{"id":8267,"date":"2013-02-18T16:44:22","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T16:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=8267"},"modified":"2013-02-18T16:44:22","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T16:44:22","slug":"skinwel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=8267","title":{"rendered":"Skinwel"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I learnt that the Breton word for television is skinwel<\/strong>, I wondered where it came from. Today I think I’ve found the answer (via TermOfis<\/a>) – skin<\/em> means ray, and appears in words such as:<\/p>\n

– skinek<\/em> = radiant
\n– skinad<\/em> = radiation
\n– skina\u00f1<\/em> = to radiate, shine, beam
\n– skinforn<\/em> = microwave oven (“ray oven”)
\n– skin an Heol<\/em> = sunbeam (“ray of the sun”)
\n– skingomz<\/em> = radio (“ray talk”)
\n– skingaser<\/em> = transmitter (“ray messenger”)
\n– skindommerez<\/em> = radiator (“ray heater”)
\n– skinlun<\/em> = x-ray (“ray picture”)<\/p>\n

The wel<\/em> part comes from gwel<\/em> (view, sight, vision), I think, and appears in such words as:<\/p>\n

– gwelus<\/em> = visible
\n– gwelet<\/em> = to see, look<\/p>\n

I find it interesting when new words like this are invented for modern inventions, rather than just borrowing international terms like television, telephone and radio. Other examples in Breton include pellgomz<\/em> = telephone (“far talk”) and urzhiataer<\/em> = computer (“order-er”). Such words may not be used in everyday speech, but I think it’s nice to know that they exist.<\/p>\n

Can you think of examples in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I learnt that the Breton word for television is skinwel, I wondered where it came from. Today I think I’ve found the answer (via TermOfis) – skin means ray, and appears in words such as: – skinek = radiant – skinad = radiation – skina\u00f1 = to radiate, shine, beam – skinforn = microwave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breton","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8267","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=8267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}