A dream-bit

[xiphias]

I dreamed that someone was asking me trivia questions about languages, and the question was how you say "please" in German.

And I totally couldn't remember. I went through por favor, permisso (which may actually be "excuse me"), si vous plait. And I couldn't remember. So I turned to Lis and said, "I'm remembering various Romance language things, but not Germanic ones. Can you think of any English words of Anglo-Saxon origin that have a meaning similar to 'please' that might give a clue?"

Lis came up with "beg". I started rolling that around in my mind, with typical sound changes. "Beg" to "bed" to "bet" to "bit", to Bitte.

I have no idea if my brain actually worked something out, or if it's just a coincidence.

Anyway, when I woke up, that dream reminded me of something ELSE that I have been rolling around in my mind occasionally.

One day, I just started thinking about the words "retrospect" and "hindsight". Those two words are synonyms, and they are both compound words, made from two roots, one might "sight" and one meaning "backward." It's just that in one word, both roots are Latinate, and in the other, they're both Germanic.

And so, since then, I've been occasionally trying to think of other pairs of words that have that same relationship: words made from more than one root, in which, in one word, all the roots are Latinate (or Greek, I guess -- let's open the game up further), and in the other word, they're all Germanic/Anglo-Saxon/Old English. and in which the two words are synonyms. I haven't really come up with any good ones besides that first pair that inspired the thought.

Comments

[navrins]

Your Post: I dreamed that someone was asking me trivia questions about languages, and the question was how you say "please" in German.

My Brain: "Danke." No, wait, that's "thank you." --Hey! That's "thank you" in German! I've been trying to remember that for weeks!

Danke!

(unless I am about to be embarrassed by finding I'm actually wrong about that.)

[aranel.livejournal.com]

Predict and foretell.
Forerunner and precursor.
Episcopos (I guess we don't have this as a noun in English, though we have episcopal and episcopate) and overseer.
Similarly, we have primogeniture, but not a noun for firstborn as far as I know.
It's a lot easier if you don't try to make the parts equivalents as well as the whole--then you could do predict and foresee, for example.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

Sorry about all the italics; can't edit.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Fantastic list.

The next question, I suppose, is "Is there an emotional distinction between the FEEL of the words 'hindsight, foretell, and forerunner', and 'retrospect, predict, and precursor'?"

To me, there is, and the best way I can describe it is that the Germanic roots seem like they would fit better in a fantasy novel, and the Romance roots would fit better in a science fiction novel. And that's not a very clear way of describing it, but I can't really do better.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You could maybe use "episcopal" and "overseeing" as a gerund. The problem with that one is that, in English, "episcopal" pretty much ONLY means "Episcopal".

I mean, "catholic" and "episcopal" are perfectly good adjectives, but you almost never see them used to mean "universal" or "relating to authority".

[aranel.livejournal.com]

Yes--they are synonyms as far as the component parts, but not really as far as the meanings in English.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

Oh, and overseer and supervisor!

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Permisso is supposed to be Italian, yes? In Italian, "please" is prego. I don't know what permisso means, if anything (I only took one semester of Italian), but "excuse me" is scusi, or, more properly, mi scusi.

[ron_newman]

Really, it doesn't mean "spaghetti sauce" ?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"Permisso" is "excuse me" in the sense of "mind if I pass you here". "Scusi" is "excuse me," in the sense of "can I get your attention?"

However, if you use "scusi" instead of "permisso" in order to get past someone, that's fine, too.

It may also be regional, of course -- Italian dialects were bascially regionally uninteligible until the advent of television. Even radio didn't help that much. . .

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

Your mind continues to amaze me - where did you come from? Oh, yeah - from ME!

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Retrosight. Hindspect. Sounds kinda like marketing for time travel technology.

I know you took some classes at NU

[temima.livejournal.com]

You would have loved phonology class at Northeastern. Your method of finding the word through phonemes common to Germanic languages reminded me of that.

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

Last night I had a language dream! I was trying to find as many words to call a fetus as possible -- maybe I was influenced by tigerbright's calling her little baby-in-the-womb "Fishy". So I was looking things up in foreign language dictionaries. I saw myself turning page after page of a large dictionary with lots of words I couldn't really read - characters in Sanskrit, Arabic, and Hebrew, as well as languages other than English with English letters. I finally found some synonyms for "fetus" in Greek, written with Greek characters. Somehow, I could read these. They said that "fish" and "guppy" were good names to call unborn babies.

please in German

[(Anonymous)]

You forgot Blazing Saddles? Lili Von Shtupp to Sherrif Bart - Bitte Shotzie.