Re:How French Was Medieval England?
by philwelch on Saturday January 27, 2024 @02:46AM
(#39153533)
English also constructs compound words out of Greek or Latin roots. For example “television” is a technology for seeing things that are happening far away (i.e. in a broadcasting studio); the German word is “Fernsehen”, which would be cognate to “Far-sight”, which is what “television” means. And sometimes we even have an Anglo-Saxon compound word alongside an etymologically equivalent compound word with classical roots, such as “manslaughter” and “homicide”.
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> manslaughter
I never understood what they thought was so funny.
The joke is that they don’t decline “man” properly (“mans” rather than “men”).
Today we’d write it menslol.
Also Greek and Latin roots like monstrosities like your example “tele” (Greek) + “vision” (Latin).
The one that grates on me most is “monolingual” (unilingual/multilingual or monoglottal/polyglottal)