[aasasd]

A sorta-weird thing about Slavic languages is, they evolved different meanings from the same roots—though related. So you constantly have your recognition of words misfiring.

E.g. Old East Slavic ‘недѣлꙗ’ (‘nedělja’), meaning ‘Sunday’, somehow come to mean ‘a week’ with Russian ‘неделя’, while even close Belarusian and Ukrainian have ‘нядзеля’ and ‘неділя’ for Sunday, same with Bulgarian ‘неделя’ or Czech ‘neděle’.

[xixixao]

Also for non-slavic speakers' interest: “ne” is No, and “dělat" is Work, so Sunday is literally the day of "Nowork".

[mv4]

I am Russian, and you just blew my mind with that piece of info.

[p1esk]

Same! :)

[gpvos]

So, in Russia they don't work at all during the week? This explains so much.

[pvg]

This isn't specific to Slavic languages, it's the norm for all sorts of related languages or even the same language evolving over time. Think of the etymology of 'nice' or 'guest'/'host'/'hostile'/'hospital'.

[lacampbell]

Words derived from the same source as 'Loft' seem to universally mean 'sky' or 'air' in almost all germanic languages... except English where it means 'small room near the ceiling'.

[aasasd]

I guess Wiktionary might be mistaken, but it says the not-really-so-modern meaning of ‘loft’ is shared among Germanic languages: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/loft

[lacampbell]

Nope, seems I am in the wrong here. Looks like Danish for example has both "Luft" (air) and "Loft" (the room), which come from the same word.

[pvg]

At least it's still in the ballpark! Compare with 'gift' or 'worry'.

[lacampbell]

TIL German 'gift' and English 'gift' are actually the same word! I had assumed it was a coincidence.

[ozzmotik]

im pretty sure that Gift in German means poison, so i can't help but wonder what exactly you think an English gift is :^)

[aasasd]

Well, the word apparently has a bit unusual etymology:

> The word has been used as a euphemism for "poison" since Old High German, influenced by Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “something given; dose of medicine”). The original meaning "gift" has disappeared in contemporary Standard German.

So yeah, the word is the same, it just became divorced from the former meaning.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Lofty carries some of the original meaning. The verbal loft also, which is where the contemporary meaning of the noun derives from.

[babuskov]

In Serbian "nedelja" is a homonym - both "Sunday" and "week".

[p1esk]

“Hey boss, I worked 20 days in a row, I’m gonna take Sunday off!” :)