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Something interesting that I noticed learning Portuguese many years ago is that the word for "explore" is the same as for "exploit" (explorar). Not that Portug
by elevaet 4y ago
Something interesting that I noticed learning Portuguese many years ago is that the word for "explore" is the same as for "exploit" (explorar).
Not that Portugal unique in its exploitative history, but this might speak to the mentality that the Portuguese "explorers" had when they went out into the world making their "great accomplishments".
- CRConrad 4y agoI'd guess it speaks more to how the pronunciation of different words from an ancient language has in some cases converged -- and in other cases diverged -- over time, in its descendant languages. If they were even all that different words to begin with. (Never actually learned Latin, just picked up words and phrases here and there.) In a mongrel language, originally Germanic but with massive direct and indirect Latin heritage, one can talk about someone's "daring exploits". Whose? Mainly, IME, those of people like Livingston, Stanley, Richard Burton (not the actor)... Explorers. "Exploits" as a(n English) noun does lead the mind more to thoughts of exploring than exploiting, doesn't it? So go easy on your explorer-exploiters. The Portuguese ones were at least probably no worse, on average, than everyone else's. ("Verbing weirds language", they say, but it doesn't even need to -- language is plenty weird enough to begin with. All of them, probably. (OK, OK, except possibly Volapük and stuff.))