3 ms·
Knowing that W is a late addition to the alphabet and would have been written UU or VV suddenly makes uuif obvious.
by dhosek 8mo ago
Knowing that W is a late addition to the alphabet and would have been written UU or VV suddenly makes uuif obvious.
- antonvs 8mo 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 8mo 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 8mo agoAlso French femme. It isn't limited to Italic languages either. There's also German Frau, Dutch vrouw, Irish bean.
- dhosek 8mo agoCzech žena
- Symbiote 8mo 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".