Talk:wolf

Relationship to lupus, vulpes

I don't see the relationship between English "wolf" and Latin "lupus", a relationship with the Lation word "vulpes" seems to be much more realistic. --2.243.248.64 12:46, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Especially if you know that the Indo-European "p" got changed in the Germanic languages to "f". lat. "pater" => English "father"; lat. "vulpes" => English "wolf" --2.243.248.64 12:48, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The Latin word was loaned from neighbouring Italic languages. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 13:03, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I never knew this. But just by lookig at it, vulpes is clearly related to wulf. Which came first?112.198.83.66 02:41, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

They come from different, but probably related, Proto-Indo-European roots. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:54, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Non-Canine Canid Etymologies

Some canid etymologies seems quite confusing to the non-linguist. We have two very similar-seeming pairs: Latin 'lupus' (wolf) with the very similar Sanskrit 'lopāśá' (fox); and 'wolf' with the very similar Latin 'vulpes' (fox). In both cases, the wiktionary etymologies seem to give completely separate derivations (i.e. they directly relate 'wulf' and 'lupus', 'vulpes' and 'lopāśá', with no interactions between the pairs. As described, any similarities are completely accidental). Is this really the case? Or is it possible that there was some crosstalk between the two, perhaps if earlier populations occupied areas where one of the two groups (wolves or foxes) was absent or rare?--Urilarim (talk) 00:36, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Gorg?

As mentioned above in regards to lupus, how does "wolf" come from "Persian گرگ ‎(gorg)"? They do not even closely in anyway seem related. I am a novice linguist and German that has studied 24 languages for many years. What am I missing here?

Also, why is this article written like a wikipedia article? It is the only wiktionary article I have encountered that is not a clear cut etymology and definition.112.198.83.66 03:04, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like a Wikipedia article to me. Most of our entries of basic-vocabulary words are far more complicated. As for the etymology, the Proto-Indo-European labiovelars such as "kʷ" tend to have strange outcomes: look at the etymologies for four and five, which have the same sound. Having two consonants that can act as vowels ("w"/"u" and "l"/"l̥") next to each other makes things more complex, and ancient peoples often superstitiously developed ways to not directly say the names of creatures they were deeply afraid of, the same way as many people say heck instead of hell. Look at *wĺ̥kʷos to get an idea of the complexity. By the way, the etymology gives the Persian word as an example of a word descended from the same source, not as the source itself, which is Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:54, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I'm going to add the /l/-less pronunciation. I've heard it across dialects; these threads have multiple users from Pennsylvania and Ohio, and single users from other places (including South Carolina), saying they and people from their area on TV use the /l/-less pronunciation, this video (6:05) has someone from North Carolina; the EDD has wuff and warwoof (werewolf) in various British dialects including Yorkshire. Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck, in Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction (2009), page 136, confirm that the phenomenon is not dialect-specific and goes back to Early Modern English, when "/l/ before a consonant had disappeared across the board", "and though most speakers do not pronounce the /l/ in half or calf, those same speakers might pronounce the /l/ in wolf [due to spelling pronunciation] and criticize those who do not" (which is also borne out in the aforelinked threads). (EME /l/-less-ness is borne out by examples here, and the absence of /l/ for [some] Southern US speakers is recorded in Walt Wolfram, Robert E. Johnson, Phonological analysis: focus on American English (1982), page 130.) I will mark it "now nonstandard".
In Middle English, in contrast, it seems that when one consonant was deleted, it was always(?) f and not l, as the MED has the spellings wol, wol(l)e, woul, wul, wul(l)e, and wal, but the only l-less spellings are ones that also lack f, and add n(!): wone, wein and win. - -sche (discuss) 05:33, 17 January 2020 (UTC)