Qanat(en.wikipedia.org) |
Incidentally, I just came back from a holiday in Madeira --- amazing place if you like mountains; the average altitude of the island is 1300m --- and it's covered with a network of tiny canals called levadas. These collect trickles of water from the high summits, which are usually covered in cloud; it doesn't rain much. So they're kind of the opposite of a qanat. Instead of the water table being underground, it's way up high.
https://goo.gl/photos/a7eNGyJtiztiDFA86
Epicly, a lot of the levadas are in grooves chipped into the side of cliff faces. You can just about extrapolate the slope in that picture. Unfortunately in the really scenic bits I was too worried about not falling off to take photos. Safety railings are things which happen to other people in Madeira...
Yup, like Kwisatz Haderach which is in Hebrew.
(Problem H) https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/problems/icpc2015.pdf
I think we should strive towards that - use the wisdom of our ancestors to build zero-energy systems, powered by naturally occurring energy, controlled and enhanced by computers.
There are lots and lots of things that have already been invented in the past, we should just listen to our grand grandparents a bit closer.. After all, they built them for future generations, including us..
Sorry for the fb link, could not find it in YouTube
Well probably not just, but Qanats are persian tech and spread from there, even today the majority of qanats (both historical and extant) is in Iran, with still-active qanats more than 2000 years old. So it makes sense that this is where they have the largest cultural presence, and understanding.
http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/201405/the.water.below....
Well, what I saw were the regularly spaced mounds of earth at the top of the access shafts.
For example, Suez Canal is called "Qanat al-Suez" in Arabic.
I will say that there are not any link.
Most words in English come from two different roots, the German one and the Latin one.
It actually happens than in Latin "canal" is "canalis", so I can believe that the English word "canal" comes from Latin.
Usually Latin and Greek are the two roots and you don't explore deeper than that, but, given my limited knowledge, I cannot exclude that "qanat" comes too from Latin.
Edit: For completeness, the intermediated step between the Latin "canalis" and the English "canal" could be the Italian "canale"
Edit2: Actually from this page [1] it looks like the Latin "canalis" comes from the Greek "ka na" perhaps from the Assyrian "qanu". So it may be that there is a common root.
Not quite?
What I'm going to say is not exact but as a first approximation it should be okay[1].
English is a Germanic language[2]. Most (all?) common words in Modern English share a common ancestor with their counterparts in Modern German/Dutch/Swedish/Danish/Swiss/Norwegian -- I've left out a bunch, sorry! So lexically and structurally they are very similar. That doesn't mean that most words are Germanic in origin, however it does mean that in any given text most word _occurrences_ are going to be. This accounts for a quarter (~25%) of the lexicon but the _bulk_ of words in any given text.
So words like "is", "can", "will", "must", "water", "the", "and", "word", "bread", "blood", and so on.
Of the rest English has borrowed from _many_ sources. Latin (but this is true of many languages) and French being equally predominant, a bit less than 30% each. Latin because of the Roman Empire and subsequently Latin being the language of European learning. French because of the Norman conquest of England. You ought not to think of this as being borrowed twice over from Latin, once directly, once indirectly. The influence of French on English is immense.
Of the remaining, (Ancient) Greek at a bit more than 5% features predominantly -- though it punches above its weight because so many crucial technical words are from this source, words we'd be hamstrung without.
Then words derived from proper names, then words derived from other European and Indo-European languages. Then the rest of the world.
As Persian/Farsi is an Indo-European language it would be unwise to say there is no link. Especially if the technology is old and the technology spread. And I think a sibling-ish comment points out that there is a direct link.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words_by_coun...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-l...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_plural
Look a few rows into the patterns table, and you start seeing fun rearrangements for patterns such as CaCaC -> ʼaCCāC, the example being sabab -> ʼasbāb.
Pretty fascinating stuff!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Arabi...
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UtFqXQosVP0C&pg=PT283&lp...
There's a single documented mention of the Old English "docga" - and then nothing.
How this word took over pretty much well entirely from "hound" is a mystery.
If that's not enough, the Polish word for dog - "pies" - has exactly the same issue!
(and I believe, but can't say with any certainty, that other Slavic languages may have the same issue.)
Edit: Oxford English's page on "dog" is paywalled off but still available in via Google's cache, a fascinating read if you have a spare 15 minutes:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jNMSJSG...
https://web.archive.org/web/20070227031854/http://members.ao...
The best example I've always thought of is the verb "to understand". Picture standing under something; you get to know it better.
In my native language Twi [1], the to understand is literally constructed as "to to sit under" I know of several other languages with very similar constructions.
Not really, no. 'Gaga' or 'kaka' are just as easy yet aren't universal. The mystery is not solved. (Could be just areal effects, for example.)
It's no coincidence that sounds like 'gaga' and 'kaka' tend to be associated with either more distant relatives or with defecation: the kid's going to be older when those things get introduced.
