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A comment on Ask HN: Teach me something new. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Teach me something new by euroderf on Saturday April 30, 2022 @10:19AM (#31216255)
In IE languages, the words for water basically follow either "aqua" or "water". Finnish (it's Ugric, not IE) follows the latter, with "vesi" (combining form "vete-").
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Re:Ask HN: Teach me something new by Contexti on Saturday April 30, 2022 @05:14PM (#31219434)
To be pedantic, Finnish is not Ugric. Hungarian is Ugric, Finnish is Finnic. They both are Finno-Ugric, a.k.a Uralic. Many non-linguist Finns mix up Finno-Ugric and Ugric.

The Proto-Uralic *weti "water" looks like it could come from IE *u̯ódr̥, *udén- "water", but that etymology is problematic because of irregular sound substitutions[0]:

- why would Uralic have *e when it's not present in the IE original?

- why would Uralic drop *r or *n at the end?

[0] Simon, Z. (2020). Urindogermanische Lehnwörter in den uralischen und finno-ugrischen Grundsprachen. Indogermanische Forschungen, 125(1), 239–266. https://doi.org/10.1515/if-2020-011

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Re:Ask HN: Teach me something new by euroderf on Monday May 02, 2022 @01:40PM (#31238266)
A-ha, good to know. And sori on the "Ugric".

As for irregular sound substitutions, well, water IS a very common concept & word, so I would think that anything goes.

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