1236: Linguistic Similarities Across Languages ('Leichter') Apr 28, 2018

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Looking at other languages—particularly Romantic and Germanic ones—offers a great deal of insights about English. Take the German word  'leichter' for instance. In English it would translate as 'lighter', except that while the '-ch-' in German is pronounced with the velar fricative [1], this is not the case in English anymore; the '-gh-' however used to represent this same sound, before it was assimilated. Not only does it show related (or at least historical) similarity in pronunciation, but also, both 'leichter' and 'lighter' refer to 'light' as in lacking significant weight, and light as in 'easy', and 'leichter' is related to 'beleuchten' which refers to the sense of 'light as brightness'. This semantic similarity shows how words, even across languages and across cultures, may often share connotations due to (somewhat) universal connotations, and likely in this case also due to cultural and linguistic similarities historically.
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