Just a couple of things that I'd like to add.... 2:19 While _man_ has indeed displaced "wer/wyr/were" as a common noun, the latter still survives in such words as.... _virile_ (manly) and _triumvirate_ (rule by three men or three branches of government) 11:18 While the origins of "boy" and "girl" are indeed unknown and quite murky, the "dress" hypothesis would kind of make sense if it were ever proven. i.e., even today in informal settings, a woman is sometimes called a "skirt," and a womanizer is occasionally referred to as a "skirt chaser." But, once again, this remains _highly_ speculative. And as a side note, etymologists are also stumped as to why, in England, _girls_ are often called "birds." Some theorize that the term derives from a transposing of letters in the word _bride_ . Others, however, believe that it actually originated in Cockney rhyming slang. (viz., _girls_ rhymes with "birds and squirrels.") In America-for some weird reason-it became "chicks."
I didn't realize that "virile" was related. I would have included that in the video. But I'm highly skeptical of the Cockney rhyming slang origin of "bird". Even in French "Madmoiselle" - the "oiselle" part means (female) bird. It seems to be common to refer to woman as "birds" in many languages.
Women have been slangily (and sometimes affectionately) referred to as animals considered to be delicate or aesthetically pleasing throughout known history; there is no etymological relationship to any nouns that literally mean “woman” or “girl” necessary. In ancient Latin we have terms of endearment like “mea columba” (my dove). Bunny, Kitty, Birdie, and their various translations have been used as female nicknames in many western languages.
Both of those ("virile" and "triumvirate") are actually later borrowings from Romance languages and derived from Latin "vir". Technically they are cognates of "wer", but on the PIE level rather than direct descendants.
Actually, what you think strengthens the theory that the word for "girl" came from a word meaning "dress" actually weakens it. First, because it would make more sense to it to refer to an adult woman rather than to a young person, and second, well, because the word "girl" meant first a young person, and didn't denote gender...
German conveniently distinguishes between "man" meaning people in general, and "Mann" as a male person. For example "Man sagt, der Himmel sei blau. Fragen wir den Mann dort drüben, ob das stimmt." - "They say the sky is blue. Let's ask the man over there if it is true".
We haven't really lost the word, its still all over the place, such as in the examples Gideon gave: 'humanity' and so on. I've yet to hear anyone describe themselves as a 'Hu-woman' :P What's more of a shame I think is losing 'wer-man' from the language as that started the gendered perception of 'man' (albeit not until modern times). Think of how many language problems that would solve for us if we still had words distinctly meaning 'a male person', 'a female person' and 'a person'. And sure, then you could add as many other 'man' pronouns as you wanted for any range of genders that you might conceive without having to twist and mangle the language in awkward ways.
My favorite poem about a singular werewolf is this one in German, which might be as untranslatable as a poem can be. Der Werwolf Christian Morgenstern Ein Werwolf eines Nachts entwich von Weib und Kind, und sich begab an eines Dorfschullehrers Grab und bat ihn: Bitte, beuge mich! Der Dorfschulmeister stieg hinauf auf seines Blechschilds Messingknauf und sprach zum Wolf, der seine Pfoten geduldig kreuzte vor dem Toten: »Der Werwolf«, - sprach der gute Mann, »des Weswolfs« - Genitiv sodann, »dem Wemwolf« - Dativ, wie man’s nennt, »den Wenwolf« - damit hat’s ein End‘. Dem Werwolf schmeichelten die Fälle, er rollte seine Augenbälle. Indessen, bat er, füge doch zur Einzahl auch die Mehrzahl noch! Der Dorfschulmeister aber mußte gestehn, daß er von ihr nichts wußte. Zwar Wölfe gäb’s in großer Schar, doch „Wer“ gäb’s nur im Singular. Der Wolf erhob sich tränenblind - er hatte ja doch Weib und Kind! Doch da er kein Gelehrter eben, so schied er dankend und ergeben.
I have waited my whole life to finally find out where MAN and WOMAN comes from. And yes I think we should probably change the spelling to WIMMEN for plural
In a technical book, I used the word manmade but the editor insisted that I replace it with something else because it is not gender neutral. Over correction.?
