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John McWhorter
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Healthy trees in springtime.
Some languages adopt their “health” word from the concept of wholeness — a metaphor that makes perfect sense. Other languages, however, adopt their “health” word from trees. John explains.
Picture of Health
Thanks John for this wonderful excursion.
The “hard” construct also relates to how German speakers (and likely others) describe musical sounds.
“Major” = “dur”
“minor” = “moll”
I think this relates to dropping the third note of the scale by a half step, thus rendering it junior (in English) or softer (in German).
Steve L
John,
I wondered why you didn't make this comparison when you mentioned about "hale and hardy."
дерево ---> здоровый
hard ---> hardy