Related words don't have to look alike. Portuguese 'nenhum' and German 'kein' (both meaning "not any; no") have the same origin. 'Nenhum' comes from Latin 'nec ūnus', 'kein' comes from Proto-Germanic *neh ainaz. These combinations meant "not even one" and had the same Proto-Indo-European origins: - ThreadSky

yvanspijk.bsky.social • 40 days ago

Related words don't have to look alike.

Portuguese 'nenhum' and German 'kein' (both meaning "not any; no") have the same origin.

'Nenhum' comes from Latin 'nec ūnus',
'kein' comes from Proto-Germanic *neh ainaz.

These combinations meant "not even one" and had the same Proto-Indo-European origins:

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iuliatraductrix.bsky.social•39 days ago

In Spanish, 'ninguno' does not have an accent on the 'u', and it is the pronoun counterpart of 'ningún', which is an adjective/determiner. It is 'nadie' that means 'no one'.

yvanspijk.bsky.social•39 days ago

The accent was indeed an error (I've since corrected in on my other platforms), but if I'm not mistaken, 'ninguno' can mean 'no one':
- Ninguno quiere ser el que se vaya a casa.
- Si él no lo hará, entonces ninguno lo hará.

iuliatraductrix.bsky.social•39 days ago

Can mean, yes, but it's not its primary meaning. That does not make your examples wrong of course, I guess I was just being picky 😅

carlos8.bsky.social•40 days ago

Wild that Danish ingen and Spanish ningun have the same root so far back

yvanspijk.bsky.social•40 days ago

Actually, 'ingen' is a different word altogether: it comes from Old Norse 'einginn', from 'einn' (one) and '-gi' (not), a particle unrelated to the ones depicted in the graphic. Its neuter form 'etki' (from *eittgi) became 'ikke'.

westmorelandken.bsky.social•37 days ago

One person lazily used Google to translate 'no' in English into Danish, which came up with 'ingen' ('not any') instead of 'nej'. It's strange for English speakers that the antonym 'noen' ('any') has the 'n' sound, suggesting negation, when it's anything but.

languagespeaker.bsky.social•40 days ago

Do we know what an English version of kein would look like?

yvanspijk.bsky.social•40 days ago

Oh, that's an interesting question. From a hypothetical Old English form *nehān, we might have first got *hone (rhyming with 'none') and then *ho, just like 'no' (as in 'no pain, no gain') comes from earlier 'none' (e.g. 'none other than').

dell-adams.bsky.social•39 days ago

What about "none" itself?

yvanspijk.bsky.social•39 days ago

Here's my graphic about its origin:

https://bsky.app/profile/yvanspijk.bsky.social/post/3lfsds3x47s2q

languagespeaker.bsky.social•40 days ago

The other Germanic ones sound much cooler 😔 maybe it was for the best

bronwynjoye.bsky.social•40 days ago

The language geek in my heart just whimpered a little. I adore this stuff and considered going to grad school for linguistics (but my path turned out differently). Thank you for posting and for replying to the questions in the thread. 🥹❤️

yvanspijk.bsky.social•40 days ago

Thank you for your kind message! 😊 Thrilled to hear you like it!

megaforte84.bsky.social•40 days ago

My favorite ever since I learned it is that English 'brother' and English 'fraternal' come from the same root.

Same language, different ways they got there with different sound shift histories.

annbees.bsky.social•40 days ago

What about the Frisian ‘neat’?

yvanspijk.bsky.social•40 days ago

Like Dutch 'niet', English 'not', German 'nicht', Low Saxon 'neet, nich', it comes from Proto-Germanic *ne aiwan wihtan ("not a thing whatsoever").

Some time ago I made a video about the English, German and Dutch word, illustrating their changes:

mickss.bsky.social•40 days ago

Now, this is super interesting!!! So, "ningun" en Spanish!

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