Re: Newest natlang?

Hi!

Philip Newton writes:
>...
> Knowing German helps, but it's still hard to understand in places.
I wonder whether some words are direct translations from German, like
_chokestuff_ 'Stickstoff' and _sourstuff_ 'Sauerstoff'.  They look so
much like German.

Some are direct translations from Greek, obviously, like _sunstuff_
'helium' and _bernstonebit_ 'electron', but this could be expected.

Often I found that Chinese has interestingly different formations,
e.g. 'middleheart' for 'center'.

And Dutch is great for Germanic stuff, especially in math and
linguistics.  E.g. _raaklijn_ 'tangent'.  Ok, 'lijn' isn't originally
Germanic, and I do not know the cognate of 'raken' in English (for 'to
touch').  Maybe 'to reach' (but the sound shifts are not obvious to
me)?  Then _reachstroke_ could be a tangent.  Or _bijvoegelijk
naamword_ 'adjective'.  And _stelsel_ 'system', one of my favourites.

**Henrik

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