Monday, August 5, 2019

Terms of Sale

Laphams Quarterly created a nice map showing how words have evolved through centuries of trade.
Items documented include whiskey, cotton, ivory and tomatoes. As an example the word for tomato has its origins in the Nahuatl language. It spread to much of western Europe and Africa with a similar name. However, the Italians started calling it "golden apple" (pomodoro) and variations on this word spread to eastern Europe and central Asia as seen in the red arrows.
The map also documents the dual words for tea referenced in a previous blog post- variations on cha from land trade and te variations from overseas trade.


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