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Knowing a bit of German or Dutch helps as well. I posted my amateur translation of 1200 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874 https://news.ycombi
by antonvs 9mo ago
Knowing a bit of German or Dutch helps as well.
I posted my amateur translation of 1200 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874
At first it stumped me, but I spent some time on it and it started to become intelligible. I didn't look up any words until after I was done, at which point I looked up "uuif" (woman/wife) since I wanted to know what manner of amazing creature had saved the protagonist :D
- dhosek 9mo agoKnowing that W is a late addition to the alphabet and would have been written UU or VV suddenly makes uuif obvious.
- antonvs 9mo agoI could intuit the pronunciation but I didn’t make the connection from “wif” to “woman” in general. In hindsight I should have, after all we have words like “midwife” which doesn’t refer to a person’s actual married partner.
- remyp 9mo agoI’m a native English speaker and I think this is an easier jump if you know other Romance languages. In Spanish and Portuguese “woman” and “wife” are often the same word, “mujer” and “mulher” respectively.
- DonaldFisk 9mo agoAlso French femme. It isn't limited to Italic languages either. There's also German Frau, Dutch vrouw, Irish bean.
- dhosek 9mo agoCzech žena
- Symbiote 9mo ago"Wif" meant woman at the same time that "wer" meant man and "man" meant person. Man changed to mean only a male person, and we lost wer except in the word "werewolf".