101
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
101 points (100.0% liked)
Today I Learned (TIL)
6556 readers
10 users here now
You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?
/c/til is a community for any true knowledge that you would like to share, regardless of topic or of source.
Share your knowledge and experience!
Rules
- Information must be true
- Follow site rules
- No, you don't have to have literally learned the fact today
- Posts must be about something you learned
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
How did 'slave' become 'ciao'?
The image is simplifying it, but Italian borrowed the word from another Romance language, called Venetian. Latin sclauus /'skla.wus/ "slave, serf, servant" → Venetian scia(v)o /'stʃa(v)o/ "slave"→"bye". Then Italian borrowed it from Venetian, and it ended as ciao /tʃao/ because Italian hates that /stʃ/ cluster.
The meaning evolved this way because of mediaeval humility expressions, like "mi so' sciavo vostro". It means literally "I'm your servant", and it implies that I'm eager to fulfil some request that you might have.
A similar expression pops up in Southern German; see servus.
Ah okay, Christian medieval traditions are weird.
Very cool! This could go in !coolguides@lemmy.ca as a post of its own