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Why is the spanish word for "Hell" and the word for "Winter" so close in spelling and pronounciation?
Hell = Infierno, while Winter = Invierno. Yet the words "hell" and "winter" give two complete opposite conotations. Was this a joke by long gone spanish linguists? A coincident, or what? Can someone who has studied the linguistics of Spanish help me?
3 Answers
- aLv 51 decade agoFavorite Answer
it's a cute coincidence. 'infierno' comes from Latin 'inferus', below or lower, from Indo-European ndher (http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/i/i0128100.html)... and 'invierno' comes from Latin 'hibernus', winter', from Indo-European 'gheim-rin-os' (http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/grammar/gramma... So they have nothing in common in origin.
Dante, in the Divine Comedy, has the lowest pit of hell as eternally frozen.
- 1 decade ago
I think it's just a coincidence. If you look at the Latin words that each comes from, those were very different. infierno:infernum, invierno: ivierno
I also think something similar happens in french: hiver, enfer; and in portuguese:inverno, inferno
