UniLang

I've been tempted lately to restart looking into (if not actually learning) Sanskrit, so in order to do something about it that shouldn't be too time-consuming and potentially useful for learning vocabulary (and definitely useful in helping me finally learn devanagari), I thought I'd look at words that cognate to words in languages I already know, and then thought why not try to make a forum game out of it. So the idea would be that each person has to give cognates from ancient Indo-European languages. Some obvious examples would be like

pater - πατήρ (patēr) -पितृ (pitṛ) = father
māter - μήτηρ (mētēr) - मातृ(mātṛ) = mother
ferō - φέρω (pherō) - भरति (bharati) = bear

To make it harder, we could have the rule that you need at least three languages, but if anybody else is interested and has any suggestions on how to improve this as a game, that would be great.

So to start with a conjunction:

que - τε (te) - च (ca) = and

one - едно - un
two - две - duo
...
ten - десет - decem

[flag=]sga[/flag] rád - to say (Cf. Mod. Ir. rá, Scot. Gael. ràdh...)
[flag=]got[/flag] rōdjan - to say
[flag=]cu[/flag] радити (raditi) to take care of, to work (Cf. Serb. радити (raditi) - "to do")

This might be a fun way to keep my Greek going and pick up some Latin along the way. If we're doing groups of three though, I might have to fill in the third slot with a random other I-E language.

Greek: αἰών "eternity, age"
Latin: aetas "eternity, age"
English, Middle & Modern: age

It would also be nice if this was open to more then just Indo-European language families. On that note, here are some Semitic cognates to help me with Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic at the least.

Aramaic: סגד [sgd] "he bowed"
Arabic: سخد /sajada/ "he bowed"
Hebrew: שָׁחֹה /šaħoh/ "he bowed"

(Tried to make a table, didn't work at all for some reason)

English: name
Greek: όνομα (onoma)
Latin: nōmen
Sanskrit: नामन् (nāman)

And for Semitic languages:
(English: head)
Hebrew: ראש (rosh)
Arabic: رأس (raʔs)
Amharic: ራስ (ras)

Maybe we should make clear what the rules of this thread are (it's up to the OP of course):

- I think we should create a "Congates" thread in the General Language forum for modern languages (along the lines of the "False Friends" threads)
- I think we should leave this one for Ancient languages, but I think it would be good if we could do more than just IE langs.

What do you guys think?

Sounds perfect to me. I was going to create a new thread for a more general game, but a) I didn't want to step on modus' heels and b) I didn't see this game being too active to begin with.

Now, on with the game!

I-E-
"holy, sacred"
Greek: ἅγιος
Latin: sacer
Sanskrit: यजति /yajati/

Semitic-
"blind (adj. or verb)"
Hebrew: עִיוֵּר /ˁiwwēr/
Aramaic: עְוָר /ˁǝwār/
Ugaritic: ˁwr /ˁawwiru/
Arabic: عور /ˁawira/


I hope I pointed the Aramaic and Hebrew correctly.

Ciarán12 wrote:What do you guys think?

I've got objections to changing the rules to make the game more interesting to more people. I don't see a problem with including more languages.