By descriptive words I mean words like tomorrow, holiday and beautiful, which most people recognize as to-morrow, holy-day and beauty-full. The meaning of these words can be derived from their descriptive terms.
By autonomous words I mean words like bread, fish and house. Such words cannot be broken down into more descriptive forms. They have to be learned in order to be understood. Unlike the word beauty-full, no one can derive the meaning of the word fish, simply by thinking about its composite parts.
When it comes to complexity, a large number of autonomous words poses a problem. There is more to learn before we can understand what people are talking about. This is why English children are slower to pick up their mother tongue than Swedish children. The Swedish language has few autonomous words, and can therefore be learned through deductive thinking once the basic autonomous words have been understood. A far bigger base of autonomous words have to be learned by English children before they can do the same.
The odd thing is that all languages appear to be transforming away from simplicity. It's not only English that's changing. It's happening to many other languages too. Yet before the middle ages, this did not happen, and we can be sure of this because of words like tomorrow, holiday, beautiful and neighbor. All these words are both ancient and descriptive. They are only now starting to move towards autonomy, with neighbor in this case leading the way.
For thousands of years, neighbor was a simple descriptive word meaning near-dweller. During this long period in human history, anyone who knew the concepts of near and dweller could simply deduce the meaning of the word neighbor. It was that simple. However, today's children have to learn the word in the same manner they learn about bread and fish and house. It has transformed into an autonomous word with no composite parts.
The word neighbor is Germanic in origin. It's old Dutch to be exact, and we arrive at this conclusion through some simple deductive reasoning. The way I went about this was to list all the Germanic variations of the word, and then use some simple rules to sort out how the word has transformed into what we have today.
These are the versions we have of the word:
- Neighbor (English)
- Nabuur or more commonly buur (Dutch)
- Nachbar (German)
- Nabo (Norwegian)
- Nágranni or informally granni (Icelandic)
I also listed the Portuguese and Latin versions of the word:
- Vizinho (Portuguese)
- Vicinus (Latin)
The closely related terms are English, Dutch, Norwegian and German, with German appearing most remote. The hot candidates for the word's origin are therefore England, Holland or Norway.
Let us now split each of our hot candidates into their composite terms to see what we get:
- Neigh-bo-r (English)
- Na-buu-r (Dutch)
- Na-bo (Norwegian)
Note how I split the trailing -r off as a separate term. This is due to the fact that a trailing -r or -er is the way all Germanic languages, except Icelandic, convert a verb into a noun. In English, we can convert run, drive and dwell into nouns by adding -er, which gives us runner, driver and dweller. This mechanism exist in Norwegian and Dutch too. In Iceland, we need to add an -i to attain the same effect, which is further evidence that neighbor is only distantly related to Icelandic.
While the word neigh is still recognizable as near in English, bo has lost its meaning. However, we know that bo means to dwell, because that's what bo means in Norwegian. In Norway, it is na that has lost its meaning. By combining our knowledge of English and Norwegian, we arrive at the full meaning of both neigh-bor and na-bo, namely near-dweller.
The only part of the Dutch word that is still recognizable as something more basic is na, which means after, just like nach means after in German. But buur has no meaning other than neighbor. The Dutch use the word buur to mean neighbor with no idea that the word's original meaning was dweller. In the case of the Dutch, their term for neighbor has made the full transition from descriptive to autonomous. It is only in English and Norwegian that parts of the original meaning can be discerned. Yet, we can be reasonably certain that the word came from Holland, and that the original word was na-bor. To know why this is so, we need to apply our knowledge of medieval European history.
First thing to note is that Icelandic is in fact old-Norwegian. The original word for neighbor in Norway was almost certainly nágranni. Norwegians still use the word grend to mean a rural neighborhood, and granne is commonly used to mean someone from the same rural background as oneself.
Secondly, we have to keep in mind the enormous cultural influence of the Dutch-German trading cooperation known as the Hansa league. The Norwegian language was greatly influenced by this corporation which dominated North European trade during the middle ages. Nágranni was almost certainly replaced by nabo during this period.
Finally, we have to recognize that England was an importer of external terms during the middle ages. There was hardly any export of English terms during this period. The origin of the word neighbor is therefore almost certainly Holland.
As a final consideration, we can use the etymological principle that a center of a linguistic area is more prone to change than the periphery. This means that Germanic languages change more quickly in places like Holland and Germany than in places like England and Iceland. To find out if the na in na-bor is more correctly interpreted as near or after, we must not go to Holland and Germany, where this term currently means after. Rather, we need to go to England and Iceland, where we find that the term means near. In fact, Iceland is the only Germanic language where the word for neighbor still retains its original descriptive form. Ná-grann-i literally means reachable-adjacent-someone/something. Ná is a reference to something that is within reach.
