Category: Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch)

Adventures in Etymology – An Assembly of Things

By Simon

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This Adventure in Etymology is an assembly of words about the word thing, or something like that.

Pointless things?

Meanings of thing [θɪŋ] include:

  • That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept.
  • A word, symbol, sign, or other referent that can be used to refer to any entity.
  • An individual object or distinct entity.

It comes from Middle English thing (thing, substance, object), from Old English þing (thing, matter, concern, event, meeting, court, case, reason, means), from Proto-West Germanic *þing (court, session, lawsuit, affair, matter, thing, object) from Proto-Germanic *þingą (time, date, meeting, assembly, council, case, matter, issue), from Proto-Indo-European *tenk-ó-, from *tenk- (to be suitable) [source].

So, its meaning changed from being suitable, to a suitable or scheduled time, to an assembly, to a specific issue discussed at an assembly, to issues, objects or things in general. Which is quite something.

There are related words in other Germanic languages that also mean thing, and other things. For example, ding (matter, thing) in Dutch [source] (and Afrikaans), Ding (thing, girl, boy) in German [source], and Déngen (thing, object) in Luxembourgish [source].

The Alþingi
The Alþingi

However, in Norwegian, ting can mean thing, court or assembly [source], ting means thing, assembly or parliament in Danish [source], and þing means assembly, meeting, council or parliament in Icelandic, and the parliament of Iceland is called the Alþingi – see above [source].

Other words from the same roots include tinka (quarrel, disagreement, shortage, lack, tight situation) in Finnish, tinge (to bargin, haggle) in Danish, þinga (to hold a meeting) in Icelandic, dungi (to employ) in Esperanto, and gedeihen (to thrive, flourish, prosper) in German [source].

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I also write about words, etymology and other language-related topics on the Omniglot Blog, and I explore etymological connections between Celtic languages on the Celtiadur blog.




Episode 10 – Languages & Dialects

By Simon

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In this episode I look into the differences between languages and dialects, and talk a bit about where they come from and how they develop.

Max Weinreich (1894-1969), a Russian linguist who specialised in sociolinguistics and Yiddish, popularised the saying,

אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט
(a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot)
A language is a dialect with an army and navy

Apparently he wasn’t the first person to say this, but heard it from an audience member at one of his lectures, and liked it [source] and used it in an article published in 1945 [source].

There are various definitions of language. This is one from the Free Dictionary:

  • Communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols.
  • Such a system including its rules for combining its components, such as words.
  • Such a system as used by a nation, people, or other distinct community; often contrasted with dialect.

Merriam-Webster defines language as:

  • the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community
  • a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings

There are also different definitions of dialect. The Free Dictionary define it as:

  • A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists.

Merriam-Webster defines dialect as:

  • a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language

Tunes featured in this episode hear

More details of German and Latin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Latin

There is more discussion about this topic on: Quora, The Atlantic, Aeon, and in these videos: