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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Is there an etymological link between "qanāt" and "canal"?

The answer appears to be yes. Both Arabic qanāt and Greek kánna are related to the Akkadian qanû, meaning "reed". The Greek word became latin canna for cane, then canalis for pipe or channel. See this entry in the Etymological Dictionary of Arabic for more: https://www2.hf.uio.no/polyglotta/index.php?page=record&view...

It's the exact same thing.

For example, Suez Canal is called "Qanat al-Suez" in Arabic.

That doesn't answer the GP's question of whether there's an etymological link. That is, are the two words derived from the same root in some ancient language? It is a reasonable question since they are phonologically similar, but from different language families.

And just because two words sound similar doesn't mean they have similar roots. The word for “dog” in the Australian Aboriginal language Mbabaram happens to be “dog,” not because they have the same root but by coincidence.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UtFqXQosVP0C&pg=PT283&lp...

Just to add to the fun, the etymology of the word "dog" itself is completely unknown.

There's a single documented mention of the Old English "docga" - and then nothing.

How this word took over pretty much well entirely from "hound" is a mystery.

If that's not enough, the Polish word for dog - "pies" - has exactly the same issue!

(and I believe, but can't say with any certainty, that other Slavic languages may have the same issue.)

Edit: Oxford English's page on "dog" is paywalled off but still available in via Google's cache, a fascinating read if you have a spare 15 minutes:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jNMSJSG...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/p...

There's a great list of these at

https://web.archive.org/web/20070227031854/http://members.ao...

they're known as "false cognates" in linguistics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate

This one btw doesn't include the one that is strangest to me: that Chinese for mom or momma is 妈妈 "mama" and pop, pappa is 爸爸 "baba".

What is also interesting is that certain words share similar literal constructions in unrelated languages.

The best example I've always thought of is the verb "to understand". Picture standing under something; you get to know it better.

In my native language Twi [1], the to understand is literally constructed as "to to sit under" I know of several other languages with very similar constructions.

[1] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/twi.htm

These are nearly universal AFAIK. I've heard stipulated a link between this and the fact that these are the first sounds a child will learn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa

> these are the first sounds a child will learn.

Not really, no. 'Gaga' or 'kaka' are just as easy yet aren't universal. The mystery is not solved. (Could be just areal effects, for example.)

Easy for an adult, not so easy for a baby. Bilabial and coronal sounds don't take much tongue dexterity: you just need to be able to open/close your lips and leave your tongue in its natural resting position respectively to produce them. Velar sounds, on the other hand, require you to flex the middle of your tongue to touch your palate, which is as significantly more difficult sound to produce.

It's no coincidence that sounds like 'gaga' and 'kaka' tend to be associated with either more distant relatives or with defecation: the kid's going to be older when those things get introduced.

There's nothing even slightly strange about it. The terms are self-recapitulating because parents mistake children's babbling for first words. If anything, it'd be strange if they weren't the same. Take a read of this: http://languagehat.com/trask-on-mama-and-papa/

Addendum: in case anybody's wondering what I meant when I wrote "it'd be strange if they weren't the same", I was referring to the high probability of them being coincidentally the same or at least very similar.

Then why isn't aunt "gaga" in all languages?

Why would it be? What's your reasoning for expecting it to be? Did you read the paper linked to?

I always presumed these were universal because they are the easiest sounds for infants to make.

I'm not sure why that was downvoted. It's a reasonable assertion.

And correct, as it happens. Though long-running cultural associations with certain consonants (such as 'm', 'n' and 'b' and mother or grandmother, 'p' and 'd' with father or grandfather, &c.) to play a huge role in it too: the parents need to be culturally primed to mistake the babbling for actual half-formed words, and subsequently build that association in the child's mind in return.

Couldn't have said it better (obviously) myself. Thanks!

The 'ma' and 'pa' sounds are some of the easiest sounds to make by babies since they just require the lips and don't involve the tongue.

You might be interested in the article by Larry Trask linked to here: http://languagehat.com/trask-on-mama-and-papa/

I'm not sure why I was downvoted - Larry Trask's article has the exact same explanation i gave above - mainly that the 'm' and 'p' sounds are the easiest consonant vocalizations that babies can do.

canal deriv. : 1400-50; late Middle English: waterpipe, tubular passage < Latin canālis, perhaps equivalent to can (na) reed, pipe (see cane ) + -ālis -al1; def. 5 a mistranslation of Italian canali channels, term used by G. V. Schiaparelli

The linked article has an etymology section, says qanat is arabic for channel.

I am not an expert by any means, so we should wait the opinion of someone more competent than me, however.

I will say that there are not any link.

Most words in English come from two different roots, the German one and the Latin one.

It actually happens than in Latin "canal" is "canalis", so I can believe that the English word "canal" comes from Latin.

Usually Latin and Greek are the two roots and you don't explore deeper than that, but, given my limited knowledge, I cannot exclude that "qanat" comes too from Latin.

Edit: For completeness, the intermediated step between the Latin "canalis" and the English "canal" could be the Italian "canale"

Edit2: Actually from this page [1] it looks like the Latin "canalis" comes from the Greek "ka na" perhaps from the Assyrian "qanu". So it may be that there is a common root.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Qanat

> Most words in English come from two different roots, the German one and the Latin one.

Not quite?

What I'm going to say is not exact but as a first approximation it should be okay[1].

English is a Germanic language[2]. Most (all?) common words in Modern English share a common ancestor with their counterparts in Modern German/Dutch/Swedish/Danish/Swiss/Norwegian -- I've left out a bunch, sorry! So lexically and structurally they are very similar. That doesn't mean that most words are Germanic in origin, however it does mean that in any given text most word _occurrences_ are going to be. This accounts for a quarter (~25%) of the lexicon but the _bulk_ of words in any given text.

So words like "is", "can", "will", "must", "water", "the", "and", "word", "bread", "blood", and so on.

Of the rest English has borrowed from _many_ sources. Latin (but this is true of many languages) and French being equally predominant, a bit less than 30% each. Latin because of the Roman Empire and subsequently Latin being the language of European learning. French because of the Norman conquest of England. You ought not to think of this as being borrowed twice over from Latin, once directly, once indirectly. The influence of French on English is immense.

Of the remaining, (Ancient) Greek at a bit more than 5% features predominantly -- though it punches above its weight because so many crucial technical words are from this source, words we'd be hamstrung without.

Then words derived from proper names, then words derived from other European and Indo-European languages. Then the rest of the world.

As Persian/Farsi is an Indo-European language it would be unwise to say there is no link. Especially if the technology is old and the technology spread. And I think a sibling-ish comment points out that there is a direct link.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words_by_coun...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-l...

You left out the Arabic influence, which is considerable for a huge amount of words in the sciences, math, chemistry, astrology, geology, botany and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Arabi...

Well … I didn't single it out even though it is on the border of being statistically significant but then again I did not mention any Semitic language. I didn't technically leave it out; it's lumped together in the "rest of the the world" bucket. Going by the link you gave me there are ~150 words of Arabic origin in English excluding domain specific jargon, far less than 1% of the language. But I take your point -- probably coming after the languages I mentioned and taking into account the order I mentioned them in Arabic would come next.

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