Cognates

[linguoboy]

I would not have assumed the Hungarian was borrowed from the German. I'm used to seeing impermissible initial clusters broken up with a prothetic vowel, as in Ibero- or Gallo-Romance (e.g. Strang > istrang).

That was the case in the earlier stages of the Old Hungarian periode (896-1526), but since the Renaissance (beginning in the middle of the 15th century in Hungary) Hungarian gives in to this clusters. Prés, trón, pláne, kvázi, strand, sztráda, platni, zrikál (irritate, tease, annoy).

Does this mean that szoba belongs to a stage which predates both of these? Or is this simply an exceptional development?

[Kristjan]

I would not have assumed the Hungarian was borrowed from the German. I'm used to seeing impermissible initial clusters broken up with a prothetic vowel, as in Ibero- or Gallo-Romance (e.g. Strang > istrang).

That was the case in the earlier stages of the Old Hungarian periode (896-1526), but since the Renaissance (beginning in the middle of the 15th century in Hungary) Hungarian gives in to this clusters. Prés, trón, pláne, kvázi, strand, sztráda, platni, zrikál (irritate, tease, annoy).

Does this mean that szoba belongs to a stage which predates both of these? Or is this simply an exceptional development?

Hard to say, could the German origin be somehow false? In Turkish it is soba meaning stove. The problem is that I have no idea where the Turkish word comes from, or is it just simply Turkish?

[linguoboy]

Hard to say, could the German origin be somehow false? In Turkish it is soba meaning stove. The problem is that I have no idea where the Turkish word comes from, or is it just simply Turkish?

According to this online etymological dictionary, the Turkish is a borrowing from the Hungarian. I'll see if I can't consult a print dictionary to confirm.

[Kristjan]

Hard to say, could the German origin be somehow false? In Turkish it is soba meaning stove. The problem is that I have no idea where the Turkish word comes from, or is it just simply Turkish?

According to this online etymological dictionary, the Turkish is a borrowing from the Hungarian. I'll see if I can't consult a print dictionary to confirm.

Great.
I can't anwer your question about the development of szoba. Maybe it would help if I knew when it was first written down, but that doesn't give an answer...
The Finns dropped the sz or s in their word tupa, we kept the sz but lost the t.

[linguoboy]

The Finns dropped the sz or s in their word tupa, we kept the sz but lost the t.

Which is consistent with other borrowings of the period, e.g. strand > ranta

[Kristjan]

The Finns dropped the sz or s in their word tupa, we kept the sz but lost the t.

Which is consistent with other borrowings of the period, e.g. strand > ranta

I see, I wasn't familiar with it.

Well, I can asnwer my own question. Szoba was first written down around 1300. It is most posible that it didn't come via German or Neo-Latin due to phonetic rules. It might come from a Southern Slavic tongue (Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Bulgarian are mentioned in the article), Romanian (soba), Albanian (sobë) or Ottoman-Turkish. The Hungarian form was first written down in Southern territories of the kingdom, therefore the Southern Slavic or Ottoman influence might be the most plausible, says the article.

Just an idea:
There's a pattern for words of Slavic origins to get rid of problems with clusters.
szabad > Slavic свободен (free)
szent > Proto-Slavic svętъ (holy)

It could be that szoba of German origin follows this pattern.

[Levike]

The Romanian official dictionary says that "soba"
was either borrowed from the Turkish "soba" or from the Hungarian "szoba".

[vijayjohn]

IIRC, this is where Romani (Kalderash, I think. Probably Lovari, too. It's hard to get my dialects of Romani straight sometimes ) got soba 'room'.

[vijayjohn]

These are two different cognate sets:

മീൻ [mi:n] 'star, lightning'
மீன் [mi:n] 'star'
ಮೀನ್ [mi:n] 'star'

മീൻ [mi:n] 'fish'
மீன் [mi:n] 'fish'
ಮೀನ್ [mi:n] 'fish'

[Thon]

синьсь [sīn] 'old'
sání 'old'

Reminds me of Latin senex.

[Kenny]

Hard to say, could the German origin be somehow false? In Turkish it is soba meaning stove. The problem is that I have no idea where the Turkish word comes from, or is it just simply Turkish?

According to this online etymological dictionary, the Turkish is a borrowing from the Hungarian. I'll see if I can't consult a print dictionary to confirm.

Here's what my Hungarian Etymological Dictionary has to say on the matter:

szoba [1221* (?), 1300**] Loanword, cf. medival Latin stuba "bathroom, steamroom; room, chamber", Old High German stuba, stupa 'heatable room, bathroom', Middle High Geman stube 'same', French étuve 'bathroom***', Old Russian istъba 'residence; bathroom'. These words go back to a Latin or Germanic source, cf. Latin *extupa 'room for use as a steamroom' < Latin *extupare 'steam out' or Old High German stioban 'to spray <steam>' ~ Old English styman 'to steam'. The donor language of Hungarian szoba may either have been medieval Latin or German, for the omission of word-initial t cf. szobor****, zarándok*****

* first suspected occurrence
** first confirmed occurrence
***WTF, it's not bathroom, it's steamroom/sauna
****statue
*****pilgrim

[IpseDixit]

Hard to say, could the German origin be somehow false? In Turkish it is soba meaning stove. The problem is that I have no idea where the Turkish word comes from, or is it just simply Turkish?

