DDeden Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Right, it was an example of how English may have
> gotten some words from Egypt via French trade.
> eg. English: O-cean <- French: Eau-Sea-n <-
> AE: Sn.
> I didn't mean AE pronounced it O-Sn.

Are you just joking or do you mean it? French "eau" is a direct descendant of Latin "aqua". English "sea" is a Germanic word (reconstructed as *saiwiz), once thought to have been borrowed from a lost non-Indo-European language of Northern Europe, but now derived at least by some linguists from the Indo-European root *seikW- 'flow out'. Neither of them has anything in common with Egyptian or with the word "ocean". I suppose one doesn't have to be a historical linguist to know where the latter comes from. Its Latin form was "o:ceanus" (the "c" was pronounced [k] in Classical times) -- a borrowing from Greek, where "O:keanós" meant the mythical great river encompassing the Ancient Greeks' discworld (and its divine personification). AE "Sn" could express the same concept, but the only other thing it has in common with "O:keanós" is the sound [n]. You can't prove anything by comparing words at random and speculating about accidental similarities between Modern English and Ancient Egyptian.

Piotr Gasiorowski