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mort= dead!
in many Indo-European languages dead means something starting with -mor. Why doesn't english have a related word for "dead"?
list: Latin languages mort (death) as in mortal, mortician, immortal etc. Kurdish mirdu (dead) Welsh marw (dead)
" Why doesn't english have a related word for "dead"? "
Because english is a germanic language.
I think that word is quite popular. Even in Polish we have:
mord - murder morderstwo - murder but as a crime mordować - to murder morderca (male) - murderer However they begin from mor- we have absolutely another group of words for "death", "die": umrzeć (perfective) - to die umierać (imperfective) - to die umarli (plural) - the dead and suprise: śmierć - a death
In Afrikaans 'dead' is 'dood', 'to die' is 'sterf' - a cognate of the English 'starve'.
>>Mortal is derived from French. Not really english.<<
Ye but we use it in English and we understand it as an english word even if we don't speak French, so it's english. Anyway if we got rid of all the 'foreign' words in english we wouldn't have many words left!
Yep. Even the word "Foreign" is a mix of Middle English, Old French and Latin.
I think you are being Romance-centric in saying 'many indo-european languages'. If you look at some Germanic languages they are rather similar:-
Afrikaans: dood Dutch: dood English: dead German: Tod Maybe someone could tell us what it is in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish? I suspect the words would be of the same root.
Danish: død
Icelandic: dauður Norwegian: død Swedish: död Also--Yiddish (transliterated): toyt
The Finnish word 'tauti' is an ancient German borrowing (cfr. Icelandic 'daudhur') but it means 'disease'. Well, previously disease very often meant death.
The word for 'to die/death/dead' are in Finno-Ugric languages totally different from the Indo-European languages: in Finnish 'kuolla-kuolema-kuollut', in Estonian 'surema-surm-surnud', in (Northern) Saami 'jápmit-jápmim-jápmán', in Hungarian 'hal-halál-holt' (from same origin as Finnish 'kuollut'; in Hungarian 'k' has changed into 'h' in certain positions'). Still, the name of November is in Finnish 'marraskuu' (kuu = month, moon; in Finnish we don´t use international month names). 'Marras' comes from the same root as English 'mortal' (in ancient Indian 'martah'). Thus, November has been the 'month of death' for Finns.
Greg:[Middle English forein, from Old French forain, from Late Latin forānus, on the outside, from Latin forās, outside.]
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