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u/squirrelwug Jul 24 '26
It's a bit funny how the PIE word for 'egg' is preserved so well across so many branches (instead of being replaced by some other term as it's often the case) while, at the same time, it is one of the PIE words whose descendants look the least like each other due to being made almost entirely of particularly shift-prone vowels and glides.
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u/Decent_Cow Jul 25 '26
The map doesn't seem to depict when a word for "egg" replaced a related word in a different language, though, which is what happened in English.
Old English "æg" (pronounced /æːj/) was replaced with Old Norse "egg" (pronounced the same as the modern word) during a period of widespread Danish settlement in eastern England.
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u/squirrelwug Jul 25 '26
Since they're going back all the way to PIE, that particular example doesn't matter and we can't even tell whether that's the case: both Old English æg (and its now archaic descendant 'ey') and Old Norse egg trace back to the same Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European root.
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Jul 25 '26
Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx’s terms seem clearly related to the same PIE as most other European languages, no?
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u/SuperProCoolName Jul 24 '26
Crimean Tatar - I've only ever heard Yımırta all my life, in steppes they say Cımırta
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u/CockolinoBear Jul 24 '26
Probably op uses u interchangibly with ı.
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u/SuperProCoolName Jul 24 '26
The map says Gagauz say "Yımırta" so it's just simply mistake on mapmaker's side
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u/_Penulis_ Jul 24 '26
Oviparous is an adjective meaning “egg laying”. You can’t say “made by oviparous”, it should be “made by oviparous animals”.
Like saying “made by hairy” instead of “made by hairy animals”.
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u/Junuxx Jul 24 '26
Nothing stopping people from choosing adjectives as a username though.
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u/_Penulis_ Jul 24 '26
No. Is that what’s happening here? Whatever is happening it’s poorly labeled
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u/Junuxx Jul 25 '26
After taking a closer look at the website, yeah I guess it's supposed to be a definition or description of "egg". That's definitely poorly worded then.
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u/TheSarmaChronicals Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
The Armenian one is incorrect. We say HavGit. Not havKit. It looks like Eastern pronunciation was applied to Western.
Edit: lmao whoever downvoted this is hilarious. Կ is the letter gen in Western Armenian. It is pronounced with a G. We say HavGit. There is no Havkit to my knowledge as Eastern Armenians say dzu
The K pronunciation is Eastern Armenian.
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u/xabi_the_redeemer Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
You are not correct. While it isn't used widely, հավկիթ/havkit is used fairly often in Armenia in more formal contexts. I am from Armenia and I have been exposed to havkit fairly often enough that it isn't foreign to me.
Article from a quite popular website in Armenia e.g.
https://168.am/2015/12/11/573187.html
I really don't know why is Eastern Armenian perceived as this mythical language for which some need to make guesswork when it is the formal language of an independent state and all you need is to Google to check stuff.
Also, it makes no sense to apply WA pronunciation to the Republic of Armenia in general. We have out own set language and its best people respect it. WA is not used in any official capacity in Armenia and its written forms are not what actual people in Armenia use. It is misleading at best.
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u/TheSarmaChronicals Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
My mistake then but in western it is havgit still. Nobody perceives eastern armenian as mythical language. That's a very bizaar and random thing to say
Western armenian is just as Armenian and just as valid. There are also Western Armenian speakers in Armenia. Best you respect that too. Historically that has not been the case.
I mention Western Armenian here so it's not erased. It's a pity Armenia has done very little to nothing to protect it.
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u/RealModMaker Jul 24 '26
I think the diminutive jajko is more common than the base word jajo in Polish.
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u/Bryn_Seren Jul 24 '26
Yup, jajo is more often used in biological terminology, but in culinary meaning jajko is much more common.
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u/eragonas5 Jul 24 '26
There's also pautas/pauts found in Lithuanian, Latvian and Old Prussian (altho in Lithuanian and Latvian it's rather used for testes today).
Some excerpt from wiktionary (about putns - bird. except I only copied the relevant part):
Another possibility is that the original stem was *pawt- (“to father”), with Latvian pauts (“testicle”) (dialectally also “egg”) as a direct reflex; from the zero grade form *put- > putns (perhaps with the suffix -ens); in this respect, cf. Sudovian paud (“bird”). For these hypotheses, cognates include Lithuanian putýtis (“chick”), paũkštis (“bird”), Old Church Slavonic пътица (pŭtica), Russian пти́ца (ptíca), Sanskrit पोत (póta, “young animal, offspring”), पुत्र (putrá, “son, child”), Ancient Greek πῶλος (pôlos, “foal”), Latin puer (“child, boy”).
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u/Pomi108 Jul 24 '26
I have a hard time believing the Semitic words aren’t related to the indo-european ones. Is that actually just a coincidence? If so then wow, they’re so similar
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u/its_aom Jul 25 '26
What are the three words in grey in Spanish?
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u/Decent_Cow Jul 25 '26
These are words of Nahuatl origin that refer to the edible eggs of a certain type of aquatic insect. They're all essentially the same Nahuatl word rendered into Spanish three different ways. I suppose TECHNICALLY they are words for eggs.
