[posterboy]

I'm going to quickly produce an animated feature film to show you. Hold my drink.

Well, tbh, if you've seen Dwarf Fortress or read Terry Prattchett, then one of the first things that comes to mind is work ethic and moral. The ethic is highly puritan and greedy, the moral is upright but loose. I'd say that's somewhat faithfully represented, except that the sense of a wider community is missing, they don't live in a mountain and of course Disney didn't do war machines jugging liters of bear and hoarding gold for the sake of it. One might argue those features were exaggerated in folk lore to begin with.

Wikipedia should have some more [1], but I can't get past the Etymology section. An ancient mythology about short spirits not withstanding, it's rather obvious that German Zwerg was related to work, Werk, PIE wérǵ- [2]. Now if I look at the indo-arian cognates, I can't deny that those look similar to warrior, related to PIE wers-[3]. That leaves the initial d unexplained. My best guess is that's pejorative, because we- as in very, venerable etc. is too positive, but which short root the d came from I wouldn't know. I guess so far that's nothing new and where previous attempts called it quits.

By the way, guess the Zerg from Starcraft are an analogy to Zwerg, and then some. kekeke

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_(mythology)

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

[3] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/warrior

[Mediterraneo10]

> it's rather obvious that German Zwerg was related to work

No, it is not obvious. In fact, that is not a mainstream etymology at all. Nor is positing the initial dental as a “pejorative” prefix, something any recognized scholar of comparative Indo-European linguistics would do. Furthermore, your connection of ‘dwarf’ and the PIE ‘work’ root to ‘warrior’ is, frankly, crackpot.

[posterboy]

I am very sorry that you feel so emotionally disturbed as to resort to insults.

> No, it is not obvious. In fact, that is not a mainstream etymology at all.

It rhymes. That is not obvious? The proposed root *werg has hardly changed at all in over 2000 years!

> Nor is positing the initial dental as a “pejorative” prefix, something any recognized scholar of comparative Indo-European linguistics would do.

Was that a compliment? I'm aware that humanities research is full of opinion. That doesn't mean I was pretending to be a recognized scholar, just because I admitted an opinion.

> Furthermore, your connection of ‘dwarf’ and the PIE ‘work’ root to ‘warrior’ is, frankly, crackpot.

I did not read this off from a cracked pot to fill in the missing bits. I attempted internal reconstruction which is admittedly highly speculative.

--

Frankly, I suppose you are, like pretty much every linguist, biased towards your mother tongue, and can't readily accept the rhyme work~dwarf ... because that doesn't rhyme, indeed. Conversely, I have to admit a bias, too.

I couldn't even explain in detail how dwarf and Zwerg could be cognate or how to derive a Germanic root from those and other cognates. So, of course I expected the need to take this with a pinch of salt. But your spoon full was a bit much.

[Freak_NL]

> […] it's rather obvious that German Zwerg was related to work […]

Is it? A quick glance at the Wiktionary reference and the etymology section in the Dwerg-article on the German Wikipedia doesn't yield any concrete evidence to support that statement.

'Rather obvious' seems overly optimistic — I would go with 'dubious' at best. For all we know some travelling story teller made the word up on the spot because it had the right dwarfish feel.

[posterboy]

While I talk hugely about language gone by, I have actually no idea what "rather" means. Take "rather obvious" as "I can't be the only one who'd consider this for a bit".

> For all we know

No, absolutely not. Rhymes are very important to old folk lore. And to language acquisition in general. And, in a metaphoric sense, to pattern matching over all.

Of course it is possible that the word was obscured from the get go lest it would appear derived. But I don't think it's onomatopoetic, if that's what you mean (I guess you didn't, though). Thinking about that, it's likely though that the word had to be pronounced by children, requiring easier phonemes, so perhaps no th. That gives a lot of leeway to speculate about an original root. Anther thought is that "swarz" (black) should be considered, because mines are inherently dirty, and as a kind of derogative. I agree though, expecting a single root would be too easy. A rhyme compressed into one word would easily obscure the term.

A very sad thought related to small people working in mines is child labor.