Even as a fluent English speaker for a long time now, I can never wrap my head around the fact that women is pronounced "wimmin". It simply never rolls out. 😄
Theoretically to substitute mankind for humanity doesn't make a difference. Humanus is adjective for homo. Which, however, includes man and woman, although the word for man in the Romance languages came from homo (uomo, homme, hombre, homem) in opposition to mulier (female "homo"). But there was, for the Romans, the more specific uir and femina for man/male and woman/female. There was also uxor for wife, but no word for husband, although we could argue that the husband was the dominus (which has domus (house) in it, so, the lord of the household). However dominus does allow a feminine form, being originally an adjective (of the house). I'd be curious about the word uirgo (lass, maiden, damsel) in Latin, which has the root uir (male, man) in it... Interestingly, Latin uir(o) is the same word as your were.
Very eloquent and fun listening to. I do like this channel almost to the high bar of subscribing. I would like to hear more of the etymology of the word man. I’m from Iceland and we have that word in two forms. Man and maðr. The latter pronounced as in south and mouth. We also have these forms pronounced as suðr and muthr. The Old norse dialects were similar in York and Iceland.
Re: the final point, perhaps an analysis of girl/girdle/skirt/kirtle would be elucidating? We know that gird/encircle led to girdle/kirtle and presumably thus “skirt”. Could that perhaps be also the origin of girl?
🤯🤯🤯 I've always felt there was something missing with "woman" having a prefix and "man" not having one. The english language would be so much better if this hadn't happened! We would be able to just swap out the prefix to another one for people that don't want to use gender-specific prefixes, AND things like Fireman wouldn't have gender-specific implications. I'll never think about this the same way again. Excellent video!
I've only seen a few LetThemTalkTV presentations, but I've loved them all, both for content and presentation. I'd like to point out the development of something in the US for the last few years: People are starting to pronounce "women" as "woman", and the plural character is known only from context. (like "fish" as both singular and plural.) The phenomenon is scattered, but on the NPR show "Wait, Wait (Don't Tell Me)", host Peter Sagal never fails to pronounce women the same as the singular. I hear it in other places, but if you want to hear it for yourself, check out the show. I'm over 70, and I'm sure I NEVER heard this happen before I was 40. It's still rare, but the frequency is increasing.
Happy New Year, Gideon! 🎉 Wishing you all the best. Hope you hit 1M subs soon, you deserve it! 💪 And of course, thanks for tricking us into learning something new while keeping it fun! 😜
Also it bears noting that Old French “femelle”, ultimately from Latin “femina”, is the origin of “ female”, through folk etymology. It was falsely assumed to be connected to the word “male” ( from Latin “ masculus”).
The Thai word for werewolf is มนุษย์หมาป่า (ma-noot mah Pah) which literally means Forest Dog Person (though in reverse word order), or "Wolf Person". The "manoot" part comes from Sanskrit. I was in a family TV movie called The Milk-Tooth Vampire (แวมไพร์ฟันนำ้นม) in which I played the head of a trio of werewolves in pursuit of a 9-year old vampire boy. One my my pack was female, but we never mentioned if she was a wifwolf. I did call her a bitch when she betrayed us to the vampires.
In Dutch there is the heen-en-weerwolf too, the back and forth wolf. Because of his name, everybody was too scared to use his ferry which made this perfectly normal wolf very sad.
Hey Gideon, I know you are not in Paris, you must be somewhere nice and sunny, such as Las palmas. Are you in a rural place on a farm ? I can hear some kind of bird in the background sounds like wood pigeon.
Do you have a specific reason for asking that? 'To man' in the sense of 'to put men there' seems like a transparent formation to me. It also exists in the related Dutch language, as 'bemannen'.
Interestingly, in my dialect of American English (east coast mid-Atlantic - often referred to here as “news anchor” or “non-regional diction”) “salesman” and “salesmen” (and your other examples of fireman/firemen, etc) are actually not pronounced the same. In most English accents I think the reason it is pronounced the same is bc the a or e in the ending “men” is clipped. To me it sounds like “salesmun” in both. In my accent, you’d hear “salesmun” (though not as clipped or blurred as the English pronunciation) for the singular and distinctly “salesmen” for the plural - with the latter vowel sound like the e in “Beth” or “kept”
I use mid-Atlantic Newscaster (I'm an upper middle class New Yorker whose mother went to college, taught the accent to my father, and was generally pretty fastidious in this matter) and I pronounce salesman and salesmen the same. Now I'm going to have to keep my ears open and see how often your assessment rings true.