It is from Icelandic and old English that we know that na means near, and it is from current Scandinavian languages that we know that bor means dweller. Yet it's origin is Dutch. It was from Holland that both the English and the Scandinavians got this word.
The word neighbor must date back to about the same time that people settled in agricultural communities. That's 6000 years back in time. This means that someone in a Germanic tribe somewhere came up with a word for neighbor some 6000 years ago. Quite naturally, they chose something descriptive. Reachable-adjacent-person and nearby-dweller are logical combinations. The Scandinavians used the former, the Germans use the latter, and they used these words in a virtually unchanged form for the following 5500 years or so. Then, all of a sudden, descriptive words like neighbor started to lose their descriptive meaning.
The way this happened was that the descriptive parts of these words became increasingly archaic. It was the rest of the language that changed. Neigh is archaic English for near. Ná is old-Norwegian for reachable.
Interestingly, this very same story can be told for Latin languages, and here too, everything started to change in the middle ages. The word for neighbor in Latin is vicinus, where vicinu means nearby, and -s takes on the function that -er takes on in Germanic languages. Vicinus literally means nearby-someone/something. While someone in a Germanic tribe came up with their near-dweller, someone in a Latin tribe came up with nearby-someone, and it happened around the same time.
From 6000 years ago until the middle ages, people in the Latin world would use vicinus, with no trouble deriving its descriptive terms. Then, everything changed. The word remained almost unchanged in Portugal where neighbor is vizinho. But the words for near and nearby are now perto and próximo. As a consequence, vizinho has lost its descriptive nature. Vizinho is an autonomous word on par with bread and house. But as recently as the middle ages, it was descriptive.
So what exactly happened during the middle ages that prompted this change both in Germanic languages and Latin languages? Was it due to population growth, rise of city life, literacy, or some other factor? It's hard to say. However, whatever is driving this is not making things easier for us. It's making it increasingly hard to learn languages, because the number of autonomous words we have to master in order to understand complex ideas are increasing.
As a final consideration, we can use the etymological principle that a center of a linguistic area is more prone to change than the periphery. This means that Germanic languages change more quickly in places like Holland and Germany than in places like England and Iceland. To find out if the na in na-bor is more correctly interpreted as near or after, we must not go to Holland and Germany, where this term currently means after. Rather, we need to go to England and Iceland, where we find that the term means near. In fact, Iceland is the only Germanic language where the word for neighbor still retains its original descriptive form. Ná-grann-i literally means reachable-adjacent-someone/something. Ná is a reference to something that is within reach.
It is from Icelandic and old English that we know that na means near, and it is from current Scandinavian languages that we know that bor means dweller. Yet it's origin is Dutch. It was from Holland that both the English and the Scandinavians got this word.
The word neighbor must date back to about the same time that people settled in agricultural communities. That's 6000 years back in time. This means that someone in a Germanic tribe somewhere came up with a word for neighbor some 6000 years ago. Quite naturally, they chose something descriptive. Reachable-adjacent-person and nearby-dweller are logical combinations. The Scandinavians used the former, the Germans use the latter, and they used these words in a virtually unchanged form for the following 5500 years or so. Then, all of a sudden, descriptive words like neighbor started to lose their descriptive meaning.
The way this happened was that the descriptive parts of these words became increasingly archaic. It was the rest of the language that changed. Neigh is archaic English for near. Ná is old-Norwegian for reachable.
Interestingly, this very same story can be told for Latin languages, and here too, everything started to change in the middle ages. The word for neighbor in Latin is vicinus, where vicinu means nearby, and -s takes on the function that -er takes on in Germanic languages. Vicinus literally means nearby-someone/something. While someone in a Germanic tribe came up with their near-dweller, someone in a Latin tribe came up with nearby-someone, and it happened around the same time.
From 6000 years ago until the middle ages, people in the Latin world would use vicinus, with no trouble deriving its descriptive terms. Then, everything changed. The word remained almost unchanged in Portugal where neighbor is vizinho. But the words for near and nearby are now perto and próximo. As a consequence, vizinho has lost its descriptive nature. Vizinho is an autonomous word on par with bread and house. But as recently as the middle ages, it was descriptive.
So what exactly happened during the middle ages that prompted this change both in Germanic languages and Latin languages? Was it due to population growth, rise of city life, literacy, or some other factor? It's hard to say. However, whatever is driving this is not making things easier for us. It's making it increasingly hard to learn languages, because the number of autonomous words we have to master in order to understand complex ideas are increasing.
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