On 15/11/17 10:51, Knut Petersen wrote: > Am 15.11.2017 um 00:26 schrieb Noeck: >> >>> The diminutive of „Magd“ is „Mägdelein“ or maybe „Mägdchen“ (nobody >>> would use the latter), but not „Mädchen“. >> But still "Mädchen" seems to be derived from "Magd": >> http://www.wissen.de/wortherkunft/maedchen > > Yes, Grimm agrees > <http://woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GM00094#XGM00094>. > > It's a pity that Mark Twain did not know about "Mensch": "Der Mensch" > (masculine) means "the human being". The old "das Mensch" (neuter) > means "a female human being" and is still occasionally used in some > areas of Germany. Plural: "Die Menscher" ;-) > Oddly enough, (and "mensch" is translated as "man" when used as a swear word) the English word "Man" originally also meant "the human being". Eg "mankind".
It had two ?Norse prefixes to add gender, Wer-Man and Wif-Man. The Wer presumably got dropped (but survives in words like were-wolf), while Wif-Man became Woman and, presumably, also Wife. Cheers, Wol _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
