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04-15-2018, 08:01 AM
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Yup, an American biscuit is closer to ship's biscuit or hardtack. The OED's opening definition is "A kind of crisp dry bread more or less hard, prepared generally in thin flat cakes." My hunch is that as often the diaspora (or colonies) retained a usage the metropolis let go of, languages do that.
Cheers,
John
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04-15-2018, 11:50 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Isbell
...often the diaspora (or colonies) retained a usage the metropolis let go of, languages do that.
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Which is why Latvian and Lithuanian are so important as Baltic languages that retain structures of very old Proto-Indoeuropean speech.
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04-15-2018, 12:02 PM
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There's a good short chapter on Lithuanian and the Baltic languages in Gaston Dorren's Lingo Lingo Lingo. Around Europe in Sixty Languages.
A Lithuanian word I learned last year was baltas or white, which also describes beer. I suspect it is a cognate of the Russian biely, and may be there in the word Baltic.
Cheers,
John
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04-15-2018, 12:08 PM
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Baltic. Now there's a thought, or rather a fragrance.
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04-15-2018, 12:15 PM
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Here's a map of IE cognates supporting my hunch:
https://pappubahry.com/maps/ie_cognates/white.html
It includes all versions of blanc, which seems a bit further afield.
Cheers,
John
Update: it also taught me (with a little googling) that Farsi, Dari, and Tajiki are three dialects of Persian. Hence Persian, not Farsi, is listed.
Last edited by John Isbell; 04-15-2018 at 12:22 PM.
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04-15-2018, 03:08 PM
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So Russia has a Black Sea and a White Sea on its coastline. Welsh has a word which means 'sea-colored," which seems a pretty apt way to describe a sea.
Cheers,
John
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04-15-2018, 05:08 PM
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I wonder if I smell "blitzen"? Haven't looked it up past my Duden Herkunftswörterbuch, which links it to the IE root *bhlei (shimmering, flashing).
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04-15-2018, 05:41 PM
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That seems very likely. Your cognate source page has this for the bl- group:
IE *bhel- 'shining' (Walde 1930: 2.175) > *bhleg-, bhelg- (2.214f); cognate with /lexeme/20574/
And, says The Free Dictionary, a whole bunch more, including blind and blue, apparently:
bhel-1
To shine, flash, burn; shining white and various bright colors.
▲ Derivatives include blue, bleach, blind, blond, blanket, black, flagrant, flame.
Update: I would think blister as well. Curious that black and baltas have the same root.
Last edited by John Isbell; 04-15-2018 at 05:47 PM.
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04-16-2018, 01:30 AM
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It's threads like this that make me realize that if I had ever gone into academia I would have been jailed by now.
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