Haber/Caber related to Have

K

krloszz

Senior Member
Mexican Spanish-Centro del Pais
Hi to everyone!

I was recently reading about Indoeuropean cognates, and one of them was the verb caber (from latin capere) with to have in english, both from Indoeuropean *kap. This sounds pretty good for me, but, for being honest, I always have found, in use and in sounds, to have more related with haber (from latin habere), even in the use.

With caber (that means to fit), I only could find one parallel construction with have:

Cabe decir-Have to say (Obviously here caber it's working like an auxiliar, and do not have the meaning of fit).

And, with have, I have this examples (taken from wiktionary):

Habēsne epistolas? - Have you got the letters?
Sic est, habeo epistolas. - Yes, I have the letters.

(I don't include a spanish example, because the verb haber in sense of posession has been replaced for tener, at least in my dialect.)

The interesting point, is that I can't find anywhere the PIE root for habere, so... what is the origin of habere? And why this extraordinary parallel use with to have? And... what's about the use of caber in 'cabe decir'?

Saludos.
 
Last edited:
    • Hi,

    krloszz said:
    I can't find anywhere the PIE root for habere, so... what is the origin of habere?
    Click to expand...
    Just a partial answer:
    The PIE root of English have, as you have pointed out, is *kap. Latin capere indeed is a cognate.

    Latin habere goes back to PIE *ghabh(-e). English to give is a cognate.

    Frank

    Oops, I didn't see Origumi's post. I used another source, Watkins' Dictionary of Indo-European roots, with the same results.
     
    Last edited:
    Frank06 said:
    Hi,


    Just a partial answer:
    The PIE root of English have, as you have pointed out, is *kap. Latin capere indeed is a cognate.

    Latin habere goes back to PIE *ghabh(-e). English to give is a cognate.

    Frank

    Oops, I didn't see Origumi's post. I used another source, Watkins' Dictionary of Indo-European roots, with the same results.
    Click to expand...

    Oh, thank you... so... between the use of habere and have it's only a semantical and phonological coincidence. Interesanting.
     
    I don't know, if you can read German. Grimm discusses the original meaning haben, the German cognate of to have, in detail. He discusses other Germanic verbs of the same root, especially German heben (English cognate to heave). He concludes that the original Germanic meaning of the verb-stem was probably much more closely related to Latin capio than to Latin habeo. This is the reason why habeo has been discarded as a possible cognate of to have though it fits the modern meaning better.
     
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