Monday, 30 March 2015
lexeme oder news you can use
Before the Norman Conquest and the explosion of French borrowings that displaced many but certainly not all Germanic roots—at least the straightforward ones, of the language, the word for news was tidings—frozen in biblical verse and carols—news coming from the Latin by way of the French term nouvelles, the latest. I had always thought that the German Nachrichten or Neuigkeit was the German equivalent, though these words refer more to the broadcast, presentation and the quality of being hitherto unknown and novel, whereas Zeitung, associated with newspapers, only refers to the medium by convention and rather means the news in the immediate sense. In the adjacent Dutch, it is rendered tijding and from there, just a hop over the sea to tidings. Comfort and joy.