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What's an example of those in German? In English I find it kind of unnecessary that we use a Latin word for adjectives when we have a Germanic noun already; wol
by 1-more 6y ago
What's an example of those in German? In English I find it kind of unnecessary that we use a Latin word for adjectives when we have a Germanic noun already; wolf, dog, neck, liver, and kidney but lupine, canine, cervical (already ambiguous depending on if we're talking about cancer or vertebrae), hepatic, and renal. Anyone learning English will effectively have to learn a whole other set of words for the "concerning" adjectives because some fancy lad writing his treatise in like 1600 was too cool to say "kidneyish failure." Or how we don't say "life science" for biology, but if I were learning Chinese once I had those two words I could guess the term for "biology" just fine
- stevula 6y ago> In English I find it kind of unnecessary that we use a Latin word for adjectives when we have a Germanic noun already; wolf, dog, neck, liver, and kidney While "dog" does go back to Old English, it's actually of unknown origin and you won't find it in any other Germanic languages except those that borrowed it from English. It displaced the ancestral Germanic word "hound" which has taken on a more specialized meaning in English.
- 1-more 6y agoHuh I'd never thought of that but of course. Interesting! Girl is also an odd word like that. TY!
- gumby 6y agoYou mean „Bauch“ instead of gastro-? I also find the Latin terms easier but I had to study Greek and Latin anyway. But my mum had to learn a ton of Latin terms in med school in the 50s, when she’d only been speaking English for three or four years (went to med school in an English speaking country). I asked her about it when I was studying the languages as languages and she said it was such a small deal proportion to all the other things she had to learn that she didn’t even notice. But it has helped her talk to other doctors from other countries. In general linguistic conservatism is a good idea simply because you want to think about the topic, not the words themselves (though in specific there are words with changing). But reading, say, Ulysses is exhausting!
- 1-more 6y agoYou do make a good point that organic chemistry is going to be a far bigger deal for anyone learning medicine, a separate vocabulary for some words isn't a huge compared with all the new knowledge, and in fact a separate vocabulary from day-to-day maybe helps see things with new eyes. Also getting every doctor to agree on terms is a pretty good idea. I was thinking more for patients who want to know more about their conditions, or even just anyone reading a book who finds the word "lupine" and has to go look it up when they already knew "wolf."
- MandieD 6y agoAs an expectant mother, I've memorized Mutterkuchen (“Mothercake”) for placenta, Gebärmutter (“Gebären” - birth) for uterus, Gebärmutterhals (“Wombneck”) for cervix, because while my doctor uses the Latin-derivates with me (as I requested her to), the Hebammen (midwives) who teach prenatal classes and make home visits to you and your baby the first few weeks out of the hospital really don’t, and I strongly suspect hospital personnel will avoid the “advanced” vocabulary upon hearing me sound like a Texan attempting to speak German.
- 1-more 6y agoTY!! Very interesting and good point I hadn't thought of: internationally agreed upon synthetic words actually can give second language speakers a leg up when their native language has the same words. Kind of an inversion of the original purpose of the specialized language, which is cool. Many happy returns for your little one!