@ wish we could post voice notes in comments on RUclips! I find all of these intricacies extremely interesting just generally as a person who loves language but also as someone who does dialect coaching for stage acting. My parents are from the same town in bucks county PA and were born the same year yet they pronounce some words differently from each other, presumably bc of their parents’ accents. They also sound much more “non-regional” than many of the ppl they grew up with. Idk if that’s bc of different exposure or intention or what. My dad went to Princeton and one of his best friends there (and to this day) is from Long Island, with the classic stereotypical accent. My parents lived w him and would comment on him saying “cawfee” and “chawclet” and he didn’t even think he sounded that way! Lol sorry for the long comment 🥺😬 My cat is on me so all I can move rn is my arm
Thanks for this presentation. As I understand… German Herr is cognate with Greek Kyrie, which you may hear in church. Maybe you can confirm this. The Wife in Midwife refers to the woman giving birth. So a man can be a midwife; there are historical examples of male midwives. Wer, as in Werewolf, etc., is related to Virile. And finally, Girl is related to German Kerl, which is an informal term for a man, similar to Guy or Fellow in English. It’s strange that it has switched gender. It may also be related to the name Karl (which has many variations, some of which are feminine or gender-neutral).
My understanding of "guy" is that it's simply the French name Guy used to represent the average "Joe" as we say in the US. (We say "Joe Doe" for the generic anybody, where the English say "John Blow".) Of course, we don't pronounce it "Ghee" as do the French.
'Kyrios' and 'Herr' seem to be from different roots, the first being related to Latin 'cumulus' (denoting something like 'expanding'), and the second to Greek 'skotos' and Latin 'obscurus' (the Germanic form being a comparative of a word meaning 'grey').
I remember that in an earlier video you have mentioned a future video would be on werewolves. When your rock’n’roll tour with Matt Damon (or was it Jon? I can never tell them apart 🤔) playing the werewolf came out, I thought this was it but maybe this new video was actually the theme in your pipeline
I'm happy to hear you were paying attention. I've always wanted to talk about werewolves in a video and I finally got the chance. Wifwolves was a bonus.
I remember reading about the creation of the word Boycott. It comes from the period where rich people in England owned most of the farm land in Ireland. If I remember right, Boia was the name of the local overseer or manager of a particular tract of land owned by someone in England. At some point the absentee owner demanded more from his tenants than they could supply, with Mr Boia being the person on the ground who had to carry out the landowner directives. When it reached the crisis level, the Irish tenants decided to ostricize the manager. Refuse to speak with him or acknowledge his existence. I don't remember any other details about the story or why his cottage became the symbolic name for their actions before morphing into the current definition.
Очень интересно! Не знаю английский язык и не могу на нём говорить, но этимология языков и заимствования из разных языков меня очень увлекают! Спасибо за увлекательный рассказ! Привет из России. ))
Hi, Gideon, I've been following your videos on youtube for some time. You are a great and very interesting teacher. My name is Raul. I’m from Brazil. I live in São Paulol. I wonder if you could possibly recommend me a site where I could find good conversation classes on line with native british speakers. Even more specifically, if possible, conversation classes with teachers from Glasgow.
@LetThemTalkTV There's a funny fantastic Brazilian film, O Coronel e o Lobisomem, that I highly recommend. I don't usually like Brazilian films (being a Brazilian myself), but this one delights me!
A werewolf in Danish is a varulv. Identical. The wer occurs in Latin too, like triumvir, duomvir etc. And in medical records regarding obstetrics vir means the father. Or supposed father.
@@LetThemTalkTVI was just going to posit something similar, as “babu” “booboo” etc in many languages is either a literal or slang name for a child or specifically a little boy.
The deeper question, can profeession determine the status of person in society and his or her importance to society over multiple generations. All ancient and modern example shows not. For some consequetive generations might be but not for so many generations
Presumably the proto-Indo-European “Wiras” is the origin of/cognate with Latin “vir”? And thus we get the words “woman” “virility” and “werewolf” all from the same root?!
Very interesting video - thanks a lot for it! Some might find it interesting that the Anglo-Saxon (and thus Germanic) "man" still lives on in modern German. It is a gender neutral pronoun and serves as a universal, impersonal subject. In modern English you have to switch to other constructions. For example: "Wie macht man das?": a) "How do you do that?" b) "How does one do that?" c) "How do people do that?" d) "How is that done?"
