Originally Posted By: sjmaxq
Originally Posted By: Bohemian_Cur
Here is a message I received from BranShea:

Only the English and the German language give: Birthday and Geburtstag (mentioning birth).


This is factually incorrect, even within the Indo-European family of languages. The most common word in Hindi for "birthday" is made up of two words, the first meaning "birth" and the second meaning "day". Put together they translate, quite literally, as "birthday". As for the rest of it, I'm with Faldage, you're extemely nice, possibly the nicest person it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid reading, to paraphrase a role model of mine.


Dear Sir Sjmaxq,

You are correct, there are more than the two languages I mentioned that will use the word "birthday" in stead of "anniversary". I should have said : f.i. English and German make mention of birth referring to that day.

I took the six languages (of which I have learned to speak and read five icl. homeland language) to show the difference in usage/habit.
In German and English there is the mentioning of the once happened fact of birth.

Not so in Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish (I only know some Spanish) where only the turn or completing of another year is visible in the word.

I do not know the exacts about the X - amount of other existing languages concerning this birthday topic. Do you?

anniversary
c.1230, from L. anniversarius "returning annually," from annus "year" (see annual) + versus, pp. of vertere "to turn" (see versus). The adj. came to be used as a noun in Church L. as anniversaria (dies) in ref. to saints' days.

I found Cur's thought refreshing even though "birthday" is fine with me (in English). I never though about the fact that this homely word " birthday " could be looked at as indeed only that one special day long ago (for me at least).

I'm no philologist.

Kind regards, Branshae

Last edited by BranShea; 06/29/2007 8:19 PM.