DJO-in ['dʑowɪn]
Historisch taalkundige, schrijver van 'Die goeie ouwe taal' en 'Woord voor woord, en vaste auteur bij Onze Taal
Historical linguist, writer
photo: Dirk-Jan van Dijk
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The word ‘town’ shares its origin with German ‘Zaun’ (fence) and Dutch ‘tuin’ (garden), even though their forms and meanings are quite different.
They all stem form Proto-Germanic *tūnan, whose meaning is reconstructed as “fenced area”.
Over the course of 2000 years, they’ve grown apart.
My new graphic shows nine unexpected but true cognates in English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and Swedish.
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In the article on my Patreon (850 words, tier 1), I explain how the meanings of these nine words group diverged over time:
The word ‘town’ shares its origin with German ‘Zaun’ (fence) and Dutch ‘tuin’ (garden), even though their forms and meanings are quite different.
They all stem form Proto-Germanic *tūnan, whose meaning is reconstructed as “fenced area”.
Over the course of 2000 years, they’ve grown apart.
My new graphic shows nine unexpected but true cognates in English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and Swedish.
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Over the past few days, I’ve created two infographics on early Germanic loanwords from Latin: one on construction, with words such as ‘kitchen’ and ‘street’, and one on food, with ‘cheese’, ‘butter’ and others.
Today, I’m wrapping up the trilogy with an infographic on utensils. ‘Fork’, ‘pan’, ‘sack’, ‘mint’ and ‘chest’ – they were all borrowed into Proto-West Germanic, the ancestor of English, when the Romans controlled large parts of north-western Europe during the early first millennium AD.
Over the past few days, I’ve created two infographics on early Germanic loanwords from Latin: one on construction, with words such as ‘kitchen’ and ‘street’, and one on food, with ‘cheese’, ‘butter’ and others.
Today, I’m wrapping up the trilogy with an infographic on utensils. ‘Fork’, ‘pan’, ‘sack’, ‘mint’ and ‘chest’ – they were all borrowed into Proto-West Germanic, the ancestor of English, when the Romans controlled large parts of north-western Europe during the early first millennium AD.
Op 20 juni geef ik tijdens de Dag van Rome 2026 een lezing over het oudste taalfoutenlijstje van Italië: de Appendix Probi.
In taalfoutenlijstjes op internet worden allerlei woordvarianten aan de schandpaal genageld: ‘Je moet proprio zeggen, niet propio’, volgens Italiaanse lijstjes. Verandering wordt vaak gezien als verloedering, omdat mensen gewend zijn om normatief naar taal te kijken: ze denken in termen van ‘goed’ en ‘fout’. Zulke taalklachten zijn van alle tijden. Zo’n 1600 ... 1/
After my infographic about words such as ‘wall’, ‘street’, and ‘kitchen’, which are very early Germanic borrowings from Latin, here’s a second one, this time about food.
While words such as ‘carnivore’, ‘cereal’, and ‘edible’ are late and obvious borrowings from Latin, words such as ‘cheese’, ‘pear’, and ‘wine’ were adopted from that language 2000-1500 years ago, when the Romans occupied the parts of Europe where the ancestor of English was spoken.
Next episode: utensils!
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How do we know that the words featured in these infographics were borrowed? Couldn’t they just be the native Germanic cognates of the Latin words? There are several ways we can identify them as borrowings. You’ll learn all about them in the short article below.
Peter 🦈