Why?

I find etymology endlessly fascinating. In another life I could see myself studying linguistics and language history, but for now, it is relegated to “hobby territory”.

One thing I often think about is the striking similarities between the words for “mother” in different languages. Some examples:

Meme (Albanian)

Moeder (Dutch)

Mere (French)

Mama (Chinese)

Maman (Persian)

Mat’ (Russian)

Muter (Yiddish)

It makes me wonder, do you think there could be some sort of distant parent language that still has roots in simple words today?

I doubt it. Even though that would be totally wicked. 

If it were the case, I think there would be more words that were similar, particularly common ones like “I”, “You” and “And”.

Realistically, I think that “ma” is probably just an easily-mouthed word for an infant.

Interestingly, many languages also have similar sounding words for father, often starting with “p” or “b” sounds. Perhaps this is the next most easily mouthed sound! But who knows?!

Probably lots of people. Linguists, to be specific. 

But anyway, this epic word journey got me thinking about another word. The word “why”.

In many languages, the word “why” is made up of two sub-words: “for” and “what”.

Spanish: ¿Por qué?
Italian: Per ché?
French: Pour quoi?
Portuguese: Por quê?
Catalan: Per què?
Galician: Por que?

Bulgarian: защо (за: for; що:what)

Chinese: 为什么 (为:for; 什么:what)

Greek: γιατί (για: for; τί:what)

I find this extremely interesting.

The make up of these words represents a paradigm of the human understanding of the world. I believe that asking “why” is a central part of being human, but over time our question of “why” has changed.

If you ask a child “why” something exists, they might tell you that it exists for a purpose. Why are there oranges? So that we can eat them. Why is the sun in the sky? So that it can warm us up and give us light.

As you can see, in these examples, the question “why” is asking “for what”. For what purpose does that thing exist, or for what purpose are you doing that? What outcome is that for?

This logic represents a shift in our understanding of the world around us.

If, like me, you believe that humans developed religion to explain the complicated phenomena around us, then you might agree that this primitive concept of explaining “why” is interrelated with a creator.

If god (allah, yaweh, or whatever you shall call him) created everything, including creating the “herbs” for man to eat, and the light for man to see, then it is easy to use such logic.

Why are there plants? For what? For us to eat, of course!

On the other hand, the question “why are there plants” could be phrased differently: “by what are there plants?” or in other words, “what has caused those plants to be there?” As you can see, this type of question calls for a completely different answer:

There are plants because plants have evolved over many years as a result of small mutations and natural selection.

As you can see, the question “why” can really ask for either the cause or the effect. Early humans naturally focused on the effect, and how something would affect them, today’s scientists focus on the cause.

In other languages, the term “how come”, “by what” or “from what” can be used in place of “why”:

Afrikaans: hoekom (hoe: how; kom: come)

Basque: zergatik (zer: by; gatik: what)

Turkish: neden (ne: from; den: what)

Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting we need to revolutionise our words for “why”. I am simply commenting on this interesting point.

I believe that the commonly used “for what” type of “why” represents an old fashioned paradigm, in which all things were believed to have a purpose. In such a paradigm, sweet fruits existed for our pleasure, not because those plants had evolved to produce sugary-fleshed objects as a means of further transporting their seed. Horses existed to carry us and our stuff, not because they had evolved as their own beings.

Does anybody else think about these things? Or am I the only one.. 

“Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question ‘how?’ But it gets terribly confused when you ask the question ‘why?’" –Erwin Chargaff, biochemist.

the reckless philosopher