I've always found it interesting how many different basic words there are for "boy" or "girl" in IE languages. Consider the most common word for "girl" in each

I've always found it interesting how many different basic words there are for "boy" or "girl" in IE languages. Consider the most common word for "girl" in each language; do any of the following share roots?: - jente (Norwegian) - pige (Danish) - Mädchen (German) - stelpa (Icelandic) - famke (Frisian) - flicka (Swedish) - tjej (Swedish, younger girls/more informal, included since it's very frequent) - girl (British English and other dialects) - lass (Scots English, which might also use quean/quine) And that's just the Germanic branch … Most common words stay very stable across language change; this one seems to reinvent itself all the time.