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Spread of four words for 'camel' across the Old World (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderwort

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I like how they manage to shoehorn Old Norde into the map but ignored Russian and Polish.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

At least for my eyes, верблюд and wielbłąd seem to have a different origin than the ones depicted.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

According to Wiktionary, this is the path the word took (from Latin into Polish at least):

elephantus (Latin, "elephant")

*ulbanduz (Proto-Germanic, "camel")

𐌿𐌻𐌱𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌿𐍃 (Gothic, "camel")

*velьb(l)ǫdъ (Proto-Slavic)

Wielbłąd (Polish)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh god oh fuck. Shit.

This applies to Czech (velbloud) as well. The thing is, we already call hippos elephants. The Czech word "hroch" is related to the chess piece "rook" in English. What about the Czech name for elephant then? It's "slon" and it means lion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

The polish word for elephant is słoń, it's very similar

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Poles got a germanic word when German didnt lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

East-Germanic languages, as e.g. the Gothic language, were spoken in todays Poland between the rivers Oder and Vistula and are a different (and extinct) branch of the Germanic languages than West-Germanic (German, Dutch, Frisian, English) or North-Germanic (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese).

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Same with Lithuanian kupranugaris which just translates into humpback.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

maybe they were not looking to depict oneoffs that did not catch on more broadly