You know, like who, what, where, when, why, which, and how.
Maybe we’ll get an explanation as to why how is the only one not beginning with
W. Why don’t we change that?
Who
Who comes from the Old English hwa, which could also mean someone or anyone as well as who. It’s from the Proto Germanic hwas and earlier, the Proto Indo European kwo-, which was the source of a lot of interrogative pronouns, as we’re about to see. No explanation as to why it switched from K to H, but it
does seem like the H to W thing is just because the former has softened over
the years. And whom is from the same place, just via hwam,
which is another version of hwa.
What
What is from the Old English hwaet, where it
could mean what but also who, something...and hark.
It’s from the Proto Germanic hwat,
which you may recognize as what with the first two letters switched, and the
Proto Endo European kwod, which is a
form of kwos. Another form for who.
Why
Why comes from the Old English (again) hwi, which
was a form of hwaet called the instrumental case.
Instrumental is an old grammar form that appeared in Old English (Russian
actually still has it) that indicates indirect receivers of action, objects of
prepositions, or that a thing is being used. Basically why comes from a form of
what that isn’t used anymore and as we all know it comes from the word for who.
Although Proto Indo European also had a version of why, kwi, again, another version of kwo.
Where
Okay, you can probably guess at least some of this one.
Where comes from the Old English hwaer, which
means where. No surprises here. It’s
from the Proto Germanic hwar, which
is from, all together now, kwo. Are you beginning to see a pattern?
When
I probably don’t even need to look this one up to guess, but
here we go. When is from the Old English whaenne, which means
when as a direct question. It’s from
the Proto Germanic hwan-/hwa- which… looks very familiar. Dammit,
it’s the same one as before and it’s from kwo-.
Which
I’m no longer expecting anything new. Which was hwilc/hwaelc in Old English, and was
actually short for hwi-lic, “of what
form”. So yeah. Hwi again. And the lic means body (body/form) and is where like comes
from. Hwi-lic comes from the Proto Germanic hwa-lik-,
and we all should know by now that hwa/hwi comes kwo-.
How
How comes from the Old English hu, just how. Before that, it’s
the Proto Germanic hwo and of course
Proto Indo European kwo. No clue as to why this one stuck with H while none of
the other ones did. Just weird I guess.
tl;dr: All question words go back to kwo-. It is the one
true question.
Sources
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
If we changed it to a W now, it would be wow.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I didn't really expect them ALL to have the same root.
ReplyDeleteSeeing why makes me think of kids asking, "but why" over and over again. "because."
ReplyDeleteLanguage started really simple. Then as we grew more complex, it gained complexity. It makes sense, then, that there was only one question word, but as the questions got more complex, the question words had to grow to meet that demand.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that they all come from the same places… But I guess it makes sense.
ReplyDelete