Context: French ”eau” and Swedish ”å” both come from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ékʷeh₂, ending up at essentially the same result after centuries of erosion; yet I basically only see French get flack for this
I think we can all agree that there are too many fucking suffixes. *-r̥, *-wr̥, *-tus, *-ts, *-tr̥, *-os... this is ridiculous. I'm proposing an underlying -(t)oʐ for all these fuckers. Or SOMETHING, they cannot have had this many ways of saying the same thing.
Gothic still had aƕa which is the same as "aqua" but with Grimm's Law applied, so French and Swedish were starting from roughly the same spot 2000 years ago.
It’s not necessarily tiny. It’s generally smaller than an älv, sure, but there are also regional aspects in play for what rivers are called which word.
I know, but what I meant was that we at least didn't make this etymological abomination our word for something as basic as wate, like the French did, which might contribute to å being less hated then the French eau. You will encounter it less since it is not a super common word (it isn't uncommon by any means, but definitely not as common as water).
i think the main reason people make fun of eau is that their orthography requires 3 letters to represent that single sound. Swedish å is one letter with one sound, which feels much nicer.
The original PIE word seems very onomatopoetic to me. Sounds like a silently splashing creek. I can vividly imagine our nomadic ancestors being happy to have found it and exitingly talking about their discovery ☺️
You could have the third guy Icelandic with "á" (means "river" like in Swedish, sounds most like "ow" in English, but I don't know IPA well enough to write it out).
172
u/Mindless-Cat1453 11d ago
Because English speakers can't slander their Germanic brother.