{"id":17158,"date":"2018-12-06T15:15:25","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T14:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=17158"},"modified":"2018-12-06T15:15:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T14:15:25","slug":"can-hens-sing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=17158","title":{"rendered":"Can Hens Sing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrpbps\/2869700508\/in\/photolist-5nzXYY-7QMYWW-faVYVT-aEgVyh-U34qec-kbpYbH-29vhgSt-WJFsQG-572u8y-2Ks8W-572tmd-nHGB1z-51oW8n-qvkN9t-4VoUc6-41qpvz-dDBTi7-9z3grx-2g93F4-69nPJW-bUVdw-Faax9-4VCEdL-4AFLjH-572shy-cp3A1N-WbUkWT-8q38Cm-8q34V3-fSDASc-9cZbcR-4tcgpQ-nbg8S-jpJxNs-3FTMqX-25qAdAp-c9nTpd-namQ7-V7wisj-92sd7m-bptb6x-fdc1Uq-aVqg2D-2aextSn-XzVnvA-5gc3o8-9uVzSY-8xQHiQ-c7X1as-dizqaM\" title=\"Four hens\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3216\/2869700508_a2c7e08377_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 20px 50px;\" alt=\"Four hens\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>What is the connection between <strong>singing<\/strong> and <strong>hens<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>Hens don&#8217;t sing, but the words for <strong>to sing \/ speak<\/strong> in Celtic languages come from the same root as the English words <strong>hen<\/strong> and <strong>chant<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The root is the Proto-Indo-European <em>*keh\u2082n-<\/em> (to sing) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European\/keh%E2%82%82n-\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>This became <em>*kan-<\/em> (to sing) in Proto-Celtic, which became <em>canaid<\/em> (to sing) in Old Irish, and <em>can<\/em> (to chant, sing, speak, talk) in modern Irish. In Scottish Gaelic it became <em>can<\/em> (to sing, rehearse, say, name or call), and in Manx it became <em>caayn<\/em> (to bray, whine; song).<\/p>\n<p>In Proto-Brythonic it became <em>*k\u0117n\u0268d<\/em> (to sing), which became <em>canam<\/em> (to sing) in Old Welsh, <em>canu<\/em> (to sing, intone, chant, state, say) in modern Welsh, <em>kana<\/em> (to sing) in Cornish, <em>canaff<\/em> (to sing) in Middle Breton and <em>kana\u00f1<\/em> (to sing) in Breton [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic\/kaneti\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>In Proto-Germanic <em>*keh\u2082n-<\/em> became <em>*han\u00f4<\/em> (rooster), <em>*hanj\u014d<\/em> (hen) and <em>*h\u014dnaz<\/em> (fowl). The English word <strong>hen<\/strong> developed from <em>*hanj\u014d<\/em>, via the Old English <em>h\u00e6nn \/ henn<\/em> (hen). In other Germanic languages these words became: <em>Huhn<\/em> (hen, chicken) and <em>Henne<\/em> (hen) in German; <em>hen<\/em> (hen) in Dutch [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic\/hanj%C5%8D\">source<\/a>]; and <em>h\u00f6na<\/em> (hen) in Swedish [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic\/h%C5%8Dnij%C7%AD\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><em>*keh\u2082n-<\/em> is also the root of the Latin <em>can\u014d<\/em> (I sing), from which words for to sing in Romance language developed, such as <em>chanter<\/em> (to sing) in French and <em>cantar<\/em> (to sing) in Spanish [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/chanter#French\">source<\/a>], and the English word <strong>chant<\/strong> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/chant#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>See also the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/celtiadur\/2018\/12\/06\/to-sing-to-say\/\">Celtiadur<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the connection between singing and hens? Hens don&#8217;t sing, but the words for to sing \/ speak in Celtic languages come from the same root as the English words hen and chant. The root is the Proto-Indo-European *keh\u2082n- (to sing) [source]. This became *kan- (to sing) in Proto-Celtic, which became canaid (to sing) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,97,102,104,107,111,116,127,10,15,33,43,44,45,56,64,67,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breton","category-cornish","category-dutch","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-german","category-irish","category-language","category-latin","category-old-english-aenglisc","category-proto-celtic","category-proto-germanic","category-proto-indo-european","category-scottish-gaelic","category-spanish","category-swedish","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}