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English is weird
Cornelius:
My best guess is that in Anglo Saxon, where we have seamere and seamestre, someone was defined not by what they do, but what they make, especially when it is one specific thing. That would explain the difference between a wheelwright and a woodturner.
At first, I thought it might have something to do with the division of labour in making garments, with the tailor cutting the cloth, and the seamstress putting it together, but that's a distinction that isn't there in Anglo Saxon.
Once you come to Anglo Norman, there's the sewer, as a loanword from Latin via Old French, that's interfering with sewer or sewstress taking the place of seamstress. Aside from which, sewstress seems to sound somewhat awkward.
Looking at Dutch, it seems to have always been some variation of naaister (stem of naaien, to sew, and a female suffix), right down to Old Dutch. So it must have happened somewhere even earlier.
Morituri:
I was surprised today to learn that "Ferris wheels" are actually named after someone who built one at the Chicago World's fair in 1893. They'd existed (earlier, wooden examples) for centuries, but he built a big famous one out of steel, and now they're named after George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.
All this time, I had supposed they were probably called that because the practice of making them out of steel, which started at the same time, had been a significant upgrade both in safety and size. The new generation of improved wheels, of course, would have been known as "Ferrous wheels", and the spelling morphed, either for trademark purposes or accidentally or by someone who wanted to take advantage of the marketing hype without being sued for making a false claim, sometime later.
But sometimes the world is logical in ways we don't expect. No, it was in fact because the guy who did it was named George Ferris.
This is sort of like discovering the patent for flush toilets that was, in fact, issued to one Thomas Crapper.....
Akima:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 22 Jan 2019, 18:01 ---For some reason I started wondering again about the old question of why someone who sews is not called a "sewer".
--- End quote ---
Sewer has an another meaning, but don't let me drain your enthusiasm.
Of course then there is the question of why sow is pronounced "soh" if it is seeds, but "sow" if it's a female pig, but I don't want to be a boar about it.
oddtail:
So, it seems I never actually wrote anything in this thread? I think?
Most things that I found weird about English over the years were not that interesting, I imagine, to most people, because I used to have a very... technical interest in the inner workings of the language and those are not that immediately fun and bizarre without foreknowledge (or a long-winded explanation).
But, there's one thing that has to do with language evolution and is still bizarre and worth sharing. It continues to completely blow my mind years after I've learnt it.
The words "isle" and "island" are not connected via etymology at all. You might assume that one is derived from the other (shortened for example). You might also assume they are similar because they entered the English language from the same source, at different times and they are different because the first changed by the time the second was borrowed (like "chivalry" and "cavalry", which ultimately come from the same word - the French for "horse").
Nope. The words are totally unrelated. Despite the fact that they sound very similar and mean almost the same thing. They are derived from two different langauge groups - and the words they come from are not even similar semantically!
"isle" comes from Latin "insula". The word itself might be etymologically connected with older words for "ocean". A similar word survives in modern English in "peninsula".
"island" comes from proto-Germanic and is historically connected with the same root as the modern word "land" (not surprisingly). It has nothing to do with Latin, with ocean, or the word "isle".
I know this sounds mildly interesting probably, but to me it's utterly crazy and almost incomprehensible - the scale of coincidence in play here. It's like convergent evolution in biology (y'know, how octopus eyes are amazingly similar to mammal eyes, despite evolving completely independently). But in biology, the similarity in form follows similar function. There's a reason for things to look similar. In language, there's no inherent reason for words to sound a certain way.
Two words looking like they are closely related and describing the same concept which are derived from completely different languages *and* words for completely different concepts? I think it's, linguistically, the weirdest thing I've seen, or will see, in my entire life. Certainly in top five.
Akima:
--- Quote from: oddtail on 24 Jan 2019, 01:17 ---like "chivalry" and "cavalry", which ultimately come from the same word - the French for "horse"
--- End quote ---
The French (cheval), Spanish (caballo), and Italian (cavallo) words for horse all derive from the Latin caballus.
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