On Wed, May 8, 2013 14:28, Barkmeyer, Edward J wrote:
> For the record, 'tea', German Tee and Russian chai are all cognates. All
> of those Indo-European forms are cognates, and they are as John says, all
> taken from Han words for the plant. But the Mandarin term and the
> Cantonese term are also cognates -- variants of a common Han precursor.
> ...
> Whatever the former term was, it fell into disuse. (01)
The 17th Century Bailey's Dictionary, defines "tea" as "the liquor
made from the leaves of a known Chinese plant." And "liquor"
has the primary meaning of liquid. (02)
The OED has "tea"/"chai" as coming eventually from Mandarin. (03)
> (The previous term was probably more like 'brew' or 'potion',
> which also suggest that there may have been another reason why 'tea'
> became an acceptable term, the earlier terms and the often medicinal
> purposes of such brews being associated with 'witchcraft'.) This
> is exactly the kind of thing the authors refer to as creating the "half
> life" of words.
>
> Is there a lesson for ontologies in this? Or is this yet more "fun with
> linguistics"? (04)
It seems the latter. (05)
-- doug (06)
> -Ed
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 11:28 AM
>> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] 15,000-year-old ancestral language
>>
>> Pat C, Matthew, Ed,
>>
>> PC
>> > The word "bark" (or "barking") is not included in the Longman defining
>> > vocabulary.
>>
>> I believe that they meant 'bark' in the sense of the outer covering of
>> trees.
>> Its survival in northern Eurasia is probably due to the importance of
>> birch bark
>> in pre-industrial societies. For examples, see
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark
>>
>> PC
>> > the notion of animal sounds being very basic had not occurred to me,
>> > nor appeared in the works I have seen.
>>
>> But the way animal sounds are represented as words in any language is
>> extremely variable. It depends on which sounds are considered
>> important,
>> how they're interpreted, and what patterns of phonology match those
>> interpretations. Just consider all the word forms that mimic the sounds
>> of
>> animals in English and other languages.
>>
>> > Did water and tea really not make the list? Tea especially.
>>
>> The word for tea in most languages is borrowed from Chinese.
>> Traders who went by sea to southern China adopted words like 'tea' from
>> Cantonese. Those that traded with the north, borrowed words like 'cha'
>> or
>> 'chai' from Mandarin.
>>
>> There are exceptions, such as 'herbata' in Polish. Poland is on the
>> border
>> between Russian 'chai' and German 'Tee'.
>>
>> As for water, it is so common that it appears in many different forms
>> with
>> different words. Which one becomes the generic term is accidental. The
>> English 'water' is cognate with the Greek 'hydor' and the Latin 'unda'
>> (wave) -
>> - not Latin 'aqua'.
>>
>> EJB
>> > And in the latter half of the 20th century it became commonplace in
>> > our trade to re-invent the same old wheels every 5-10 years with a
>> > whole new set of terms to suggest that there was a "new" technology.
>>
>> That's true, but the core vocabulary changes much more slowly.
>> Japanese, for example, has a huge number of words borrowed from
>> Chinese, but they still have a strong native core. Now they're
>> borrowing so
>> many words from English that the older generation of Japanese can't read
>> their daily newspapers.
>>
>> By the way, their words for tea and rice are borrowed from Chinese, but
>> they
>> are also using the word 'raisu', which was first borrowed in the phrase
>> 'kari
>> raisu'.
>>
>> John
>>
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