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Even within Europe there are many different words used for water, very cool! This is not a comprehensive list: Germanic - wasser/water/voda/woda French - e
by kepler471 3y ago
Even within Europe there are many different words used for water, very cool!
This is not a comprehensive list:
Germanic - wasser/water/voda/woda
French - eau
Italian/Spanish - aqua/agua
Greek - nero (νερό)
Danish - vand
Romanian - apă
Latvian - udens
Turkish - su
Welsh - dwr
- TRiG_Ireland 3y agoThe Irish uisce is the source for the English word whiskey.
- vidarh 3y agoThe Danish belongs in the "Germanic" list; as does the Norwegian "vann" and "vatn" (the latter also Faroese, Icelandic, Norn), and Swedish "vatten". The Romanian and French both comes from the latin aqua, just like the Italian/Spanish.
- kepler471 3y agoThanks for this! Looking into it a bit more, the French is also from the latin source (aqua) - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eau https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eau
- cafard 3y agoThe Welsh suggests the Ancient Greek "hudor".
- richardfontana 3y agoThat resemblance is coincidental: hudor derives from Proto-Indo-European *wed- (as does English water, wet, winter) while dwr derives from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewb- "deep" (as does English dip, deep) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/d%CA%B0ub%CA%B0r%C3%B3s https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... https://www.etymonline.com/word/*wed- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*wed-
- uoaei 3y agoIt is strange to see Slavic lumped in with Germanic. Is this common practice?
- kepler471 3y agoI only meant this as "similar to the Germanic", I don't know enough to give this category a proper name
- jagrsw 3y agoBoth come from PIE "wódr" for water. Romance languages descended ftom a synonym "ekeh" which resulted in aqua/agua/eau/... and the word itself meant "a body of water" like a lake or a river iirc.
- mcswell 3y agoAdding Basque to your list, the word is ur. (I don't know Basque, just looked it up.)