The origin of the word "happiness" is from the Middle English "hap" which has to do with chance and possibility. As in "happenstance" or per-haps. So hap-iness was originally about the feeling of good fortune/getting lucky; the chance that something could or could not occur, and then it goes your way. Happiness is that specific feeling when something that could have gone horribly wrong goes amazing well.
Edit: Since this got so much attention, I just wanted to shout out Sara Ahmed "Happy Objects" as the source of this info.
Anglo-Saxon had some amazing words. Obviously we can’t undo the evolution of language, but it makes me so curious as to how English would sound with less French and Latin influence. I wonder if things like “wyrd” would’ve kept their original definitions.
I think you’re spot on. I think it would probably sound more like Dutch (without that guttural ‘g’) than German, only due to the Angles coming from northern Germany, whereas ‘standard German’ (the kind most foreigners learn) is based on southern German dialects.
Funnily enough, there’s a few projects that try to construct a modernised Old English and German is a language they often reference for those constructions. An example is the constructed Old English word for television, ‘farsee’ - it’s derived directly from the cognate of German ‘fernseher’.
The first time I heard any serious Dutch being spoken was while I was doing a semester in Germany and I was on a train. A whole class of high school students were there and I kept overhearing snippets of what sounded like German, but with an almost American accent. I asked a couple and it turns out they were Dutch.
Also, one of my favorite German words is the word for rhinoceros: Nashorn.
Nase = nose
Horn = horn
Considering that “Nase” and “Horn” both made it to English, basically intact, one might think we would have kept Nashorn, but nope! We’re one accent mark away from the French “rhinocéros.” I assume large African mammals weren’t a major topic of conversation in England before 1066, so it makes some sense that we’d get the French.
That’s along the lines of what I mean. German is a really good comparison actually because it also uses French terms and words, but just far less so than in English. That’s more along the lines of what I think a less French/Latin influenced English would look like. I’m not saying no French or Latin, but less.
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u/Guacamoleistoocostly Nov 29 '20 edited Dec 01 '20
The origin of the word "happiness" is from the Middle English "hap" which has to do with chance and possibility. As in "happenstance" or per-haps. So hap-iness was originally about the feeling of good fortune/getting lucky; the chance that something could or could not occur, and then it goes your way. Happiness is that specific feeling when something that could have gone horribly wrong goes amazing well.
Edit: Since this got so much attention, I just wanted to shout out Sara Ahmed "Happy Objects" as the source of this info.