@@Born.Toulouse I recently saw a video that explained the German “man”. I don’t recall where, exactly. It may have been here or on Words Unraveled. The idea presented is that German “man” is an adaptation of a French word. I don’t recall the details; maybe someone else can tell us more.
@@davidkantor7978 That would be interesting - any chance you find that video again? I asked ChatGPT about it, and the answer I got was that the origins of the German "man" are primarily Germanic. The French "on", which serves the same function as "man", may have contributed to consolidating and expanding the usage of "man" in German during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance-a period of intensive cultural and linguistic contact between German and French.
I would have thought that, being such a linguistic maven, you would know that the "w" in "schwa" comes from the initial Hebrew-to-German transliteration. So the word is really "shva", reflecting the Hebrew of 1000 years ago, when the Masoretes first used it to annotate the Hebrew Bible.
Couldn't understand the theory behind the different pronunciation of woman/women compares with similar words, to be honest. I'm probably dumb eheh happy new year
Because it is the plural of wifman, so women is pronouced wimmin. And by the way the word wer in werman is similar to mar as in marry, marriage which is supposed to have been used only by women to describe that they were going into a relationship with a werman. In Kurdish language we use mêr or merd to refer to a grown male, husband or a brave and generous person.
A ceorl is just a (free) man. Probably equivalent to señor "old man". Not a peasant but someone with less land than the minimum required to be a thegn. Possibly none but unlike a villein, they were free. Human is cognate with the groom in bridegroom.
Quite fascinating, thank you 😊😊 Keeping things lighthearted I’d have thought wimmin would have come from whim-men, perhaps referring to the particular time when women are pregnant and this being when cravings had better been served ☺️
There is no Old English word werman(n). It's existence is purely hypothetical. German Herr is not cognate with 'wer'. Herr is cognate with hoar/hoary meaning "grey".
Very informative and fascinating video! Thank you, Gideon!
This wifman enjoyed your first lesson of the year 😊
Thank you wifman.
Just a couple of things that I'd like to add....
2:19
While _man_ has indeed displaced "wer/wyr/were" as a common noun, the latter still survives in such words as....
_virile_ (manly)
and _triumvirate_ (rule by three men or three branches of government)
11:18
While the origins of "boy" and "girl" are indeed unknown and quite murky, the "dress" hypothesis would kind of make sense if it were ever proven.
i.e., even today in informal settings, a woman is sometimes called a "skirt," and a womanizer is occasionally referred to as a "skirt chaser."
But, once again, this remains _highly_ speculative.
And as a side note, etymologists are also stumped as to why, in England, _girls_ are often called "birds."
Some theorize that the term derives from a transposing of letters in the word _bride_ . Others, however, believe that it actually originated in Cockney rhyming slang. (viz., _girls_ rhymes with "birds and squirrels.")
In America-for some weird reason-it became "chicks."
I didn't realize that "virile" was related. I would have included that in the video. But I'm highly skeptical of the Cockney rhyming slang origin of "bird". Even in French "Madmoiselle" - the "oiselle" part means (female) bird. It seems to be common to refer to woman as "birds" in many languages.
Women have been slangily (and sometimes affectionately) referred to as animals considered to be delicate or aesthetically pleasing throughout known history; there is no etymological relationship to any nouns that literally mean “woman” or “girl” necessary.
In ancient Latin we have terms of endearment like “mea columba” (my dove). Bunny, Kitty, Birdie, and their various translations have been used as female nicknames in many western languages.
Both of those ("virile" and "triumvirate") are actually later borrowings from Romance languages and derived from Latin "vir". Technically they are cognates of "wer", but on the PIE level rather than direct descendants.
Actually, what you think strengthens the theory that the word for "girl" came from a word meaning "dress" actually weakens it. First, because it would make more sense to it to refer to an adult woman rather than to a young person, and second, well, because the word "girl" meant first a young person, and didn't denote gender...
+1 for the Warren Zevon snippet at the end.
As a Londoner with werewolf tendencies. I couldn't possibly not include that.
German conveniently distinguishes between "man" meaning people in general, and "Mann" as a male person. For example "Man sagt, der Himmel sei blau. Fragen wir den Mann dort drüben, ob das stimmt." - "They say the sky is blue. Let's ask the man over there if it is true".
On the other hand the word for friend and boyfriend is the same. You win some you lose some.
In Dutch "weerman" is a weatherman... Local weather reports will never be the same 🤭
losing man as a gender neutral word is a tragedy 😭
It's still a gender neutral word, it just depends on when the book you are reading was written.
