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

submitted 4 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] 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 2 days 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 days 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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).