interesting detritus

[katster]

Today's interesting fact of the day:

In spanish, the word la mañana means both "tomorrow" and "morning". zibblsnrt informs me that the same is true in German. So this got me curious, and I wondered if the 'mor' part of both words suggests a similiarity in English that isn't obviously apperant, and so I checked etymology, and got this for "tomorrow":

[Middle English to morow, from Old English t morgenne, in the morning : t, at, on; see to + morgenne, dative of morgen, morning.]

Now, I'm trying to figure out how this nifty little tidbit happened. How did we come to associate 'tomorrow' so strongly with 'morning'?

[Edit #1: Huh, another linguistical oddity. jillcaligirl informs me that, in all the romance languages and Germanic, the words for 'three' and 'mother' are very similiar. I don't see that one as easily. Hmmm.]

[Edit #2: Oh. Jill informs me it's like this. All the words for 'three' are very similiar. All the words for 'mother' are similiar. zibblsnrt adds father to that list. I misunderstood my sister. Ah, fun with linguistics.]

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... tres = mujere? Not terribly similar. But I can attest to confusion among uses of mañana in Spain. The past three weeks, I was there working on a joint project, and several times the non-Spanish staff would be confused over whether something was planned for the next morning or sometime the following day -- it was freely used both ways.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I imagine the tomorow and morning thing comes from our distant ancestors habit of rising with the sun and going to be at dark, so morning and the next day would be similar things..
In german, the phrase "morgen fruh" (morning early) is often used to get over the problem of how to say tomorrow morning with only one word, and avoid confusion about which one is meant.

[bioillogical.livejournal.com]

I was about to make mention about "mother" and "three" being similar in that, in most pagan religions, "mother" could refer to the the maiden, the mother, and the crone, the three representations of the goddess, the archetypical woman. Damn me for making that connection, and immediately seeing that I'm just leaping to conclusions. *chains down his leapy mind*

[malakim.livejournal.com]

What'll really flip your lid, then, is how similar the verb for 'to see/look' are in Spanish (mirar) and Japanese (miru). And those languages don't even have a common root. ^_^

[ms-interpret.livejournal.com]

There's a neat theory about why so many unrelated languages have words for 'mother' and 'father' that start with [m] and [d]. They're really really easy sounds to say, and babies make those noises very early on. Since we want to hear our babies call us, the words arose out of sounds babies say the earliest.

As for 'tomorrow' and 'morning', think of "I'll see you tomorrow" and "I'll see you in the morning".

Gotta love it. :)

[kaosfury.livejournal.com]

Also, the actual German word for morning is vormittag, but mst just use morgen. ;)