Yeah, we need another.
We have 'one' as a gender neutral word for the generic person, but it's not used so much anymore. eg "one never knows" "one would expect .."
We haven't really lost the word, its still all over the place, such as in the examples Gideon gave: 'humanity' and so on. I've yet to hear anyone describe themselves as a 'Hu-woman' :P What's more of a shame I think is losing 'wer-man' from the language as that started the gendered perception of 'man' (albeit not until modern times). Think of how many language problems that would solve for us if we still had words distinctly meaning 'a male person', 'a female person' and 'a person'. And sure, then you could add as many other 'man' pronouns as you wanted for any range of genders that you might conceive without having to twist and mangle the language in awkward ways.
So true, compounded by Victorian legislation that made sure man meant male to exclude women from property...
My favorite poem about a singular werewolf is this one in German, which might be as untranslatable as a poem can be.
Der Werwolf
Christian Morgenstern
Ein Werwolf eines Nachts entwich
von Weib und Kind, und sich begab
an eines Dorfschullehrers Grab
und bat ihn: Bitte, beuge mich!
Der Dorfschulmeister stieg hinauf
auf seines Blechschilds Messingknauf
und sprach zum Wolf, der seine Pfoten
geduldig kreuzte vor dem Toten:
»Der Werwolf«, - sprach der gute Mann,
»des Weswolfs« - Genitiv sodann,
»dem Wemwolf« - Dativ, wie man’s nennt,
»den Wenwolf« - damit hat’s ein End‘.
Dem Werwolf schmeichelten die Fälle,
er rollte seine Augenbälle.
Indessen, bat er, füge doch
zur Einzahl auch die Mehrzahl noch!
Der Dorfschulmeister aber mußte
gestehn, daß er von ihr nichts wußte.
Zwar Wölfe gäb’s in großer Schar,
doch „Wer“ gäb’s nur im Singular.
Der Wolf erhob sich tränenblind -
er hatte ja doch Weib und Kind!
Doch da er kein Gelehrter eben,
so schied er dankend und ergeben.
I had to read it a few times, but it is quite enjoyable. :)
If wereman was the male human wouldn't werewolf just be the male wolf?
"were" isn't a replacement for "male" since it refers specifically to a male human.
I have waited my whole life to finally find out where MAN and WOMAN comes from. And yes I think we should probably change the spelling to WIMMEN for plural
The wait is finally over. Thanks
In a technical book, I used the word manmade but the editor insisted that I replace it with something else because it is not gender neutral. Over correction.?
BTW, there is a gender-neutral word for manmade: artificial...
Love all of your videos Gideon. Happy new year.
Just an aside, George Formby went Swimmin with Wimmin. 😁
I'll give it a listen. Thanks
It's fascinating to illustrate these issues, thanks to you I've been paying attention to correct pronunciations and etymologies are mega interesting
Thanks I'm glad you share this fascination...a lot more to come.
@LetThemTalkTV Anxiously waiting🙌
Even as a fluent English speaker for a long time now, I can never wrap my head around the fact that women is pronounced "wimmin". It simply never rolls out. 😄
I understand. If you ignore the spelling then it makes more sense.
English as second language speakers like my mom say woo man
No worse than “through”, “benign”, etc etc 😂
Sounds like we-men 😭😂
@@feelthejoywtf is benign 😭
Fascinating. Thank you.
thanks
Theoretically to substitute mankind for humanity doesn't make a difference. Humanus is adjective for homo. Which, however, includes man and woman, although the word for man in the Romance languages came from homo (uomo, homme, hombre, homem) in opposition to mulier (female "homo"). But there was, for the Romans, the more specific uir and femina for man/male and woman/female. There was also uxor for wife, but no word for husband, although we could argue that the husband was the dominus (which has domus (house) in it, so, the lord of the household). However dominus does allow a feminine form, being originally an adjective (of the house).
I'd be curious about the word uirgo (lass, maiden, damsel) in Latin, which has the root uir (male, man) in it...
Interestingly, Latin uir(o) is the same word as your were.
I've seen that husband is a version of house-bound. I liked the notion, but didn't do further research.
'Maritus' is the word typically used for a husband in Latin literature.
