Language:Proto-Indo-European language
I watched a video and decided to note down the most interesting things with screenshots.
In school, and some in university, we are told about the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who lived very long ago, and from whom many modern languages derived: English, Russian, Italian and even Hindi. All this happened due to the constant migration, wars and most importantly, the absence of a written language. People did not have written language standards, so they could easily be replaced.
Indo-European languages can be divided into two main groups: centum and satem, depending on how they pronounce the word "hundred": with "k" sound (lat. centum, gr. ἑkατόν) or "s/š" (rus. сто, lit. šimtas).
Colon
In English, the word colon is used both to denote the punctuation mark : and to refer to the large intestine.
It may seem, what could possibly be in common between these two words? Actually, nothing. Both emerged from Ancient Greek, and the latter meaning is straightforward: κόλον is a clear designation for the large intestine.
There's also the word κῶλον, which is pronounced similarly, but refers to a part of the body (arm, leg) or a part of a sentence. The interesting part is that in Ancient Greek, the symbol : was an analogue of our period and marked the end of a phrase. And this very phrase was called κῶλον.
Much later in English, the colon turned into a variety of the comma, but the name hasn't changed, leaving room for puns.
For instance, some unfortunate people who had a piece of their intestine removed due to cancer, Crohn's disease or other problems, joke about now having a semicolon ;, that is, a half-intestine (Google "semicolon cancer").
When was the last time you had a colonoscopy?
Learning German
Hertz (Hz) is a unit of frequency, how many times a certain event happens per second. It is named after Heinrich Hertz (Heinrich Hertz). In a calm state, the heart beats about 60 times per minute, that is, at a frequency of 1 Hz. The word for heart in German is herz.
The word for a present in English is gift. Gift in German means poison.
The name of the letter ß, "eszett", can be literally translated as SZ (es-zett). It looks very similar to B or β (beta), but in fact it is a ligature of two letters: ſ (one of the old forms of s) and ʒ, which have no relation to B (ſʒ → ß, beautiful). Moreover, the letter has always been lowercase, and a few years ago a capital version appeared - ẞ.
Language is alive!