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Eight/Night similitude in several languages

Started by deks May 22, 2006 at 7:23 AM 17 replies 5.1k views

Original Post

May 22, 2006 at 7:23 AM

Anyone ever noticed that several languages have one letter difference (or so) for eight and night? The same goes with other languages:


English: eight/night.
French: huit/nuit.
German: acht/nacht.
Spanish: ocho/noche.
Italian: otto/notte.
Portuguese: oito/noite.
Occitan: uèch/nuèch.
Swedish: åtta/natt.
Walloon: ût/nut.
Esperanto: ok/nokto.
Old French: oit/uit or noit/nuit.
Old German: ahtô/naht.
Latin: octo/nox(noctis).
Greek ochto/nux(nukto).
Romanian: opt/noapte.
Vietnamese: tám/dêm.

According to wikipedia, all of those languages derives from Indo-European (except for Esperanto). Greek doesn't have this feature, so it might come from Italic... Anyone know about other similitudes like this one or a signification? This is quite interesting. Edit: added some languages, fixed Swedish per eighty. [Edited by - deks on May 23, 2006 8:54:19 AM]

sunandshadow

May 22, 2006 at 1:02 PM

Esperanto derives from Indo-European too because it is a constructed language made from hybridizing English and various European languages. Since Esperanto is not a natural language you would probably be best off just leaving it out of your comparison.

deks

May 22, 2006 at 1:04 PM

Quote:
Original post by sunandshadow
Esperanto derives from Indo-European too because it is a constructed language made from hybridizing English and various European languages. Since Esperanto is not a natural language you would probably be best off just leaving it out of your comparison.

Thanks for the clarification, sunandshadow. I thought Esperanto was created from "scratch".

jfclavette

May 22, 2006 at 1:04 PM

Eight hours of sleep a night...

roel

May 22, 2006 at 1:27 PM

Creepy! In Dutch it is acht/nacht too. brrr.

sunandshadow

May 22, 2006 at 1:53 PM

Your welcome. And here are the two words in Japanese, quite different from each other:
Eight - hachi
Night - yoru

Dmytry

May 22, 2006 at 2:06 PM

Interesting. Two more related languages where it's much less similar:
Russian: vosem' / noch
Lithuanian: aštuoni / naktis
(note: second letter in Aštuoni should be pronounced as sh. It's kinda similar to german acht . Noch and Naktis is of course related to night etc.)
Russian and Lithuanian is Indo-European too.

eighty

May 22, 2006 at 3:13 PM

The Swedish one is wrong. It's åtta/natt.

Here's pig latin: eightway/ightnay.

deks

May 22, 2006 at 3:21 PM

Quote:
Original post by eighty
The Swedish one is wrong. It's åtta/natt.
Here's pig latin: eightway/ightnay.

And your nickname is eighty? This is getting more and more interesting! :)

RuneLancer

May 22, 2006 at 3:58 PM

Quote:
Original post by deks
*** Source Snippet Removed ***

Shouldn't that last one be "Pig Latin"? It's totally different from REAL Latin. :)

Eight: Octo
Night: Nox/Noctis

deks

May 22, 2006 at 5:43 PM

Quote:
Original post by RuneLancer
Shouldn't that last one be "Pig Latin"? It's totally different from REAL Latin. :)

Thanks, I didn't know about Pig Latin but now I do, thanks to Wikipedia!

deks

May 22, 2006 at 6:05 PM

While browsing on the subject, I also found this nice similitude with nine/new:

Sanskrit: nava/avasGreek: enne(w)a/ne(w)osLatin: novem/novusEnglish: nine/newFrench: neuf/neufOld Irish: noui/nue

mutex

May 22, 2006 at 10:22 PM

Vietnamese:

eight: tám
night: đêm

One of the more interesting similarities are the words for father and mother. Apparently they resemble "pa" and "ma" in most languages due to them being the easiest sounds for a baby to make.

English: pa, ma
Vietnamese: ba, má or cha, me depending on the region
Spanish: padre, madre

deks

May 23, 2006 at 8:57 AM

Quote:
Original post by mutex
One of the more interesting similarities are the words for father and mother. Apparently they resemble "pa" and "ma" in most languages due to them being the easiest sounds for a baby to make.

Indeed, in french it is "papa" and "maman".

benryves

May 23, 2006 at 9:09 AM

Quote:
Original post by deks
Quote:
Original post by mutex
One of the more interesting similarities are the words for father and mother. Apparently they resemble "pa" and "ma" in most languages due to them being the easiest sounds for a baby to make.

Indeed, in french it is "papa" and "maman".

Rather père and mère.

_goat

May 23, 2006 at 9:19 AM

That is interesting, especially since I do Etymology.

What most suprising is the correlation between Germanic languages and the Romantic ones. They generally differ profoundly on the "base" words, such as colours and numbers. Like white:

English: white
German: weiß ("wice/vice" depending on accent)
French: blanc
Portuguese: branco
Spanish/Italian: blanco

I think the most interesting thing is that the Northern Germanic languages don't have this trait, but I suppose it isn't that suprising due to the (relatively) large difference in their ancestral languages.

And Japanese is just crazy, being one of the two Japonic languages (the other, of course, being Ryukyuan).

microdot

May 23, 2006 at 12:09 PM

Quote:
Original post by sunandshadow
Your welcome. And here are the two words in Japanese, quite different from each other:
Eight - hachi
Night - yoru

The problem with that comparison is that はち hachi is the on'yomi (Chinese derived reading) for 八. The kun'yomi (native Yamato reading) for 八 is ya- or yō- which is a bit closer to 夜 yoru/yo though still not as close as the Indo-european cognates.

jfclavette

May 23, 2006 at 12:10 PM

Quote:
Original post by benryves
Quote:
Original post by deks
Quote:
Original post by mutex
One of the more interesting similarities are the words for father and mother. Apparently they resemble "pa" and "ma" in most languages due to them being the easiest sounds for a baby to make.

Indeed, in french it is "papa" and "maman".
Rather père and mère.

père = father, mère = mother. papa = dad, maman = mom

remigius

May 23, 2006 at 4:44 PM

I was just thinking about the relation between octo/nox(noctis) and novem/novus. From various sources you can find the Roman names for the time of day. Unfortunately only the daytime names seem known, giving the following names for the times of day:

VIII. octava 1:15 2:31 p.m.
IX. nona 2:31 3:46 p.m.

With a bit of fuzzy math and the big assumption that the nightly hours had the similar names, this would translate to roughly the following periods in night-time hours for Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice:

VIII. octava ~2:30 a.m.
IX. nona ~3:30 a.m.

VIII. octava ~21:45 a.m.
IX. nona ~22.30 a.m.

Bringing us to an average of:

VIII. octava ~0:10 a.m.
IX. nona ~1:00 a.m.

Which would offer the plausible explanation that the 8th hour is the deepest hour of night and the 9th is the first hour of a new day. Not too shabby a theory for 11.45 am if I do say so myself [wink]

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