5 ms·
Interesting. This is about Welsh: "Likewise, diwrnod ‘day’ goes back to Latin diurnāta, apparently an alternative word for ‘day’ that also led to French journée
by ochrist 3y ago
Interesting. This is about Welsh: "Likewise, diwrnod ‘day’ goes back to Latin diurnāta, apparently an alternative word for ‘day’ that also led to French journée and Italian giornata."
In Danish the word 'døgn' indicates a day and a night (24 hours). I don't know if these words have a shared origin, but it sounds plausible (not a scientist).
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoIn French you also have a closer "diurne" - "that happens during the day".
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoThe Danish word comes from Old Norse dœgn, ultimately a derivation from Proto-Germanic dōgaz ‘daily’. (If one is familiar with comparative Germanic linguistics, the long vowel in the Old Norse form speaks against any borrowing from Latin diurnāta). Meanwhile, Latin diurnāta is a derivation from dies ‘day’, unrelated to the Germanic word. If you are curious about where words come from, the English-language Wiktionary often has etymologies in its entries for words, and for the Nordic languages they are usually pretty up-to-date in terms of the scholarly state of the art.
- ochrist 3y agoThanks. I had actually checked Wiktionary but only the Danish language version.
- tomca32 3y agoIts so interesting. If you follow dōgaz one more step you get to Proto-Indi-European dheg: (to burn). Origin of Latin “dies” is also from PIE but a different word: dyews: (sky, heaven). Interesting Latin dies (day) and deus (deity) are very much related since both come from dyews.
- riffraff 3y agoMy favorite trivia related to dyews is that the Greek "theos" (theology etc) is unrelated despite the sinilarity, but the Greek "Zeus" is :)
- tomca32 3y agoOh yeah that’s a good one. Both Zeus and Jupiter are cognates of Dyus Pter (Sky Father) of old Indo European mythology. They just took different parts of that name.