The word for "dog" in Mbabaram (an Australian aboriginal language) is "dog". (
Wikipedia)
A thread in the EHL forum made me think of two words I had always thought that came from the same root:
Ancient Greek Ζεύς Zeús, Latin Deus and many other IE branches, from PIE *dyḗws "sky, god"
Ancient Greek θεός theós "God", from... well too complicated, from somewhere else
There's also Nahuatl
teotl (root
teo-), also "god" but unrelated to either.
Sumerian
sipad = English
shepherd.
Basque
ni -- first-person singular absolutive pronoun ("me"; "I" with intransitive verbs)
Swahili
ni- -- first-person singular verb prefix
French
aucun(e) -- no (adj.), none
Swahili
hakuna -- there is no ...
(I knew of the Disney song
Hakuna matata long before I learned any Swahili, and had originally guessed - quite wrongly, as it turns out - that
hakuna might be a borrowing of French
aucune.)
Akkadian
gerru "military campaign, expeditionary force" (a secondary meaning of a noun whose primary meaning is "road, path")
French
guerre "war"
Akkadian
in(a), "in" (usually
ina, but sometimes
in in literary use, which may indicate an archaic form)
Latin
in, English
in, etc.
Akkadian
līpu, "fat"
Greek λῐ́πος (
lípos, "fat")
Akkadian
šī, "she, that (f.)"
English
she
Akkadian
ugāru, "meadow, field"
Latin
ager "field", English
acre
Akkadian
ūsu, "direction, guidance, custom"
Latin
ūsus, "use, habit, usage, custom"
Of course for some of these there's always the possibility, however remote, of a very early borrowing. I don't know the Akkadian etymologies.
The root of the verb "to be" in Manchu is
bi (pronounced /bi/). The root by itself is used as a copula ("is"/"are"), and Manchu verb roots can also be used as imperatives.
The Etruscan word for "god" was
ais, plural
aisar.
The Old Norse word for "god" was
áss, plural
æsir.
The informal English expression
oh-so means "very".
The Basque word
oso means "very".
