7mo ago

Small discussions thread - 2025/Apr/04

Feel free to use this thread to ask small questions or share random language / linguistics trivia, if you don't feel like creating a new thread just for that.

(Just to be clear: yes, if you want to create a new thread for your question/trivia, you can. I'm only trying to stimulate discussion in the comm.)

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I've learned yesterday that the word "aura" comes from the ancient greek αὔρα, from ἀήρ and it means "air"
- Oh, that gets real fun if you backtrack into Proto-Indo-European cognates using the same root, h₂ews- "sunrise" - all of the following are cognates:
  Greek ⟨αὔρα⟩ aúrā "breeze", ⟨ἀήρ⟩ āḗr "air". Apparently Proto-Hellenic used those words to refer to the morning mist.
  Latin ⟨aurora⟩ "dawn". Still close to the original meaning.
  Latin ⟨auster⟩ "south". Because in the Northern Hemisphere you'll typically see the sun to the south.
  German ⟨Ost⟩ "east", English ⟨east⟩. It's similar to the above, but closer to the original meaning.
  Latin ⟨aurum⟩ "gold". Etymologically it's roughly "the shining [metal]".
  English ⟨Easter⟩. The name comes from the goddess of dawn Ēastre, associated with April because of spring in the N. hemisphere.
  Albanian ⟨err⟩ "darkness". This one did a 180°: dawn → twilight → darkness.
  Estonian ⟨vask⟩ "copper", Hungarian ⟨vas⟩ "iron". Proto-Uralic borrowed the word from some Indo-European language, but likely used to refer to metals in general.
  And it is not even the worst etymological mess I've seen. Like Portuguese getting, like, a half dozen words from Latin ⟨macula⟩.
  
  Do that mean the Austria and Australia are etymologically related? That's amazing
  
  That's interesting. By the way, I speak Portuguese.
Hmmm…
Time travelling thread from AD 2024
- I'm a muppet. Thanks for pointing it out - fixed.
Where the heck did Jan Misali go?
- He's still releasing videos once in a blue moon, last one was a month ago.
  (Context, for other users: jan Misali is a youtuber, with plenty videos about conlangs and specially Toki Pona.)
Might as well share some resources here:
This channel is a godsend if you struggle with IPA or to pronounce specific articulations. It's all ~1min videos, each highlighting a single consonant, in a neat moving diagram that shows how to pronounce it. Make sure the audio is on.
Index Diachronica shows a bunch of sound changes across multiple language families. It is not an academic resource, take a grain of salt when using it, but it's useful if you want to look for examples. Doubly so if you're into constructed languages.

11 comments