I wrote the below in November. Today (February 27), I have re-read my last sentence below, and had to think about it, because it doesn’t make much sense at first glance, or even at a second glance, though when I wrote this below, I did (and I can) see the similarity between the French and Russian words, but today I would not call them “very similar”, just somewhat similar – perhaps similar. I will do some clarifying/revision to the below text this winter/spring 2025, or, perhaps I should just say in 2025, as this is fun, and I’ve studied quite a few languages, but the history of languages, and the visual components of languages, were not areas of my graduate school field of study.
Pictographs and Language Similarities – November 2024
Words in most languages probably have some pictographic elements to them, or one can pretend that they do, whether or not they ever did. For example, the word “hill”, begins with an h – a letter with a hump and a line – the line maybe reaches as high as a mountain might, but the hump of the h, only about half the size of the line. The other three lines (ill), well, paths, streams running downhill through ravines, tree trunks. True or not true, intentional or never so intended, one can remember the word “hill” through pictographs.
I’ve been studying Russian, and such thinking can be helpful for learning words with Russian also. For example, some animal words are fun to think about this way. Should I draw it out, or just let the reader who has not yet done so at some point in life figure it out, as it is fun to do.
It is also fun to connect languages together, whether derived from each other or not.
Rabbit is particularly fun – don’t read what follows if you prefer to figure it out yourself, if you have not yet.
Putting the two together, pictographs, and finding English and Russian similarities, start with the word for hares, Зайцев, or hare, заяц. The word заяц rather looks like “Hare, or anyway, going down the rabbit hole and looking back up, maybe eaRH. (Rabbits – кролик). The word Rabbit – bb, two ears perhaps, bunny, nn, again, two ears, кролик – KK – like two rolly, poly rabbits, two ears each sticking up. Зайцев – a rabbit ZIps (z) along and HIDES (pronounced, haIdz). Taking the z from zips, and the aIdz sounds from hides, one is very close to З аиц.
Fun, right? Languages are fun.
By the way, кролик in French is lapin – also very similar.
Author: Sarah K. Sniffen – Sarah has a B.A. in French from Wellesley College (and the Université d’Aix-Marseille), has studied Finnish (and a little Swedish), and French, in Finland, some Spanish in France, and a little Italian at Michigan State. Her current studies in Russian are somewhat scattered – she started and continues from time to time with The Real Russian Club with Daria Molchanova, such as with her book for beginners From Zero to Fluency Workbook, and with the book Beginner’s Russian with Interactive Online Workbook by Kudyma, Miller, and Kagan. Sarah also studies with some apps (Duolingo), and various videos, and other books.