According to this online etymological dictionary, the Turkish is a borrowing from the Hungarian. I'll see if I can't consult a print dictionary to confirm.

Here's what my Hungarian Etymological Dictionary has to say on the matter:

szoba [1221* (?), 1300**] Loanword, cf. medival Latin stuba "bathroom, steamroom; room, chamber", Old High German stuba, stupa 'heatable room, bathroom', Middle High Geman stube 'same', French étuve 'bathroom***', Old Russian istъba 'residence; bathroom'. These words go back to a Latin or Germanic source, cf. Latin *extupa 'room for use as a steamroom' < Latin *extupare 'steam out' or Old High German stioban 'to spray <steam>' ~ Old English styman 'to steam'. The donor language of Hungarian szoba may either have been medieval Latin or German, for the omission of word-initial t cf. szobor****, zarándok*****

* first suspected occurrence
** first confirmed occurrence
***WTF, it's not bathroom, it's steamroom/sauna
****statue
*****pilgrim

Interesting. In Ladin we have the word stua which is indeed the heatable room, however in the case of Ladinian houses the heatable room is actually more of a living-room than a steamroom. But now that you make me think about it, it's very impressing how the living-room of traditional Ladinian houses resembles a sauna (being made entirely of wood).

[linguoboy]

[flag=]en[/flag] stevedore
[flag=]es[/flag] estibador

I'd forgotten about this pair until estibador popped up in the book I was reading. What I find particularly amusing is that the English word is actually a loan from Spanish, but it looks like it should be the other way around--particularly when it shows up in the company of other nautical terms like babor (< Dutch bakboord).

[linguoboy]

I've long known that the usual Catalan word for "root" is arrel. But it never occurred to me before today to wonder where that comes from and why Catalan doesn't have a reflex of Latin RADICEM like pretty much every other Romance language. As you may have guessed, the answer to one question is the answer to the other.

The expected development of RADICEM is raïu (cf. DICET > diu), and this is what we find in early attestations. However, already by the 13th century, this gets hypercorrected to raïl. Later (15th cent.) the diphthong contracts to rel, which is still found dialectally. In the standard language, however, a misdivision takes place similar to that which yielded English an apron from earlier a napron and la rel [ɫəˈrɛɫ] becomes reanalysed as l'arrel (19th cent.).

[OldBoring]

These are two different cognate sets:

മീൻ [mi:n] 'star, lightning'
மீன் [mi:n] 'star'
ಮೀನ್ [mi:n] 'star'

മീൻ [mi:n] 'fish'
மீன் [mi:n] 'fish'
ಮೀನ್ [mi:n] 'fish'

Then "starfish" is "mean mean"?

[vijayjohn]

These are two different cognate sets:

മീൻ [mi:n] 'star, lightning'
மீன் [mi:n] 'star'
ಮೀನ್ [mi:n] 'star'

മീൻ [mi:n] 'fish'
மீன் [mi:n] 'fish'
ಮೀನ್ [mi:n] 'fish'

Then "starfish" is "mean mean"?

I'm pretty sure my parents have no idea what the Malayalam word for 'starfish' is, so I looked it up. In Malayalam, they used the Sanskrit loanwords for 'star' and 'fish'. So it's [n̪əˈʈʃət̪rəməlsjəm].

According to this, Kannada has [n̪əʈʃət̪rəˈmiːnu] (so using the Sanskrit word for 'star' but the Dravidian word for 'fish'; in Malayalam, the Sanskrit word for 'star' is the only one that I've ever seen used, but the Dravidian word for 'fish' is used way more often than the Sanskrit loanword, so maybe the same is true of Kannada, too) as well as [əɾɪl(u)ˈmiːnu] ([əˈɾɪl(u)] is apparently another word for 'star' in Kannada, but I haven't managed to find any information on its etymology yet) and [ˈsʈaːrfɪʃ].

The Tamil Wikipedia article on starfish also lists [n̪əʈʃət̪rəˈmiːn] in addition to [ʊɖʊˈmiːn] ([ʊˈɖu] is yet another word for 'star' I haven't found the etymology of yet), [ʋɪɳˈmiːn ʊˈjɪri] (literally 'star organism'; [ʋɪɳ] means 'sky' or 'heaven', and [ʋɪɳˈmiːn] means 'star'. I guess that's a way of specifying that you mean 'star' rather than 'fish'), and [kəˈɖəl ʋɪɳˈmiːn] (literally 'sea star').

[OldBoring]

Nice, so each language always avoids the repetition of two homophone words.

"Sea star" is how it's called in Italian and in Chinese too.

[Car]

"Sea star" is how it's called in Italian and in Chinese too.

As in German.

[vijayjohn]

Nice, so each language always avoids the repetition of two homophone words.

Well, that isn't the word that's normally used for 'star' in Malayalam anyway. There are two Sanskrit loanwords for 'star', and I've seen both of those being used for it (although [n̪əˈʈʃət̪rəm] is by far the most commonly used word). I've never seen anybody actually using the native Malayalam word for it; I've only ever seen [mi:n] in the sense of 'fish'.

[linguoboy]

I wonder to what extent "sea star" is an independent development in these languages and to what extent many of them are calquing Classical Latin stella marina.