Very eloquent and fun listening to. I do like this channel almost to the high bar of subscribing. I would like to hear more of the etymology of the word man. I’m from Iceland and we have that word in two forms. Man and maðr. The latter pronounced as in south and mouth. We also have these forms pronounced as suðr and muthr. The Old norse dialects were similar in York and Iceland.
thanks for the interesting explanation
fascinating stuff. I'm wondering about the origins of laddie and lassie.
Re: the final point, perhaps an analysis of girl/girdle/skirt/kirtle would be elucidating? We know that gird/encircle led to girdle/kirtle and presumably thus “skirt”. Could that perhaps be also the origin of girl?
Is there any connection between the Latin manus (meaning hand, hence manicure and manipulate) and the 'man' part of werman?
🤯🤯🤯
I've always felt there was something missing with "woman" having a prefix and "man" not having one. The english language would be so much better if this hadn't happened! We would be able to just swap out the prefix to another one for people that don't want to use gender-specific prefixes, AND things like Fireman wouldn't have gender-specific implications. I'll never think about this the same way again. Excellent video!
Great vid!
I've only seen a few LetThemTalkTV presentations, but I've loved them all, both for content and presentation.
I'd like to point out the development of something in the US for the last few years: People are starting to pronounce "women" as "woman", and the plural character is known only from context. (like "fish" as both singular and plural.) The phenomenon is scattered, but on the NPR show "Wait, Wait (Don't Tell Me)", host Peter Sagal never fails to pronounce women the same as the singular. I hear it in other places, but if you want to hear it for yourself, check out the show. I'm over 70, and I'm sure I NEVER heard this happen before I was 40. It's still rare, but the frequency is increasing.
Interesting I'll look out for that.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for an interesting video.
Great video, Gideon, and thank you (no sarcasm ment)
Happy New Year, Gideon! 🎉 Wishing you all the best. Hope you hit 1M subs soon, you deserve it! 💪
And of course, thanks for tricking us into learning something new while keeping it fun! 😜
Many thanks, Best wishes for the New Year.
Also it bears noting that Old French “femelle”, ultimately from Latin “femina”, is the origin of “ female”, through folk etymology. It was falsely assumed to be connected to the word “male” ( from Latin “ masculus”).
The Thai word for werewolf is มนุษย์หมาป่า (ma-noot mah Pah) which literally means Forest Dog Person (though in reverse word order), or "Wolf Person". The "manoot" part comes from Sanskrit. I was in a family TV movie called The Milk-Tooth Vampire (แวมไพร์ฟันนำ้นม) in which I played the head of a trio of werewolves in pursuit of a 9-year old vampire boy. One my my pack was female, but we never mentioned if she was a wifwolf. I did call her a bitch when she betrayed us to the vampires.
By the way, I like that you went with images of the usually overlooked movie Werewolf of London. I quite like that film.
In Dutch there is the heen-en-weerwolf too, the back and forth wolf. Because of his name, everybody was too scared to use his ferry which made this perfectly normal wolf very sad.
interesting
No way...
Hey Gideon, I know you are not in Paris, you must be somewhere nice and sunny, such as Las palmas.
Are you in a rural place on a farm ? I can hear some kind of bird in the background sounds like wood pigeon.
Yes, those birds were damned noisy.
Since I was a little, I have always been fascinated by birds and fish. Still till this day, old chap.
Merci beaucoup jeune homme!
Take care for now.
Could the man in man your station be rooted in the latin manus and not the anglican man?
Do you have a specific reason for asking that? 'To man' in the sense of 'to put men there' seems like a transparent formation to me. It also exists in the related Dutch language, as 'bemannen'.
@@ansibarius4633 I was thinking to manipulate the apparatus, steering wheel, rudder, etc...
Interestingly, in my dialect of American English (east coast mid-Atlantic - often referred to here as “news anchor” or “non-regional diction”) “salesman” and “salesmen” (and your other examples of fireman/firemen, etc) are actually not pronounced the same. In most English accents I think the reason it is pronounced the same is bc the a or e in the ending “men” is clipped. To me it sounds like “salesmun” in both.
In my accent, you’d hear “salesmun” (though not as clipped or blurred as the English pronunciation) for the singular and distinctly “salesmen” for the plural - with the latter vowel sound like the e in “Beth” or “kept”
I use mid-Atlantic Newscaster (I'm an upper middle class New Yorker whose mother went to college, taught the accent to my father, and was generally pretty fastidious in this matter) and I pronounce salesman and salesmen the same. Now I'm going to have to keep my ears open and see how often your assessment rings true.
