Comment on Please check you kids' Halloween candy, everyone
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 8 months agoIf Kampf is pronounced “comf” does that mean the English words, “comfy” or “comfortable” come from the German word for “struggle”?
Comment on Please check you kids' Halloween candy, everyone
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 8 months agoIf Kampf is pronounced “comf” does that mean the English words, “comfy” or “comfortable” come from the German word for “struggle”?
Akasazh@feddit.nl 8 months ago
Nah, not at all.
To be fair, it only really works with the american accent, where the ‘o’ in comfortable gets pronaunced a bit like an a. In British english it leans more to ‘u’.
Comfortable is from latin ‘to strengthen or to help’. Com (cum) Force (forte) (maybe the british pronounciation is more correct because of the latin ‘cum’ :).
German Kampf is related to camp, which would mean a military kamp, but also a battle. It gets translated to ‘struggle’ in English, but ‘My Battle’ or ‘My Fight’ would be more correct, albeit less litererary pleasing.
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 8 months ago
Ah, okay. I was wondering if it was a silly reason like, “it’s a struggle to do anything when you’re comfy” or something like that.
Masimatutu@lemm.ee 8 months ago
As a rule, when speculating etymological relations, always look at the spelling rather that the pronunciation, since the latter tends to change a lot more quickly. English, of course, is an extreme case of this; during the Great Vowel Shift spellings stayed much the same while most vowels changed to the point of becoming unrecognisable. This is why English spelling makes no sense.
Masimatutu@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Remember to always provide context when describing pronunciation in English. The letter u may be realised /jʉw/ (“use”), /ʉw/ (“rule”), /ɵ/ (“put”) and /ʌ/ (“cut”), of which only the last one is a valid approximation.