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u/MrOtero Jul 29 '26
In Spain's Spanish (Castilian) it's only Huevo. The rest of words (which I've never heard before) are native American words used secondary in their respective areas, never in Europe
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u/AnirXD Jul 24 '26
The map is wrong for Tunisia. The word for "egg" is the same as the word for "bone" because the word's literal meaning is "solid" "strong" or "great"
- عظمة ʿaḍma (Singular, Feminine) = an egg
- عظمتان ʿaḍmtēn /عضمتين ʿaḍmtīn (Dual) = two eggs
- عظمات ʿaḍmēt/ʿaḍmāt (Plural, Feminine) = eggs
- عظام ʿḍām (Plural, Masculine) = eggs
- عظم ʿḍam (Singular, Masculine) S M is used as a collective noun in some words, like the words for tree, palm, cow, and date. It refers to eggs/bones generally.
Usage Rules:
- The feminine singular is used for exactly 1 egg.
- The dual form is used for exactly 2 eggs.
- The feminine plural is the plural of fewness used for 3 to 10 eggs (e.g., You need 3 eggs for this recipe يلزمك 3 عظمات للوصفة) // The feminine singular is used with numbers 11 and higher specified quantities (e.g., 13 eggs have 1,000 calories 13 عظمة فيها 1000 كالوري)
- "The masculine plural form is the plural of abundance used to talk about the noun as separate individual units, unspecified large quantities, or distinct varieties (e.g., the eggs of birds come in different shapes عظام الطيور متنوعة / the farm produced million of eggs المزرعة أنتجت ملايين العظام)
- The masculine singular forms is used to talk about eggs collectively or generally (e.g., Eggs are good for your health العظم باهي لصحتك)
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u/AnirXD Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
also the map is not completely right for Algeria
in eastern Algeria they also use ʿaḍma عضمة
and in other parts they use wlad ej-jaj ولاد الجاج (children of chickens XD)
and in parts the Kabyle region and Chaawi region(not sure about the Chaawi) they use another word tamellalt (singular) ⵜⴰⵎⴻⵍⵍⴰⵍⵜ (female white thing)and in Libya (even thought it's not shown they use the word daħħiya (singular) the word means something flat but that's related to flattened sand hollow where an ostrich lays its eggs not the egg shape
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u/HeyLittleTrain Jul 24 '26
"Ubh" in Irish is pronounced like "uv" which seems like it is definitely related to french/italian/Latin.
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u/Logical_Positive_522 Jul 24 '26
Yeah it's Proto-Celtic right? Not sure why Welsh amd Cornish aren't marked in the same colour
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u/_Penulis_ Jul 24 '26
Read the legend. The yellow indicates one single Proto-Indo-European origin for them all — within that are many language families not given separate colours, like Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Italic.
Irish is given a separate colour only because it is “origin unknown”. (Although looks to me like there must be a link even if we can’t find it.)
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u/creepyeyes Jul 24 '26
Looking at wiktionary, its interesting because it almoat seems like its convergent evolution. Ubh looks related to latin Ovum, but is actually a decendent of Old Irish Og, and potentially an older ugos, but wiktionary notes it can't have come from Proto-Celtic āwyom as the /g/ is unaccounted for
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u/_Penulis_ Jul 24 '26
Okay thanks I wondered what the story was. I’m no expert in linguistics, and it’s a superficial observation, but it just seems like a massive coincidence that Og looks like/sounds like the PIE-descended words used by all the peoples the Irish had contact with over the centuries. I guess it’s a “we will never know” thing.
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u/creepyeyes Jul 25 '26
My guess would be it could have come from some substrate language, Irish has a couple of words for "common" things (like eggs, various animals) that don't seem to have come from Proto-Celtic. For example "portán" (crab) or "lacha" (duck).
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u/Logical_Positive_522 Jul 24 '26
I dId read it thanks, I think most of us here are familiar with these maps
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u/_Penulis_ Jul 24 '26
Most of us here are also familiar with Redditors who say stuff like “I don’t know why X” and then get mad with the person who tells them why.
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u/Ghorrit Jul 24 '26
When my daughter was little she found it difficult to pronounce “tokhm”(e morgh). She called it “tork e mork” which is what we still call eggs in my house to this day.
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u/Jin_SobSob Jul 24 '26
I speak Arabic and Hebrew, didn’t realize until just now that “BeySah” and “BayyiD” are related.
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u/FengYiLin Jul 25 '26
In Tunisia and Eadt Algeria, it's called Aadhma (عظمة), originating from the word for bone.
In Berber languages (not shown for some reason) it's called tamellalt (literally means white thing)
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u/Divljak44 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
jajce is diminutive form, protoslavic form is "aję"
For English speakers read "J" as "Y"
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u/Ok-Bad5282 Jul 30 '26
First that tokhm isn't a turkic word. It's derived from avestan which is an ancient indo-european language Second that it's funny you show kurdish language's but not others' like azeri of iran or other countries (excluding russia)
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u/mapologic Jul 31 '26
You can find it in the notes. I think Avestan taoxman is a cognate. Isnt it?
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u/MinutePreparation754 Jul 24 '26
In Armenian it's pronounced Dzu, not Ju
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u/Srslyredit2 Jul 24 '26
also i’ve heard havgit used more often
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u/MinutePreparation754 Jul 25 '26
I am from Armenia myself, Dzu is definitely more used than Havkit!! Especially in informal talks
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u/Mantis-TobogganXXL Jul 24 '26
Hungarian also has the archaic form ‘mony’ which is a cognate with the Finnish word.