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When the fuck did we start singing "shit"? (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 5 months ago by Blaze@reddthat.com to c/dataisbeautiful@mander.xyz
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Source: https://chrisdallariva.substack.com/p/when-the-fck-did-we-start-singing

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[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I have some fun etymological trivia related to that.

Late Proto-Indo-European had a root typically reconstructed as *kakka-. It means "to shit" or "shit". It's imitative in nature so not exactly a "fancy" word, right off the bat; more like a "child-friendly vulgarism".

That root is still present in Armenian (k'ak'), Russian (kakat'), Lithuanian (kaka), the Romance languages (cacare/cagar/etc.), the Iranian languages (kaka/kakā/kake/etc.), and other Indo-European languages. Still ranging from childish to vulgar.

A word that stops being used is not inherited. If that root was inherited by so many languages, it means that it kept being used, from ~five millenniums ago to now.

Obligatory musical reference: this goliardic song. "Oh, how beautiful it is, to shit [cagar] in the mountain, where the grass tickles you in the hole of the butt". It's just keeping up with a 5000yo tradition.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 6 points 5 months ago

Thank you, as always

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 5 months ago

Side note/off-topic: I'm glad to see that this comm grew really fast!

[-] Kolli@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

And for some reason, "kakka" is de facto word for excrement in Finnish, which is from the Uralic family.

It is very weird seeing it here, because it's like THE word.

kakka is more like "poop" and the rougher word "shit" has a different word (paska[Learning about the homophone-y Pascal is always a knee-slapper])

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

I think that it's a parallel development. It's unlikely to be a borrowing from some PIE descendant because

  • Proto-Germanic shifted PIE *k into *h (Grimm's Law), so the word would end as *hahha. Plus a direct descendant of the word isn't even attested in Germanic languages [see note].
  • Proto-Balto-Slavic and its descendants show a single consonant in that word, as PBS *kākā́ˀtei (see Latvian kakāt, Russian какать/kakat'). The result would be *kaka or *kakaa. (A double consonant often becomes single, but the opposite is rarely true.)

*NOTE: before someone mentions German "kacken", it's likely a borrowing from Latin "cacō" I shit. Now that's some borrowed shit!

this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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