LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.05 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 05 October 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.03 (02) [E]

In the case of English, there seem to have been a lot of "twin-words" in the
native Germanic, even before the French-speakers arrived: bird/fowl,
tree/beam, hound/dog etc. Some have since aquired rather different meanings
over time (tree/beam), but I wonder if this duality made English more
receptive to borrowing when the later languages came? Old English peakers
presumably had no problem with same thing having two or three different
names.



Paul

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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.05 (01) [E]

Heather, you wonder about conter/raconter: D tellen/vertellen

 I have always be intrigued by the relationship of telling / recounting a
story

e.g. conter/raconter  erzählen   all these have to do with NUMBERS! &
 counting

Where is the link?

Maybe that is to be found a very long time ago, when reading, writing, and
counting still were considered "Magics"

and only our shaman (men mans?) could perform those for us. Jacqueline

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From: Mike Morgan <mwmosaka at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.05 (01) [E]

Stan suggested:

> get yourself to a decent Chinese vegetarian restaurant and you'll
> discover how delicious bitter melon (kugua in Chinese, literally "bitter"
+
> "melon/gourd") can be.

Yes, well, 18 years in Japan, and now in India ... am not sure a
"decent" Chinese restaurant (and in Japan most certainly NOT a
vegetarian one) is to be found in either. ... And in fact, I probably
HAVE eaten kugua and LOVED it (in a Beijing vegetarian restaurant ...
or maybe in San Francisco or New York China town) ... but didn't know
it was the same "animal".

And as for R/R's

> have Uncle R/R cook some for you sometime.

I assume he means "uncle" in the Indian English sense of the term,
meaning a male old enough to have gray in his whiskers but quiet
possibly much younger than oneself and also possibly NOT ones parent's
brother.

> Names are important.

Most decidedly so!

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From: Wolfram Antepohl <wolfram at antepohl.se>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.05 (01) [E]

 I have always be intrigued by the relationship of telling / recounting a
story

e.g. conter/raconter  erzählen   all these have to do with NUMBERS! &
 counting

Where is the link?



Heather

More good points. But rather than suspecting coincidental concepts I'd still
suspect spread resulting in areal features, alternatively a much older
stratum in Indo-European development. Traces of the "tell" <> "count" link
are found in Slavic as well (e.g., Russian *считать*).

Hi Heather and Ron!

I have been wondering about that quite a lot. he connection between
"telling" and "counting" is obvious in many Germanic, Romanic and other IE
languages although it seems hidden in English. However, in the Online
Etymology Dictionairy I found this:



tale Look up tale at Dictionary.com

    O.E. talu "story, tale, the action of telling," from P.Gmc. *talo (cf.
Du. taal "speech, language"), from PIE base *del- "to recount, count." The
secondary Eng. sense of "number, numerical reckoning" (c.1200) probably was
the primary one in Gmc., cf. teller (see tell) and O.Fris. tale, M.Du. tal
"number," O.S. tala "number," O.H.G. zala, Ger. Zahl "number." The ground
sense of the Mod.Eng. word in its main meaning, then, might have been "an
account of things in their due order." Related to talk and tell. Meaning
"things divulged that were given secretly, gossip" is from c.1350; first
record of talebearer "tattletale" is 1478.



"An account of things in their due order" seems to be a great summary. N.B.
that even "account" and "order" comprize both language and mathematics. It
seems as if our IE ancestors did not really see them as different concepts
yet.



Greetings
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