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

submitted 3 days 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 3 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Same with Lithuanian kupranugaris which just translates into humpback.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days 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] 2 points 1 day 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 1 day ago

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

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

Poles got a germanic word when German didnt lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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).