Dog is an interesting word (1 Viewer)

[Ahsoka]

For a couple reasons One, its etymology in English is actually rather unknown. The words been around since Old English (at minimum). But what’s interesting is that for a long time, dog didn’t mean all dogs. It was used for a specific type of dog. And to make it more interesting, the word hound was used to refer to all dogs, rather than a subset of dogs like today. At some point the scope used for these words switched, with hound becoming specialized and dog becoming general, and it’s not fully understood why this happened. It’s worth noting that dog was not used the same as hound today, it referred to another subset of dogs. But the difference in general use or specialized use switched. Pretty interesting, right?

Now onto part two This one will be about other languages, not just English it’s common that you can find words with clearly similar roots between languages, especially ones in the same family. You’d think dog follows this pattern. But not quite. This is more a personal observation, not a researched one. But I found it interesting so here you go Below are 7 languages and how they each pronounce their word for dog (all are romanized if needed). Some are words I know, some are words others have told me. But what’s interesting is that not a single pair shares an obvious root, despite almost all of them being info-European, and some being even more closely related. But here you are.

English: Dog
German: Hund (shares a root with hound, but I’m only talking about words that mean all dogs, not specialized words)
Spanish: Perro
Russian: Sobaka
Hebrew: Khelev
Gujarati: kuttroo (shoutout to @Nina )
Korean: Gae

Also im sure there are languages with the same roots, but I didn’t know any, which was interesting. Maybe dogs are just aliens would we ever know?

 

[Nina]

Oh you included all forms. I guess the main form would be kuttroo

 

[Ahsoka]

Oh you included all forms. I guess the main form would be kuttroo

None of the forms sound anything like any of the other languages so they can stay But I will bold the main one so people know what’s the main

 

[Ahsoka]

Oh you included all forms. I guess the main form would be kuttroo

Actually nvm bolding is hard I’ll get rid of the rest

 

[Nina]

None of the forms sound anything like any of the other languages so they can stay But I will bold the main one so people know what’s the main

YOU CAN QUOTE AGAIN!!!!!!!!!

 

[Selfmate]

interesting

 

[lexus]

I'm immature for laughing at the Korean one

 

[StirFriedPanda]

Korean: Gae

So what your saying is that in Korea all days are Gae?

 

[StirFriedPanda]

I'm immature for laughing at the Korean one

It's ok, I just said what everyone is thinking.

 

[alo]

i'd think dog in indo-aryan languages share a common root now that i know it's kuttroo in gujarat. i knew it's kutta in hindi and kukur in bengali, so i think there's a common root somewhere (unfortunately i don't know the sanskrit word for dog so i can't say what the common root is)

what interests me is how it's calling someone a dog is offensive in so many languages. calling someone a bitch in english is offensive (i've heard people call others dog too as an insult), and is often censored. calling someone a kutta, kutti, or kutte ka bachcha (dog, bitch, or child of a dog) in hindi is also offensive, though it's slightly tame as actual hindi curse words go. calling someone a gae in korean (or mashing it up with words like ajeosshi or ajumma to get gaejeosshi or gaejumma) is also offensive, and is often censored. min heejin got through her first press conference calling everyone in hybe a gaejeosshi fyi

 

[dark_tranquility]

Dog is such a diverse meaning and spelliing

 

[Ahsoka]

i'd think dog in indo-aryan languages share a common root now that i know it's kuttroo in gujarat. i knew it's kutta in hindi and kukur in bengali, so i think there's a common root somewhere (unfortunately i don't know the sanskrit word for dog so i can't say what the common root is)

what interests me is how it's calling someone a dog is offensive in so many languages. calling someone a bitch in english is offensive (i've heard people call others dog too as an insult), and is often censored. calling someone a kutta, kutti, or kutte ka bachcha (dog, bitch, or child of a dog) in hindi is also offensive, though it's slightly tame as actual hindi curse words go. calling someone a gae in korean (or mashing it up with words like ajeosshi or ajumma to get gaejeosshi or gaejumma) is also offensive, and is often censored. min heejin got through her first press conference calling everyone in hybe a gaejeosshi fyi

Dog in Russian is also an insult. I guess people in the past were cat stans As for the root, I wouldn’t expect one single root for many of the languages, given how languages spread and change and such. But I would expect to see some overlap with some languages (Germanic, romance, Slavic, ect) but the only overlaps so far I’ve seen are the ones you mentioned, the Indo-Aryan ones. Granted, there is hound/hund, and there aren’t overlaps in language families other than Germanic (and I guess romance for a vocab standpoint). Maybe i should look at how they compare in subfamilies