed, the Modern English descendant of the Old English cognate word (still present today as a Scottish dialect word for "salmon", supposedly), would be "lax" - https://www.etymonline.com/word/lax https://www.etymonline.com/word/lax
- subpixel 7y agoThe German word 'lachs' and the English word 'lox' are pronounced, essentially, identically.
- tdeck 7y agoBut the German "ch" phoneme doesn't even exist in (American) English?
- asynchrony 7y agoIt's not pronounced from the throat like the German "ch" but otherwise it's as close as it gets.
- anyfoo 7y agoThere are (at least?) three different ways "ch" can be pronounced in German: Throaty as in "Buch", a slightly altered "sh" sound like in "Bücher", and just as plain "k", like in "Lachs".
- 7y ago
- thom 7y agoThis is apparently an English word that has completely bypassed the English, because I've never heard the word 'lox' for 'smoked salmon' in my life. Did this somehow go from mainland Europe straight to America?
- mc32 7y agoGravlax? Although a slightly different kind of lox.
- Sharlin 7y agoThat’s a loan from Swedish though.
- Sharlin 7y ago(Edit: although the words are cognates, naturally.)
- wowtip 7y agoIn Swedish: Lax = Salmon Grava = preparing raw salmon (or other fish/meat) by keeping it in a mixture of salt, sugar and spices. Salt and sugar keeps the fish from spoling, lactic acid bacteria preserves the fish. Back in the days this was done by digging a hole in the ground, cover the fish with spruce/fresh leaves and salt. Then lleaving it lying there for a couple of days. This also gives the origin of the word "grava" which in this context would bean "bury".
- Sharlin 7y ago> This also gives the origin of the word "grava" which in this context would bean "bury". And is cognate to English "grave" as in a burial place! Other cognates are Middle English (and modern Dutch) "graven", and German "graben", both meaning "to dig". Ultimately deriving from Proto-Germanic *grabaną. "Groove" is also related. Interestingly the adjective sense of "grave" in English (as in "serious") is of unrelated Romance origin (cf. "gravid", "gravity", "gravitas").
- naikrovek 7y agoThey jinxed it. In a few years, "lox" is going to mean something entirely different, like a stray thread on a shirt or something.
- soMeaningful 7y agoLiquid oxygen? Multiple scottish lakes? Piles of curly hair?
- gpm 7y agoFunny, the only "lox" I know of is shorthand for liquid oxygen.
- taneq 7y agoYep, this is the only thing I've heard it used for too.
- userbinator 7y agoIndeed, when I saw it used to refer to the fish I thought it meant liquid oxygen was somehow used in its processing.
- industriousthou 7y agoI really only know of either usage because a Bond movie I saw as a kid had the villain disguise his order for liquid oxygen as smoked salmon. Or something. Recollection is a little hazy.
- nullc 7y agoI knew of the other usage, but I did think "but they didn't have liquid oxygen 8000 years ago!" when I saw the headline.
- mjfl 7y agoI think of cre-lox recombination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cre-Lox_recombination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cre-Lox_recombination
- eigenspace 7y agoLinguistics is a pretty amazing field that I always feel like I should learn more about.
- yellowapple 7y agoI've sunk a lot of my spare time into binging all sorts of Wikipedia articles on the evolution of languages.
- KhoomeiK 7y agoSame. There's usually a linguistics-related article on the front page of HN every couple days too. Seems like people who are interested in software tend to also be interested in linguistics...
- dorchadas 7y agoYou definitely should. It's quite a fun field, especially historical linguistics. I recommend /r/linguistics and /r/badlinguistics (they require an explanation of why things are bad). I've learned quite a lot from them.
- KhoomeiK 7y ago"lox": From Yiddish לאַקס (laks, “salmon”), from Old High German lahs, from Proto-Germanic lahsaz (“salmon”), from Proto-Indo-European laḱs- (“salmon, trout”). Cognate to Icelandic lax, German Lachs. More at lax. It had a number of sound changes in between, and modern English "lox" just coincidentally resembles PIE's "*laḱs-". It should also be noted that the "k" is palatized, meaning it'd be pronounced more like "lakys" or "laksh".
- schoen 7y agoIt seems like the most significant change is the series of values of that consonant. I don't think the -az in Germanic is significant here because it's a separate inflectional morpheme (and can be ø in the vocative, and in nouns in subsequent Germanic languages). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic_grammar#a-stems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic_grammar#a-stems I'd agree that there's an element of chance in what's happened to the k since it didn't necessarily have to change back to resemble the PIE form, but I'm not sure I see the other changes as ever having moved far from PIE at all.
- romaniitedomum 7y agoThis is fascinating to me. There's also "lax" from Old Norse, which also means "salmon". There's an Irish town near Dublin named "Leixlip" which comes from "Lax Hlaup", meaning Salmon Leap. It's also the location of some of Intel's big fabrication plants, to bring this back to technology for no good reason. Wonder if HN can display Norse runic characters. This is the name "Lax Hlaup" in the Younger Futhark runic alphabet: ᛚᛅᚼᛋ ᚼᛚᛅᚢᛒ
- danans 7y ago> For example, sound [k] changed to [h] from Latin to Germanic, and the Latin word casa transformed into the English house. The way this is written is incorrect. German is not a daughter of Latin, and the word "house" has a fully understood old Germanic origin [1]. Borrowings from Latin to German starting with the hard c sound retain that sound. The relationship between the old Germanic and old Latin is that of cousins. The various Proto-Indo-European "k" sounds became "h" in Germanic and retained their "k" pronunciation in Latin. i.e. English PIE Latin hound kyon canis who kwo- qui 1. https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/house-word-origin-etymology/ https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/house-word-origin-etymology/
- YayamiOmate 7y agoHey, it's tangential but it always funny to me... Are you perhaps german? I have no idea what other language would have "language" as feminine =). Though, in polish "speech" is. One of the meanings is quite close, esp. In the example of "mother speech" which seems like a direct copy of mutterspraeche. Its exatcly the same in meaning and literal translation. I think it is interesting how words got their gender established as part of their etymology. It baffled me when learing german that every other word had it different and it's important for grammar.
