snippets

[kaberett]

1. The English sofa is a loan from Turkish. The Turkish for the English sofa, however, is kanape, as a loan from the French canapé, which has the original meaning of English sofa and, by figurative extension, the meaning of English canapé, because you've got a little piece of bread or pastry or something that looks like a sofa with the topping perched on top of it. (sebastienne conjectured this etymology when I was grumbling about the Turkish last week; they were surprised and delighted to be correct.)
   
2. Fox/vixen is the solitary surviving example in modern English of the Germanic feminine suffix -en, -in: Fuchs/Füchsin.
   
3. The English/French foyer is rendered, in Swedish orthography, foajé. It is pronounced the way one might reasonably expect foyer to be pronounced. See also: restaurang.

Comments

[alatefeline]

Delightful!

[kaberett]

I am so pleased

[alatefeline]

It's funny how people (at least those with a high linguistic sense) can pick up on some of this without knowing the related language.

I've *used* that Germanic suffix (in the meaning described here) when playfully altering English words, and how my brain acquired its meaning, I have no idea. Latin plurals and Spanish verb conjugations, ditto (though I do have formal education for Spanish). My brain is positively greedy for affixes.

But this has its limit - I have no *instinct* for noun declensions or noun classes, even grammatical gender as in Spanish, though the explanations for how they work make sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class

[staranise]

*delighted* This is so cool!

[kaberett]

isn't it all GOOD

[kaberett]

like, I only found out about the English-sofa thing while I was looking up the references to link for everything else, and that just made it EVEN BETTER

[ironed_orchid]

Foxen!

My German friend used the Noongar greeting "Kaya" on facebook the other day, but being German she wrote it as "Kaja". I was puzzled for a second before being charmed.

[kaberett]

One of the things I'm proper delighted by (and had brought to my attention by the linguist David Crystal) is that *of course* other languages also adapt text speak for their own contexts. Thus: gute n8.

[buttonsbeadslace]

It always throws me off for a second, even though it makes perfect sense, but laughter written down in Spanish is "jajaja".

[cesy]

Eee, that's great! :)

[fyreharper]

:D
:D :D :D

[redbird]

That is weird and wonderful.

[shehasathree]

:D

[davidgillon]

Ooh!

Wonders what was going on that we ended up with sofa and divan and ottoman?

My mind is trying to demand vixen can't be the only example, but it's not shaking any counter examples loose. Wonder if there's any hiding in Northern dialect?

[birke]

All of this is absolutely wonderful.

I was amused to discover that "tampons" in Norwegian is "tamponger."

[steorra]

:-)

[sfred]

I am delighted by the whole canapé/sofa thing!

[aldabra]

That sounds like the best conversation ever.

Couch and Carry

[hairyears]

Many of our words for furniture come from Persia via Turkey: 'sofa' is, if you will, a transitive divan.

[jedusaur]

It makes me smile that almost twice our lives later you are still using that icon.

[kaberett]

I have no plans to stop. <3

[frobisherw]

As many others have said -- this is delightful, thank you so much for sharing!

[inoru_no_hoshi]

I am so charmed by these linguistic gems. :D

[silveradept]

Such an odd language, English. Borrows from everywhere and does its best to remember how everything went in the original, and always getting it just slightly wrong, it seems.