LINGUIST List 11.2164

Fri Oct 6 2000

Qs: List of Most Common Words, Animal Names

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>



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Directory

  • Prof. Yaacov Choueka, most common words
  • Robin Allott, Animal names

    Message 1: most common words

     Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2000 22:48:09 +0200
    From: Prof. Yaacov Choueka <yco636scnetvision.net.il>
    Subject: most common words


    I would be grateful to anyone who can point me to the list of the 100 most common words of any of the European languages (with latin alphabet)

    such as English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Portuguese, etc. (I am interested in all of them). Many thanks.

    Prof. Yaacov Choueka Head, Department of Information Retrieval and Computational Linguistics Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, 59100 yco636scnetvision.net.il

    Message 2: Animal names

     Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 09:57:37 +0100
    From: Robin Allott <RMAllottpercepp.demon.co.uk>
    Subject: Animal names


    As part of a study of sound symbolism I am collecting the names in a wide range of languages of a selection of animals, birds and one insect.

    The list is: Animals: cat cow dog donkey goat horse pig sheep wolf Birds: chicken cock crow duck goose hen lark owl partridge pigeon rook sparrow turkey woodpecker Insect: wasp Not all the animals or birds are found in different language communities.

    To illustrate the start of the collection, there are the following words:

    CAT: k'at'a (Georgian) macska (Hungarian) mace (Albanian) gorbe (Persian) kissa (Finnish) kat (Dutch) kuching (Malay)gata (Greek) kot (Russian) kutta (Arabic) chat (French) neko (Japanese) amouch (Berber) kedi (Turkish) kakis(Latvian) mau (Egyptian) mao1 (Chinese) gatu (Basque)

    DOG: dzaghli (Georgian) kutya (Hungarian) qen (Albanian) sag (Persian) koira (Finnish) hond (Dutch) anjing (Malay) kuon (Greek)pyos (Russian) kalb (Arabic) chien (French) inu (Japanese) aydi (Berber) kopek (Turkish) suns (Latvian) uher (Egyptian) chu'an3 (Chinese) zakur (Basque)

    DUCK: ikhwi (Georgian) kacsa (Hungarian) rose (Albanian) urdak (Persian) ankka (Finnish) eend (Dutch) itek (Malay) papia (Greek) utka (Russian) batta (Arabic) canard (French) kamo (Japanese) ordek (Turkish) aq (Egyptian) ya2 (Chinese) ahate (Basque)

    Contributions, particularly for less familiar languages, for CAT DOG or DUCK or for other animals and birds in the list welcome and also corrections - though there are obvious difficulties with email in representing different orthographies.

    The motor theory of language origin proposes that words have a natural, non-arbitrary origin [ see material at http://www.percepp.demon.co.uk or more specifically http://www.percepp.demon.co.uk/motheory.htm ] Bloomfield said that the differences between words e.g. for 'horse' proved that word-forms are arbitrary. What in fact seems the case is that there is a much more extensive onomatopoeia than he or Hockett were prepared to recognise.

    Robin Allott email: RMAllottpercepp.demon.co.uk