chol - welsh

[voynichbombe]

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funny thing with the corpus regex (ace, btw. thx). google translate (yes, again), thinks the chol example is welsh. welsh dictionary tells me "from her lap", old english welsh thesaurus tells me chol comes from arab. "chalel", "to expect" (I expect it means expecting a child).

[Koen G]

Strange, how does an Arab word for childbearing get adopted into Welsh?

[davidjackson]

 old english welsh thesaurus

???
Chol is the old welsh lenited form of col which is old Irish (incest, prohibition, sin,lust). Wiktionary.

[-JKP-]

<probablyhasbeennotedbeforedisclaimer />

funny thing with the corpus regex (ace, btw. thx). google translate (yes, again), thinks the chol example is welsh. welsh dictionary tells me "from her lap", old english welsh thesaurus tells me chol comes from arab. "chalel", "to expect" (I expect it means expecting a child).

I don't know about Wales, it was less accessible and not as cosmopolitan as the London area, but Saracen craftsmen were already working in England in the 13th century. Whether there were enough of them to influence the language, I don't know, it doesn't seem highly likely, but maybe the English knights who spent a few years in the Jerusalem area during the Crusades brought back bits and pieces of the language with them.


Most people know what the word "simba" means (Swahili for "lion") and I've even come across the word in old manuscripts (I can't remember exactly how old), so the use of the word in European culture predates the Tarzan movies by a few centuries.

[davidjackson]

Most people know what the word "simba" means (Swahili for "lion") and I've even come across the word in old manuscripts (I can't remember exactly how old), so the use of the word in European culture predates the Tarzan movies by a few centuries.

But there is zero reason for a foreign word to displace a basic word like "childbearing".

[Emma May Smith]

Most people know what the word "simba" means (Swahili for "lion") and I've even come across the word in old manuscripts (I can't remember exactly how old), so the use of the word in European culture predates the Tarzan movies by a few centuries.

But there is zero reason for a foreign word to displace a basic word like "childbearing".

That's an assertion pregnant with contradiction...

[-JKP-]

Most people know what the word "simba" means (Swahili for "lion") and I've even come across the word in old manuscripts (I can't remember exactly how old), so the use of the word in European culture predates the Tarzan movies by a few centuries.

But there is zero reason for a foreign word to displace a basic word like "childbearing".

I would agree and the similarity could also be completely coincidental, but the Celtic people (some of whom settled in Wales) originally came from the Iberian Peninsula and, through further migration, from central Europe (where they lived for a few centuries).

I don't know if there would have been any Arabic influence on their language in those locations, but when one considers that the Finns, many of whom are light blond, with Scandinavian DNA, speak a language completely unrelated to Scandinavian (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian), one that has been strongly influenced by Turkic and Mongolic incursions, obviously interesting things can happen.

[voynichbombe]

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safe from claiming that language is a virus, from outer space even (nicked that refs from William S. Burroughs & Laurie Anderson, sorry).

there was another google translate oddity on here, which I cannot locate atm (chor?). it also thought it was welsh for dwarf.

we shall not forget we are dealing with google books n-grams, and we cannot look inside those algos. they are intransparent.

[Koen G]

As a linguist, I think David is right here. The source quoted is from the 19th century. Etymology is still doubtful sometimes, and it certainly was back then. Unless such an assertion is backed by evidence, it's very doubtful. 

Usually when making a claim like this, they will provide old quotes which show when and how the foreign word entered the language.

[Diane]

I don't know... the reference to the crusades is possible... perhaps its 'colonial' slang and the medieval equivalent of a Hobson-Jobson term.  Nor is Arabic the only language in the group - funny if it turned out to be a relic of Phoenician; we'd have to revisit the initially popular, now unpopular legend of Phoenicians mining tin, or Camelot being memory of a Phoenician outpost.  These theories were quite common during the nineteenth century, the 'tin-mines' one being taught as history into the 1970s as I recall.