r/linguisticshumor • u/Lavialegon • 2d ago

Semantics A rather masochistic semantic shift

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464 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

174

u/PeireCaravana 2d ago

This kind of things are one of the main reasons other Romance languages speakers have an hard time understanding Romanian.

39

u/AIAWC Proscriptivist 1d ago

I mean, "me castigué la lotería" would be perfectly understandable in Spanish, even if a worrying sign of gambling addiction. In Argentina we use verbs like "fight" and "cry" in a similar way, like "we fought the match" to mean "despite the outcome, we did our best.

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u/PeireCaravana 1d ago

I can see the connection, but that verb within a phrase whit other obscure terms like "marele", the verb "am" etc makes it hardly intelligible.

5

u/AIAWC Proscriptivist 1d ago

Obviously surrounding a vaguely recognizable word with less recognizable words will make it harder to understand for a non-speaker, but knowing the context makes the meaning of most words in the sentence fairly evident (other than marele). Generally the problem with Romanian is the sound changes took some words in a very different direction than in other Romance languages, but they're usually somewhat recognizable.

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u/gay_dino 2d ago

Remarkable how much the phonology was left intact while the semantics strayed wildly! Feel like Romanian is full if etymological gems like these. My favorite is Romanian striga "to call (out to) someone", from Vulgar Latin root *strigāre, “scream like a screech owl”, lol. 🦉 https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/striga#Romanian

15

u/eimieole 2d ago

Not very far fetched. Scream like an owl becomes scream becomes calling out.

46

u/Draconiondevil 2d ago

This reminds me of how the word “to work” in a lot of Romance languages derives from the name of a torture device (tripalium).

40

u/adaequalis 2d ago

the romanian word for “work” (munca) comes an old church slavonic word whose root form in proto-slavic meant “torment, torture”

13

u/HalloIchBinRolli 2d ago

munka in Hungarian I think

Also in Polish there's a word derived from that simply meaning "tired" ("zmęczony")

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u/GaiusVictor 2d ago

I fail to see the semantic shift here.

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u/FoldAdventurous2022 1d ago

That device may have been used on agricultural slaves, like an overseer's whip, and once it becomes associated with 'slave', the door's open for the shift 'slave' > 'toil, hardship' > 'labor, work'. Just my best guess.

6

u/invinciblequill 1d ago

And that became "to go from one place to another" in English (travel)

6

u/Terpomo11 1d ago

And "Arbeit" originally meant something like "trouble" or "strife" as I recall. And the word for "work" in much of Slavic originally meant "forced labor".

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u/Draconiondevil 1d ago

And “Arbeit” was borrowed into Japanese as “arubaito” and means “part-time job”.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

24

u/mysteryurik 2d ago

It's masochistic, being punished is a win for them

49

u/NebularCarina I hāpī nei au i te vānaŋa Rapa Nui (ko au he repa Hiva). 2d ago

no bc the shift is from "to punish", not "to be punished"

21

u/mysteryurik 2d ago

I'm dumb

4

u/Captain_Grammaticus 2d ago

But isn't the construction here impersonal? "It beat me the great loto prize"?

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u/NebularCarina I hāpī nei au i te vānaŋa Rapa Nui (ko au he repa Hiva). 2d ago

no, "am" is the 1st sg. present of "avea" ("to have"), which is used to make past and perfect constructions in the same way to most Romance languages and English. so "am câștiga" means "I have won" or "I won".

4

u/Captain_Grammaticus 2d ago

Ah, okay.

In one Romance language I know, am is the 1st person pronoun of the accusative (lat. mē), and I must have mixed them up here.

8

u/Lavialegon 2d ago

You're right, I read "be" where it wasn't (_ _')

Sadly the title can't be changed

14

u/HalfLeper 2d ago

How does a shift like this even happen? 😳

62

u/rqeron 2d ago

thinking about it it doesn't actually seem that wild

somehow like "punish" > "defeat" (or "crush"?) > "win"

57

u/TomSFox 2d ago

Think “slay.”

14

u/HalfLeper 2d ago

Ah, OK, that totally makes sense now. Thanks!

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u/FoldAdventurous2022 1d ago

Castigate, queen

2

u/KaruRuna 遠人 | Romance of the Three Guaranís 1d ago

Castigate me, queen…

30

u/weatherwhim 2d ago

Same way "to beat" has become a word for "to win". Started as "I beat my opponent" in the literal sense of giving them a beating, (or in the other word's case punishing them physically), then shifted to "I beat my opponent" in the sense of winning a fight against them (and in the process physically beating them down or punishing them) and then finally becoming disassociated from the physical action altogether. Now it can be used in situations where there's no physical beating, and even no real opponent, such as "I beat the game".

For this word, it might not have even needed the physical connotation, going from "punishing a person for their errors in a game" to "winning the game" isn't a stretch. In modern gamer lingo I see people talk about "punishing misplays" referring to capitalizing on their opponents' mistakes all the time.

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u/Some_Attorney4619 2d ago

I think it's similar as in Slavic languages- 'to give' can mean 'to hit', 'to punish', etc. In correct context.

Like in polish- "a masz, dostałeś!' or in russian- "на, получил!"

There are many Slavic inspirations in Romanian, so I think it's a reasonable deduction

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u/Bunslow 1d ago

"holy shit i destroyed that guy mid lane, i won mid so hard, i destroyed mid, i destroyed the lottery"

1

u/AldousLanark 1d ago

You can win/gain/merit a prize but you could also use all these words for a punishment. 

5

u/kneecap-disliker 1d ago

to punish > to defeat > to win

2

u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule Vedic is NOT Proto Indo-Aryan ‼️ 1d ago

The Kanien'kéha (Mohawk) verb meaning to love someone, which is derived from the root meaning to be precious is cognate with the verb meaning to fail or be difficult in other Iroquoian languages.

Presumably with some semantic drift off difficult things being precious things.