"Moron"

Translation: Carrots

[jakinnguaq]

May be coincidental, but Möhre is a dialectal word for carrot in German.

[jdiegosuarez]

It is not a coincidence, both come from Proto-Germanic *murhǭ. Welsh must have borrowed it from Old English (moru) or Middle English (more) before English borrowed French "carotte" (hence 'carrot') just as Standard German did ('Karotte').

[pablopublico]

In Russian it is морко́вь (morkóvʹ) and in Lithuanian "morka".

[TheDeafPianist]

Yoy know Lithuanian???? Oooooooh i wantvto learn that soooo baaaaaaaaad

[DaibhidhR]

And there isn't even a Duolingo course. These words are obviously related somehow. Wiktionary says the Russian word is

Of uncertain cognateship to Proto-Germanic * murhǭ (“wild carrot”).

I like to learn a new word every day, and cognateship is my word for today.

[Rumactree]

Thanks, very helpful!
NB apparently the same sort of thing happened to mutton, beef, etc. so now Germanic rooted words sound slightly vulgar and frenchified words posh. Nice to see Welsh kept their moronen.

[AliT.Firefly]

Germanic words for the animals, French words for the meat. The Norman conquest,. Serfs did the farming, seigneurs did the eating.

[endotassia]

In Swedish carrot is "morot", so pretty similar too.

[pablopublico]

I thought that "morot" was a compound word (mo + rot) meaning "moor root", but I'm not certain anymore.

[DaibhidhR]

Allegedly (see https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/13265760?comment_id=39113797) the Swedish rot and English root each come separately from words with w at the beginning like Wurzel. Sounds like rather a coincidence to me.

[Bunnywise]

Morot is carrot in Swedish so that's why I knew it.

[Laraemilie]

So "Moron" would be the plural form right ? What would the singular be ?
I had sort of figured out the pattern of adding "au" as in oren, orennau and tegan, tegannau to form plural forms, but this is obviously a different one...

[samstyan99]

'moronen'. yes, 'au' is a common way of creating a plural in Welsh, but not the only way. sometimes the singular version is longer than the plural, e.g. moronen/moron. another example is mochyn = pig, moch = pigs. Some plurals are completely random and must just be learnt, e.g. ci = dog, cwn = dogs

[Laraemilie]

ok thanks ;)

[mikezephyr]

I'm always straining my ear to catch a familiarity. Eine Möhre in German, морковь morkov' in Russian.

[DesertGlass]

You might be interested to know that what we call a carrot was only introduced into the UK around 1668

[conkface]

That's not nice. :(

[becky3086]

Can it mean both "carrot" and "carrots"?

[pablopublico]

"Moron" is a mass noun, so it means more or less "carrots". If you want to speak about one concrete carrot, you can use the singulative "moronen".

[DaibhidhR]

So it would translate as carrot when the number is not important, such as in cawl moron 'carrot soup'. Cawl moronen would be soup made from one carrot.

[Enidthepost]

I don't hear the m at the start even in slow speech

[ibisc]

The audio here is faulty. It has been disabled, but it may take some before that takes effect.