May 30, 2010

Just to continue yesterday's discussion on the mysteries of languages I would like to make a few observations. These observations refer to the English language as we (Americans) speak it.

I think we create nouns from some verbs by adding the letters er at the end. At least that is the way most of them work.

Look at the word serve. By adding er to the end we just created server. Or cook becomes cooker.
Or somebody occupied with jewels will become a jeweler, and somebody occupied with mountains will become a mountaineer. So far so good.

But what the hell is bucca? I figured it must have meant something since there were buccaneers and they probably did some bucca.

Or somebody who was a plum became a plumber.

And it is obvious that somebody who was a carpent became a carpenter, and someone who dealt with butches turned out to be a butcher.

But I still don't know what bucca, plum and carpent meant.

However, I do know that someone who comes from Somalia will become a sommelier.

Other thing.

Why the names of foreign cities are translated to different languages? Why they can not remain the same as their original name?

I can not accept that Hispanic people call New York Nueva York. That is not our name. I'm sure they would be insulted if we would call San Juan (Puerto Rico) Saint John and Puerto Rico the Rich Port island.

Moscow in Russian is called Moskva, Wien (Austria) in English is called Vienna. Saint Petersburg in Russian is called Sankt-Peterburg. Warsaw in Polish is called Warszawa and Belgrade the capital of Serbia is called Beograd in Serb. Venezia is renamed to Venice. What is wrong with Venezia?

And there are many, many more such changes. Why these names had to be changed from their original version? But this does not apply to English alone. Many other languages change city names to their own versions but leave others intact.

Paris stayed Paris, London stayed London (at least for us here), Madrid remained Madrid. And probably just as many as were changed remained with their original names.

This is another one of those mysteries of life.