@ wish we could post voice notes in comments on RUclips! I find all of these intricacies extremely interesting just generally as a person who loves language but also as someone who does dialect coaching for stage acting. My parents are from the same town in bucks county PA and were born the same year yet they pronounce some words differently from each other, presumably bc of their parents’ accents. They also sound much more “non-regional” than many of the ppl they grew up with. Idk if that’s bc of different exposure or intention or what. My dad went to Princeton and one of his best friends there (and to this day) is from Long Island, with the classic stereotypical accent. My parents lived w him and would comment on him saying “cawfee” and “chawclet” and he didn’t even think he sounded that way! Lol sorry for the long comment 🥺😬 My cat is on me so all I can move rn is my arm
Thanks for this presentation.
As I understand…
German Herr is cognate with Greek Kyrie, which you may hear in church.
Maybe you can confirm this.
The Wife in Midwife refers to the woman giving birth. So a man can be a midwife; there are historical examples of male midwives.
Wer, as in Werewolf, etc., is related to Virile.
And finally, Girl is related to German Kerl, which is an informal term for a man, similar to Guy or Fellow in English. It’s strange that it has switched gender. It may also be related to the name Karl (which has many variations, some of which are feminine or gender-neutral).
My understanding of "guy" is that it's simply the French name Guy used to represent the average "Joe" as we say in the US. (We say "Joe Doe" for the generic anybody, where the English say "John Blow".) Of course, we don't pronounce it "Ghee" as do the French.
'Kyrios' and 'Herr' seem to be from different roots, the first being related to Latin 'cumulus' (denoting something like 'expanding'), and the second to Greek 'skotos' and Latin 'obscurus' (the Germanic form being a comparative of a word meaning 'grey').
@ thanks. I’ll check that out .
In German, there’s the term „ der Bub-die Buben“ meaning boy-boys. Do you believe that there is an etymological connection between the two?
I remember that in an earlier video you have mentioned a future video would be on werewolves. When your rock’n’roll tour with Matt Damon (or was it Jon? I can never tell them apart 🤔) playing the werewolf came out, I thought this was it but maybe this new video was actually the theme in your pipeline
I'm happy to hear you were paying attention. I've always wanted to talk about werewolves in a video and I finally got the chance. Wifwolves was a bonus.
I remember you saying once Boycott came from Charles Cunningham Boycott.
Are you having a Moroccan Hamam / Hamam 😂😂
No, I'm not. The name Boycott goest back more than a 1000 years
I remember reading about the creation of the word Boycott. It comes from the period where rich people in England owned most of the farm land in Ireland. If I remember right, Boia was the name of the local overseer or manager of a particular tract of land owned by someone in England. At some point the absentee owner demanded more from his tenants than they could supply, with Mr Boia being the person on the ground who had to carry out the landowner directives.
When it reached the crisis level, the Irish tenants decided to ostricize the manager. Refuse to speak with him or acknowledge his existence.
I don't remember any other details about the story or why his cottage became the symbolic name for their actions before morphing into the current definition.
Очень интересно! Не знаю английский язык и не могу на нём говорить, но этимология языков и заимствования из разных языков меня очень увлекают! Спасибо за увлекательный рассказ! Привет из России. ))
Hi, Gideon, I've been following your videos on youtube for some time. You are a great and very interesting teacher. My name is Raul. I’m from Brazil. I live in São Paulol.
I wonder if you could possibly recommend me a site where I could find good conversation classes on line with native british speakers. Even more specifically, if possible, conversation classes with teachers from Glasgow.
If I’m not mistaken, Glasgow is Scotland’s capital city. Thus, they don’t speak with British accent but with Scottish one.
Thanks for your comment. I'm afraid I don't know about conversation classes.
Portuguese "lobisomem" (lobo + homem).
always carry a silver bullet.
@LetThemTalkTV There's a funny fantastic Brazilian film, O Coronel e o Lobisomem, that I highly recommend. I don't usually like Brazilian films (being a Brazilian myself), but this one delights me!
@@gustavoolivieri6568 It's here on youtube!
how to stop the terrible automatic dubbing?
I've switched them off. I didn't know it was happening. sorry for that.
@@LetThemTalkTV many thanks indeed !
A werewolf in Danish is a varulv. Identical. The wer occurs in Latin too, like triumvir, duomvir etc. And in medical records regarding obstetrics vir means the father. Or supposed father.
