Talk:The Cow (1969 film)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR (talk) 16:35, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per nom. Film has been released as The Cow in English-speaking countries [1]. While interesting, the discussion below isn't really pertinent to this move request. PC78 (talk) 17:30, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Just wish to mention that a point can be made in favour of Gāv, and that is that this word has a history of at least some 3000 years; it is a word which can be traced back to Old Persian, meaning both cow and bull. A word of such an ancient history seems to be worth preserving! Incidentally, I have no problem with changing Gāv into The Cow. --BF 04:07, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, according to the

OED "cow" and "Gāv" ultimately come from the same Indo-European root word, so they both have a long history! Cop 663 (talk) 04:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply

]

Thank you for the remark. I was aware of that, however the oldest Old English reference given by OED, Vacca cuu, dates from around 800 CE. The next to oldest, Ne fuõon ... an oxe an cu ne an swin, dates from 1085 CE. I emphasise, I have no objection to changing Gāv into The Cow, however hearing the sound of a word that people over 100-150 generations ago pronounced, is simply exhilarating beyond description — just imagine the feeling of listening to a tape recorded some 3000 years ago, and this is just like that. --BF 12:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is pretty amazing. I wonder what the oldest word in the world is (still in use today)? Cop 663 (talk) 13:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear User:Cop 663, it is indeed very amazing, but this is not all! If you knew only Modern Persian (i.e. Farsi) and someone would read to you Old Persian, then you would, with some effort, understand what is being said, at least roughly. This applies at least to me and the amazing thing is that when I read or listen to Old Persian, it is as though I hear these people of over 3000 years ago speaking to me; it is a sensation that I am unable to describe; it is as though the stones on which these words have been inscribed are speaking to me! As for the oldest known word, although I believe that this is not a well-posed question, I suspect that one of the oldest words still in use must be the Old Persian word Āp, i.e. the Farsi word Āb, meaning Water; I believe that the French word Eau originates from the Old Persian word Āp, since if you go to villages in the West of Iran, you will hear people pronounce Āb almost exactly as the French pronounce Eau. Why Āp should in my opinion have this status? Because life so crucially depends on water. Moreover, the simplicity of this word is such that it is one of the first words, if not the very first word, that a baby in an Iranian family learns to pronounce. Kind regards, --BF 17:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ps: The word Āb consists of Ā and B, the first and the second letters respectively in the Farsi alphabet (this is of course not specific to the Farsi alphabet; think of A and B, of Alpha and Beta, of alphabetum and of alphabetos). Consequently, Āb is also one of the first words that any Iranian child learns to write! --BF 18:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would think that some variation on "mama" is the oldest. It's consistent across many languages. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could best be the case. In any event, the Old Persian word for mother is mātar (similar to Sanskrit, which is mātṛ); the Modern Persian word is mādar. Mātar is very close to the German word Mutter. Some other examples: Latin, mater; Greek (Doric) matēr, (Attic, Ionic), mētēr, Old English, Old Saxon and Old Frisian, mōdor, Old Irish, máthir, Dutch: moeder. Etc. --BF 04:27, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.