Yoïn van Spijk

The origin of the word ‘iron’ is shrouded in mystery.

It comes from a Proto-Germanic word that was most probably borrowed from Proto-Celtic *īsarnom, the ancestor of Irish ‘iarann’. The Celts were skilful metal workers during the Iron Age.

However, tracing *īsarnom further back has proven to be hard.

My new graphic shows four hypotheses, as well as the many descendants of *īsarnom in Celtic and Germanic:

The numbers ‘twenty’ to ‘ninety’ end in ‘-ty’.
Where does this part come from?

While it’s now a suffix, ‘-ty’ stems from a Proto-Germanic noun meaning “decade, a (group of) ten”.

For example, ‘forty’ comes from *fedwōr tegiwiz, literally “four tens”.

Only Icelandic, Swedish, and Elfdalian have preserved this word as a noun.

Click my new graphic to learn all about ‘-ty’ and its relatives:

The English verb ‘to see’ is very distantly related to the verb ‘to sue’ – and also to ‘segue’, ‘second’ and ‘sequence’.

Via Germanic and Latin, they all come from a Proto-Indo-European root whose meaning can be reconstructed as “to follow”.

In Germanic, this meaning shifted to “to follow with the eyes”.

Click my new graphic to learn more.

As the graphic shows, the Proto-Indo-European root that’s at the basis of these words is *sekʷ- (“to follow”). Through derivatives of its Latin ... 1/

Na de twee prijsnominaties van 'Die goeie ouwe taal' maakt nu mijn boek 'Woord voor woord: de verleden tijd van taal' kans op een prijs. Het is genomineerd voor de Language Industry Awards van De Taalsector én op de shortlist gezet!

Wil je dat ik win in de categorie 'beste boek', dan kun je me helpen: stem t/m 22 maart via de link hieronder. Daar lees je ook alles over 'Woord voor woord' en zijn conculega's:
https://www.languageindustryawards.eu/nominaties-2024-25/

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