Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 August 29
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August 29
editDoes philo- words automatically mean a person is not part of the thing but "loves" it as an outsider?
editI am specifically considering Judeophilia and Sinophile. The Wikipedia article Sinophile provides a list of sinophiles, and none of them seem to be actually of Asian descent. I suppose if one loves one's own nation, then one is not a phile, but a patriot. And there is the term, Sinocentrism, which suggests that China is the most superior country [in the known parts of the ancient world from China's perspective]. But does that indicate "love" for one's own culture or is that a similar concept like American exceptionalism? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:21, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- I can't find any example of a -phile term that would normally apply to one in the group bring emulated. Terms like jingoism and nationalism and chauvanism come to mind regarding irrational attachment to ones own culture. --Jayron32 03:28, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
Off topic
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Have, Haber, Happening
editThe English words, happening and have, have English/Germanic roots. Haber has Latin roots. Yet, they mean nearly the same thing! Is this a coincidence? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 13:21, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- No. Haben and habere are classic false cognates. Шурбур (talk) 14:54, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- Unless they have the same PIE roots. --Jayron32 15:36, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- Which they don't, as is Шурбур's point. (Germanic habban points to IE keh₂p- as per the Germanic consonant shift, Latin habeo to IE gʰeh₁bʰ-). Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:44, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- Unless they have the same PIE roots. --Jayron32 15:36, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- So, it is just a coincidence then. But a coincidence doesn't mean the two entities are related. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 16:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- Right. Hence the term "false cognate". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- So, it is just a coincidence then. But a coincidence doesn't mean the two entities are related. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 16:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
- The English cognate to the Latin habere is, ironically, "to give". (Apparently the act was seen as reciprocal in PIE). The Latin cognate to have gives us the root of the Latinate capture. μηδείς (talk) 15:55, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
There was mutual influence between Germanic and Romance languages based on this coincidence -- during parts of the middle ages, there was an extensive Western European "sprachbund" zone in which there was a perfect verb tense (distinct from the simple past) which was expressed by HAVE + past/passive participle for transitive verbs and BE + past/passive participle for intransitive verbs. English is one of the relatively few languages in the former sprachbund which still has a robust semantic distinction between perfect and simple past verb tenses (though it's dropped the use of "to be" to form intransitive perfects, except in a few archaic relics such as "Christ is risen"). AnonMoos (talk) 15:27, 4 September 2017 (UTC)