I came across this short video recently, and I would like to share it in this blog. It illustrates neatly why we have some words that mean more or less the same thing, but that look very different.
This phenomenon isn't exclusive of the English language. In Spanish, for example, the words perro and can mean the same thing (dog), and their origins are different (Basque and Latin respectively), and there are countless other words like that. Without going into too much detail, this depends on how much one language has been exposed to others, whether or not one of the languages was used by the ruling classes or was considered more prestigious, and so on.
Apart from the words illustrated (sometimes, literally!) in the video, there are others. Can you think of any?Why do you think they have both survived and are in use nowadays? Feel free to use the Comments section below to post your ideas.
See you next time!
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