Could it be that "boy" and "girl" were terms of endearment that referred to something else, such as "kid" or, in French, "chou"?
possibly
@@LetThemTalkTVI was just going to posit something similar, as “babu” “booboo” etc in many languages is either a literal or slang name for a child or specifically a little boy.
No prisons? What a wise society!
I still pronounce *x*man and *x*men differently. Fairly certain that I pronounce woman and women the same, however.
The deeper question, can profeession determine the status of person in society and his or her importance to society over multiple generations.
All ancient and modern example shows not. For some consequetive generations might be but not for so many generations
Interesting topic.....
And even more confusing would be _menswear_ 😂
It is possible to say "crew your stations"
Presumably the proto-Indo-European “Wiras” is the origin of/cognate with Latin “vir”? And thus we get the words “woman” “virility” and “werewolf” all from the same root?!
Very interesting video - thanks a lot for it!
Some might find it interesting that the Anglo-Saxon (and thus Germanic) "man" still lives on in modern German. It is a gender neutral pronoun and serves as a universal, impersonal subject. In modern English you have to switch to other constructions.
For example: "Wie macht man das?": a) "How do you do that?" b) "How does one do that?" c) "How do people do that?" d) "How is that done?"
@@Born.Toulouse I recently saw a video that explained the German “man”. I don’t recall where, exactly. It may have been here or on Words Unraveled.
The idea presented is that German “man” is an adaptation of a French word. I don’t recall the details; maybe someone else can tell us more.
@@davidkantor7978 That would be interesting - any chance you find that video again?
I asked ChatGPT about it, and the answer I got was that the origins of the German "man" are primarily Germanic. The French "on", which serves the same function as "man", may have contributed to consolidating and expanding the usage of "man" in German during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance-a period of intensive cultural and linguistic contact between German and French.
@@Born.Toulouse I tried looking for it. Regrettably, I’ve not found it yet. I’ll let you know if I do find it.
You did it again: Lifelong mystery solved! So fascinating 🤨
Glad to help solve the mystery.
What exactly is the reasoning behind the image used at 2:00 ? You all know what I'm talking about. No hate, just wondering.
I don't understand your question.
Sure you do, and I consider my question answered.
"sure you do" no, I have absolutely no idea what you're on about so no, it's not "answered".
On the woman/women front, I'll say that I've noticed these two are often mixed up in writing even by native English speakers.
I would have thought that, being such a linguistic maven, you would know that the "w" in "schwa" comes from the initial Hebrew-to-German transliteration. So the word is really "shva", reflecting the Hebrew of 1000 years ago, when the Masoretes first used it to annotate the Hebrew Bible.
that's interesting thanks
Couldn't understand the theory behind the different pronunciation of woman/women compares with similar words, to be honest. I'm probably dumb eheh happy new year
Alright guv'nor? Seeing you puts in a state of euphoria 😊
Fare thee well r kid.
Bye Gideon
Why the hell do I watch this video in german???
Probably because of the audio dubbing. You can revert it back to the original language in the video options
Sorry, I didn't know. I've just switched off auto-dubbing.
@@LetThemTalkTV Thank you!!! Now it works perfectly.
English teachers are cool....
Because it is the plural of wifman, so women is pronouced wimmin. And by the way the word wer in werman is similar to mar as in marry, marriage which is supposed to have been used only by women to describe that they were going into a relationship with a werman. In Kurdish language we use mêr or merd to refer to a grown male, husband or a brave and generous person.
Makes sense
A ceorl is just a (free) man. Probably equivalent to señor "old man". Not a peasant but someone with less land than the minimum required to be a thegn. Possibly none but unlike a villein, they were free.
Human is cognate with the groom in bridegroom.
Funny, in flemish dialect "wyf" means woman.
Quite fascinating, thank you 😊😊
Keeping things lighthearted I’d have thought wimmin would have come from whim-men, perhaps referring to the particular time when women are pregnant and this being when cravings had better been served ☺️
I like it.
Can we please go back to Wereman/Woman and end the unnecessary arguments.
Why don't we just make it wimen?
❤🎉
sir, i created a word : a flatcat. meaning something repeated too much. came to me having seen a flat cat on the highway
There is no Old English word werman(n). It's existence is purely hypothetical. German Herr is not cognate with 'wer'. Herr is cognate with hoar/hoary meaning "grey".
In South African English 'women' is widely pronounced 'woman'.