- eatplayrove 7y agoIn French too, la langue is feminine.
- pvaldes 7y agoLanguage is often linked with the world of the mother. The masculine term is more formal In spanish and english there are a version masculine (El lenguaje / The language) and other feminine (La lengua / The tongue) with subtle differences in meaning but equivalent basically. The feminine term is polysemic. It seems that French use only the second version, in a polysemic sense also.
- 7y ago
- rmbeard 7y agoReally? When I was growing up lox meant liquid oxygen the fish was called salmon in my experience its only recently that English speaking people began to use the word for liquid oxygen for fish.
- amarant 7y agoHuh, I wasn't aware of this word in the English language, but it is remarkably similar to the Swedish word "lax" which just means salmon. I guess our languages are more related than I thought!
- jacobush 7y agoEspecially if you go to local dialects instead of to "standard" English (and to a lesser extent, "standard" Swedish), the similarities are much closer than what you'd otherwise think.
- gpvos 7y agoEnglish and Swedish are both Germanic languages, which means they share a lot of basic vocabulary. And a few centuries after the split between North and West Germanic, a bunch of vikings invaded England and stayed there for a long time, leaving another large number of words there. A few more centuries later, English was diluted somewhat by French, but that was mostly fancy words.
- emmelaich 7y agoThe fascinating speculation for me is the similarity of Krishna and Christ. I first read about this in the fantastic book "Ideas" by Peter Watson https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-History-Thought-Invention-Freud/dp/0060935642 https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-History-Thought-Invention-Freud...
- posterboy 7y agoLinguists will say that Christ didn't have a /k/, hence "ch", and then religiouss fanatics (what a pleonasm) will join in and give their versions of heavily revisionist history, a few serious scholars will admit that nothing worthwhile is known about either as a living being, and the debate will be desolved by the notion that the onus of proof is on the claimant, who will be called wrong, if not lunatic, until proof is advanced. For one, dating of the stories does not really match, I believe.
- lutorm 7y agoI didn't realize people knew about liquid oxygen 8000 years ago.
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- aasasd 7y agoI'm betting that ‘ma’ hasn't changed in dozens thousand, if not hundreds thousand years. Also, dunno how legit this guy is, but he wrote a fiction book about life 32000 years ago, and did some research for it: https://www.livescience.com/39324-shaman-kim-stanley-robinson.html https://www.livescience.com/39324-shaman-kim-stanley-robinso... > Kim Stanley Robinson: Once I realized that the narrator had to be talking and not writing, that made a huge difference. Then I had to think about words. I had to think about every word … I realized that as a normal writer, one of my most common phrases to start a sentence would be "in fact." The word fact began to look wrong. They didn't have facts. That's a modern concept … I couldn't use all kinds of words. I tried to examine every word ... I did develop a different vocabulary for all of the words for sexual parts. That was because the English language words are all heavily weighted by Judeo-Christian or modern pruderies or concerns. They all had baggage. I went back to Basque and Proto-Indo-European and I used real words. I just used real words from their time. What we're finding is that Basque is amazingly old, Proto-Indo-European is amazingly old ... There are about 100 words that linguists now have determined are probably as old as 15,000 years old that never changed like "mama" and "aye." I've been getting a fair amount of incredulity and a little bit of objection to having my characters say "mama mia," but it turns out that both of those words are outrageously ancient.
- shellmayr 7y agoI recently stumbled upon the word 'lakh' in the Indian number system meaning 100000 [1] , which according to Paul Thieme [2] may be related to the German word Lachs, for salmon, referring to the innumerable fish in a swarm. The way languages are connected in their histories while seeming so disparate today keeps fascinating me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh
- acqq 7y agoMoreover, salmon probably entered English during the time French was the language of English nobility: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/salmon https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/salmon Richard the Lionheart was actually Richard (probably pronounced something like Rishaa?) Cœur de Lion and spoke French: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England Apparently only one fourth of English words are of Germanic origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_French_origin#/media/File:Origins_of_English_PieChart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Frenc...
- microtherion 7y agoBy the usual pattern in English, "lox" would designate the living animal, while "salmon" would designate what you'd put on a bagel (cf ox/beef, lamb/mutton).
- acqq 7y agoAlso: swine/pork, deer/venison. Turkey as the name of the bird is however something still unclear. It's not called so in Turkey.
- lagadu 7y agoDanish is "laks" and the sound is very close to the English one too. Interesting.
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- simonh 7y agoI was curious about the Turkish word Pilav so looked it up. It turns out it's related to both Pilau in India and Paella in Spain, brought by the spread of Islam. In all cases it's rice or other grain cooked in a broth. It's a much more recent dispersion than Indo-European, but I still found it fascinating that the Spanish, Turkish and Indian restaurants in my town have this connection in their cuisine.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoA friend and I used to pour over a massive dictionary to discover insights into ancient indo-european thought. An example: "world" a conjugation of two germanic words - "were" (man) and "ald" (age). We surmised that the "world" was everything a man experienced during his lifetime, from birth to death. Gives meaning to the phrase, "Not the end of the world."
- js2 7y agoI beg to differ. Lox is salt cured (brined) for an extended period and not smoked. It's usually somewhat salty. Nova is short cured and cold smoked, and not nearly as salty as lox. At least at the Jewish delis I've been to. Google backs me up.