2572: milk Dec 28, 2021

The English words 'milk' and 'lactose' obviously have related meanings, but moreover they share a common root. There is a clear set of relationships across Germanic languages for milky words like Milch (German), melk (Dutch/Afrikaans), as well as in Slavic languages молоко (moloko) in Russian, or mleko/mlijeko (Serbo-Croatian/Slovenian). Conversely, across Romance languages this is less clearly related with French 'lait', Spanish 'leche', and Italian 'latte' to the Ancient Greek γάλακτος (gálaktos) from γάλα (gála), but each of these comes from the same Proto-Indo-European root.

Read More