To expand on this, in linguistics, when you notice a similarity between two words, there are three main possibilities.
Common ancestry. The English word "house" and the German word "Haus" are obviously similar, and this is because they both descend from Proto-West-Germanic, with the source word being something like hūs around 1700 years ago or so.
Borrowing. The English word "chef" is a direct loan from French "chef". It's pretty common for the borrowed word to specialize its meaning somewhat. French "chef" merely means "boss", while English "chef" specifically means "boss of a kitchen" (who's probably from France because no one wants to eat English cooking).
Pure coincidence. This dog example is the classic one, but it really does happen, and not exactly infrequently. There are only so many sounds in human language, and across all languages, you're bound to get some random collisions. There is the special case where both words originate from a phenomenon like onomatopoeia or infant language ability (think mama, papa, etc).
The first two are fun because they're evidence of some kind of historical connection, which can sometimes stretch back further than the historical record. Sanskrit in India having a lot of similarities to Greek and Latin is the classical example there (and controversial if you're a Hindu nationalist). Coincidence can be disappointing when you think you've discovered some exciting historical connection, but the dangerous bias that has to be kept in mind is that generally, if you're looking for something, you will find it.
In summary, having a few purely coincidental similar words is extremely likely. In fact, if there were no such similarities that would be weirder, from a mathematical perspective… especially (but not necessarily) if you stretch what might be considered a “similar meaning”, which people often do.
You forgot universals, words that wind up with a common derivation in a lot of languages. For example, “Mama” is a common word for mother in completely unrelated languages, because it’s derived from babies frequently making mmm sounds first.
Also animal names derived from the sounds said animals make IIRC Crow is an example of this
I kinda touched on that under coincidence, which is admittedly stretching it a bit, but I also think "universals" is a bit of an overly strong name for the phenomenon.
But it is true that there are some underlying elements of human biology and psychology that can cause some interesting effects as well, though I think people have a tendency to exaggerate them.
Interesting question, I hadn’t thought about that. I assume they mean dingos.
"Australia’s Indigenous community has had a long relationship with dogs, dating back to the dog’s ancestor, the dingo. Dingo fossils in Australia date back thousands of years, and the first British settlers in 1788 recorded dingoes living with Indigenous Australians"
The article is confusing. Are they saying COVID causes long colds? In other words now that COVID is like the common cold when you get it, they are just saying you have mild long COVID I think?
The visibility of long-COVID has led people to reevaluate whether other viruses cause “long” syndromes. It looks like rhinovirus (aka “the common cold”) can, too.
There are other viruses that were already known to cause “long” symptoms, often due to damage caused to the nervous system by the virus or the immune response. Post-polio syndrome has been known for a long time, for example.
Oh man. This caused a flashback to that time I had a 3 day long cold that caused me to cough non-stop for the next month until I went to the doctor for steroids to make it stop.
mildlyinteresting
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.