Quote:
Originally Posted by Sumippi
そ、それは難しそうですね、ラテン語起源くらいしか分 からないかも・・・（そのまんまだから）。う～ん…例 えば、beef, porkがフランス起源で、cow, pigがドイツ語とか古英語とかから来た、などということ って、「語の形」で分かるものなんでしょうか、（いや 、日本語すらも出来ていない私なので絶対無理・・・orz ）
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"Beef" and "pork" are tough, aren't they!
Typically, it is said that old concepts and ideas are going to be descended from the same langauge's forebearer. For example, (Old) English speakers a thousand years ago needed to be able to talk about water since it existed there. So they had a word for it. So naturally that word continued on to Modern English (wæter -> water). But for a newer concept like "jury," the dominant language of the time (French in England, spoken by the aristocracy) donated the word (juris (Lat.)->juree (Anglo-French)->jury).
The interesting thing about "beef" and "pork" is that the animal name is from Old English (cu->cow, pacg->pig), but the meat word is from French/Latin (boeuf->beef, porcus->pork). The theory is that poor, English-speaking people tended the animals (and so used Old English words), but the wealthy people who ate the meat, and the cooks who worked for the wealthy people in the kitchen, had to use the French word (boeuf, porcus).
An important thing to note, for people who don't know the history of England, is that in 1006 A.D., it was taken over by the French, and French remained the "court" language until the middle of the millennium.
To this day, Latin/French-based words carry an air of sophistication in English that Germanic words do not. Consider
please pardon my profanity, but I think this is a very interesting demonstration
"feces" versus "shit"
"copulate" versus "fuck"
"illegitimate" versus "bastard"
"penis" versus "dick/cock/prick"
etc.
Also, non-profane words like
labor vs. work
feline vs. cat
canine vs. dog
sustenance/cuisine vs. food/meal
Couple final notes: Japanese holds Chinese in similar respect, linguistically, with 使う being a less sophisticated word compared to 使用する, 買う vs. 購入する, etc.
Also, I tended to treat Latin and French equally in my post. This is because Latin was brought to England by the French (technically the Romans brought Latin to England, retreated and the language died out, then the French re-brought it, and it survived for a few hundred years as the upper-class language). Educated Japanese used Chinese hundreds of years ago while the lower classes used Japanese. Same deal.
You could say the 美化語 technique in English is to replace Germanic words with Latin/Frankish words.