Similar words in different Languages
Have you ever wondered about the origins of a word?
This is the Etimology: the origins of the words, where they come from, how they are created and why.
In the European languages we can find a lot of similarities and also a lot of differences.
The European languages can be divided into two wide groups: Indo-European group, which includes the commonest European languages like Italian, French, Spanish, English and German and the Finno-Ugric group, which involves only the Hungarian and the Finnish languages. Then we can find the Romanic languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian and Latin) and the Anglo-Saxon languages (English, German, Dutch).
Here below we show some maps in which are indicated some words and we can easily discover their origins, the similarities between the different countries and languages and also learn something new!
- APPLE
The first map shows the word APPLE. In the pink countries on the map, the word apple comes from the term “h2ébl” or “h2ebol” from the PIE language, which is the Proto Indo-European or better known as Indo-European. In the green countries the word comes from Latin “poma”, plural of pomum, that means “fruit”. In the end the orange countries show the ancient Greek word “μηλον” , which means “tree” or “fruit”.
2. BEER
The second map shows the word BEER. The mayority is represented by the pink color and it explains how the word beer comes from the PIE term “bhews” or “bews”, that means the brewer. The yellow part of the map shows the PIE word “h2elu”, which means bitter. The green part of the map includes the PIE term “peh”, which comes from the verb “drink“. In the end, the orange part of the map comes from the PIE word “kh2erh2”, which includes some words like mix, cook and party
3. CHURCH
The third and last word is CHURCH. In the green part of the map, the word church comes from the ancient Greek “ecclesia”, which means “congregation, assembly”. The pink part of the map shows a link with the ancient Greek language, but it comes from a different Greek word “kyriakon”, that is ” the house of Lord”. The hell blue regions shows a Latin origin from the term “templum”, that is “temple”. The last yellow part of the map is a about a Latin origin from the word “castellum”, which means “fort”.