11 ms·
There are decades of scholarship on those cognates, and a longstanding view that in Proto-Indo-European the word meant simply "large body of water" and not spec
by TFNA 17d ago
There are decades of scholarship on those cognates, and a longstanding view that in Proto-Indo-European the word meant simply "large body of water" and not specifically "sea". Moreover, it may be a substrate word borrowed into European IE languages, as the affinity of that Sanskrit word to this cognate set is not very certain.
- kleton 17d agoIt is probably not a substrate word, but more likely coming from "dead" water, as in not a moving river.
- TFNA 17d agoThis is a well-established field where you can read experts discussing the word in depth, including its derivational properties and ablaut behavior. This isn't something where an HN's armchair guess is worth anything, just like when laypeople use HN threads on quantum theory for their own inane ideas.
- kleton 17d agoCarl Darling Buck (A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages) and Julius Pokorny (Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch) are just a few of the philologists who have posited this "dead water" hypothesis
- TFNA 17d agoNeither Buck nor Pokorny are regarded today as worth citing except for historiographical reasons. Their work is obsolete by many decades.
- derriz 17d agoCould you recommend a book or reading material that reflects recent developments in PIE research? I have a few books but they’re quite old.
- Affric 15d agoIt's funny how you cited sources and rather than be given information you were just told that you were very wrong without any attempt to distill knowledge.
- TFNA 14d agoFor someone in the field, teaching is work, while telling people they are wrong isn't. Unless you are paying good money, you don't have a right to the former instead of the latter. In any event, the GP (note: not the same as the OP) could just look for himself on the shadow libraries, which now have pretty much everything.
- medvidek 17d agoYou can see the same with the word "sea". Its German equivalent See still mainly means "lake", even though in some fixed expressions it can be translated as "sea" (e.g. Nordsee, Ostsee).
- Lutzb 17d agoDer See - the lake Die See - the ocean
- Basje 17d agoAs a Dutch person, we were taught German in secondary school and Meer/See were the textbook example of false friends: het meer - der See - the lake de zee - das Meer - the sea I don't remember being taught "die See" but I also dropped my German course after one year (which I now regret). Anyway, I always thought this was an interesting development in our languages.
- samus 16d ago"die See" refers to the sea in general, not to a specific body of water, unless it is part of a name, like "Nordsee". The English word "sea" is also sometimes used in this sense, but it's less apparent since "the" carries no gender: "He liked living close to the sea." - doesn't really refer to a specific sea or ocean even though the definite article has been used. (I'm happy to be corrected if this is an ungrammatical sentence since I'm not a native English speaker)
- niemandhier 17d agoI remember reading that, in middlelow German the meanings were swapped “See” meaning the ocean and “Meer” meaning large body of standing water. That’s probably why the lake is called “Steinhuder Meer”. In low German the word for ocean still is “See”.
- nephihaha 16d agoThe word "mere" in English is pretty uncommon but tends to refer to small bodies of water.
- EdwardDiego 17d agoYep, it's the same in Māori, a Polynesian language, where "moana" refers to oceans and large lakes alike. What's really interesting is that in Hawaiian, a close relative with some sound shifts (k/t, l/r, n/ng, so taboo is kapu in Hawaiian, in Māori, tapu, path is ala / ara, the God of the sea is Kanaloa/Tangaroa) they have more than one word for ocean, kai is coastal waters, moana is the deep ocean. But it makes sense in the geographical context of both societies and how they evolved to their environment, the Hawaiian archipelago is made up of multiple smaller islands separated by waters exposed to the full force of the Pacific, while the archipelago of New Zealand is dominated by two large landmasses separated by a narrow strait that together are about the same area as Germany. So the Hawaiians remained more tightly wedded to the sea to build their archipelagan societies than the Māori did. In fact, the Māori lost the knowledge to build ocean-going vessels like the ones that had carried them to New Zealand within a few hundred years because there was no need for it. And their language lost the distinction between "coastal waters" and "ocean" while Hawaiian retained them. While we have evidence of Māori traveling to Raoul in the Kermadecs early on, as classical Māori culture evolved on much much larger islands, their technology focus on boats switched from ocean going vessels to coastal travel and river travel. In fact, while "Wai", water, is often considered the Māori word for "river", there's another word that also means river in Māori: "Ara" - path. (Of course, it still means a regular path)
- dmurray 16d agoAre there any large lakes in Polynesia? The Māori, Hawaiians, etc are one group of people I would expect to make a distinction between lakes (puddles, really) and open ocean.
- nephihaha 16d agoYes, there are many substantial ones in New Zealand. Lake Taupo is an obvious one, and there are some large ones in Otago and Southland which are not abutting the sea. I would imagine Polynesian languages would distinguish between fresh water bodies and salt water ones, since they need to be able to drink. Even small islands can have pools. [Edit to add: much of Polynesia is of volcanic origin, so freshwater crater lakes are a feature of these landscapes.]
- Utilera 17d agoThe cognate set is real, but jumping from that to "PIE had a word for the sea" assumes the original meaning was already maritime