Languages and Linguistics

lanlady

(7,183 posts)

20. I love the names of the months in Ukrainian

Sat May 9, 2020, 02:07 PM

May 2020

They're descriptive of the activity or state of the natural world with which the month is associated.

A few examples: April is kviten, which comes from the word for flowering; May is traven, the month of grass; August is serpen, from the word for scythe; November is lystopad, the month of falling leaves. Other Slavic languages such as Polish and Belarusian also have the same ancient system of naming the months. An exception is Russian, which at some point adapted the same Latin-derived names of the months that we use.

I also love the Ukrainian word for rainbow - veselka - which is related to the word for happy, merry.

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What are your favorite non-English words? [View all] Recursion May 2013 OP

From German: Lydia Leftcoast May 2013 #1

From Japanese: Lydia Leftcoast May 2013 #2

"Nicht schiessen" (German) -- "don't shoot!" nt raccoon Jun 2013 #3

From Italian Starboard Tack Sep 2013 #4

I was always intrigued by the German word ailsagirl Feb 2014 #5

English didn't have an equivalent word, Lionel Mandrake Aug 2014 #12

From German geardaddy Mar 2014 #6

From Welsh geardaddy Mar 2014 #7

Mandarin XiaoXing Jun 2014 #8

Is that the one that means "is"? Recursion Jun 2014 #10

No, that's geardaddy Jul 2014 #11

From Croatian... whathehell Jun 2014 #9

Tea. Sweeney Dec 2014 #13

Nihongo (Japanese) yuiyoshida Jun 2016 #14

Ferrocarril, Spanish for Oldem Oct 2016 #15

Izquierda, the Spanish word for left. The direction. PoindexterOglethorpe Dec 2016 #16

Yes, it's Basque Recursion Dec 2016 #17

Oh, my. I'd thought it was something along those lines. PoindexterOglethorpe Mar 2019 #18

fooly kooly!! yuiyoshida Jun 2019 #19

I love the names of the months in Ukrainian lanlady May 2020 #20

Message auto-removed Name removed Sep 2020 #21

selvflgelig in Danish - 12 letters, 6 sounds, means "of course" flor-de-jasmim May 2022 #22

Norwegian has this same word LearnedHand Mar 2023 #23