German and English words are usually pretty similar. Maus~mouse, Milch~milk, Wasser~water, sechs~six, Vater~father. But the German word for horse, "Pferd", is nothing like English. What happened? A thread. /1
English and German both share a common ancestor, which linguists refer to as "Proto-Germanic", spoken around 2,000 years ago in the north German plain and modern-day Denmark. Other Germanic languages include Norwegian, Dutch, Gothic, Faroese, and Afrikaans. /2
This proto-language presumably had only a single word for horse. Was it the ancestor of modern "horse" or the ancestor of "Pferd"? Which word is original and which one is an interloper? /3
We can look at other Germanic languages for guidance. For example, German for "dog" is "Hund". The Dutch word is "hond". These words bear a similarity to English "hound"! And indeed, most etymological dictionaries state that English "dog" is "of uncertain origin". /4
So at some point, "dog" replaced "hound" as the default word for canines in English. We figured this out by looking at related languages and the history of English. What about horses? The Dutch word is "paard", quite similar to German "pferd". /5
Tangent: there's a famous joke in the Netherlands that when [famous anglophone politician] met [famous Dutch politician], Anglo asked Dutchie what hobbies they enjoyed.
D: I fuck horses.
A (aghast): Pardon?
D (smiling intently): Yes, horses! /6
D: I fuck horses.
A (aghast): Pardon?
D (smiling intently): Yes, horses! /6
(Explaining the joke: Dutch "fokk", means "to breed, to raise"; "-en" is the Dutch plural suffix. Dutchie incorrectly assumed "fokk" was the same in English, and misinterpreted "pardon" as "paarden", i.e. "horses". They were so happy the Anglo knew some Dutch!) /7
Tangent over. So maybe this horse/Pferd/paard thing is like the dog/Hund/hond thing, and English is just weird? That would be a neat solution, but unfortunately things aren't so simple once we delve deeper into other Germanic languages and varieties. /8
There's the Icelandic word "hross", which looks like a spelling error (it's not!). We also find the word "hors" in some dialects of Dutch, Swedish, and Danish. And there's even a German word "Ross", which looks like an autocorrect on the Icelandic word. They all mean "horse". /9
In northern Germany, "Ross" sounds old-fashioned or poetic, but as you go south, especially into Switzerland and Austria, it's actually the everyday word for horse. Could "horse" be related to "Ross"? /10
"hross" and "horse" are similar but the <o> and the <r> have switched positions. This process, whereby two sounds swap places, is called "metathesis". We can see examples of metathesis in English by comparing the word "three" to the derived words "third" and "thirteen". /11
The <r> and the vowel have swapped positions! In European languages metathesis is usually a pretty sporadic (random) change, but there are examples of regular historical metathesis in other parts of the world. /12
Another tangent: metathesis is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, me-TA-thesis /məˈtæθəsɪs/. In Star Trek TNG s3e21, Data mispronounces the word with stress on the third syllable. Looks like someone messed up when programming his text-to-speech dictionary! /13
Picard had just referred to Lt Barclay as "Mr Broccoli". Data attempts to explain this away as a speech error, invoking "metathesis". This explanation works fine for the American accents of most of the crew: /bɑɹkli/ to /bɹɑkli/ is a simple transposition. But not for Picard! /14
Picard speaks Southern British English, where "Barclay" is /bɑːkli/ and "broccoli" is /bɹɒkəli/. Hardly a transposition! Perhaps Data was just trying to save face, but that seems out of keeping with his typically limited understanding of social graces. Okay, end of tangent. /15
So, the Proto-Germanic word was likely something like "hrussą", from which we get English "horse" (via metathesis!). So, where did "Pferd" come from? From various Old High German words "pherit", "pfarifrit", and "parafred", all derived from Late Latin "paraverēdus". /16
This word is the Latin for an extra horse, a "post horse" that lived at inns which was available for messengers or travellers. For whatever reason, (the descendants of) this word became the most common way to refer to horses in German and Dutch. /17
The Romance languages are the direct descendants of Late Latin. "Paraverēdus" made its way into Old French as "palefroi". Anglo-Norman, the French dialect spoken in medieval England, adapted this word as "palefrei", which was subsequently loaned into English as "palfrey"! /18
If you'd asked me before today what "palfrey" means I would have said "something about horses, probably?" It's one of those words that I recognise but I don't know the meaning. Apparently it's a small horse used for riding (as opposed to a draft horse or a war horse). /19
So, German Pferd and English palfrey are ultimately cognates, via Latin of all places! That's pretty neat. But wait, the word paraverēdus has an interesting history of its own... /20
It's composed of two roots, "para" and "verēdus". The first is from (Ancient) Greek παρά, meaning "about" or "beside". The second is a word meaning a light horse (a palfrey, if you will). This word, "verēdus", was loaned from Gaulish "werēdos". /21
Gaulish is no longer spoken, but at the time of the Roman empire it was the main language of modern-day France and other parts of western Europe. (Yes, Asterix and Obelix would have spoken Gaulish!) More details at this linked thread. /22
Gaulish is a Celtic language, making it a sibling of modern Gaelic, Welsh, and Irish! (And Breton and Manx and Cornish and...) We can trace the word "werēdos" to Proto-Celtic "uɸorēdos". (The ɸ was pronounced a little like a 'f'.) /23
The word "uɸorēdos" apparently has a descendant in modern Welsh "gorwydd", which means, unsurprisingly, horse. I'm not aware of cognates in other modern Celtic languages but I'm also quite unexpert in those languages, so. /24
So, now we come to the end of our adventure. The German word for horse is different from English because it's borrowed from Latin, which is in turn borrowed from Gaulish. The same Latin word went into English as "palfrey", which is ultimately cognate with Welsh "gorwydd". /25
Language (and etymology) is so fascinating, it takes us on these little adventures of discovery! I don't have any grand conclusions, I just wanted to share some of the joy I had at slowly unravelling these facts. /fin
