'veritas'-'vera' (some Russian-Japanese trivia)

[Nobukatsu Minoura]

At 10:44 AM 9/26/96, Zev bar-Lev wrote:
> The Latin verus, veritas "true, truth" no doubt antedate any written
> reference to vera, verit' in Slavic.
>
> The two simply share an Indo-European source -- cf. also German wahr "true".

So 'veritas'-'vera' connection was sort of a "semi-folk etymology," wasn't
it?  They are cognates, but the route of connection was assumed wrongly.
When lay people (meaning non-linguists) find cognates in different
languages, they tend to ask "Which is original?"  They overlook an option
that neither is original but they merely come from the same source.  It's
just like claiming "Human beings came from apes!"  But the truth is only
that human beings and apes share a common origin.

And there are similar-sounding words in two languages with similar meaning
which cannot be acounted by genetics (cognates) but by diffusion (loan
words) or by coincidence.  In Japanese, my mother tongue, there are many
loan words from Russian:

Russian : Japanese : meaning
sivuch : seiuchi : walrus
ikra : ikura : fish roe (R), separated and prepared salmon roes (J)

And there are similar-sounding words with similar meaning which cannot be
explained by genetics nor by diffusion but only by coincidence:

Russian : Japanese : meaning
vata : wata : cotton

BTW, my Russian teacher, who is a famous Russian literatus and translator,
told us in a class that Japanese 'ruibe' is a loan word from Russian
'ryba.'  'Ruibe' is a dish of frozen and sliced raw salmon meat which is
supposed to be eaten when it's about to thaw.  But after all, that IS a
folk etymology.  Actually 'ruibe' is a loan word from Ainu, an indigenous
language in northern Japan which is genetically unrelated to Japanese.
It's analyzable in Ainu:

ruipe 'frozen (salmon) sashimi'
ru 'thaw,' ipe 'food'

Nobu

---------------------------------------------
Nobukatsu "Nobu" Minoura
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