Comments on: ストーヴ ≠ stove

By: skim

skim — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:44:17 +0000

Haha, stove is nothing! Try wrapping your mind around スマート or 時間にルーズ.

* meaning “skinny” and “not prompt with time” repsectively.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:44:29 +0000

bob smith – Older homes much farther north than where I grew up, heh. I guess that’s why I associate them only with cooking.

Also, facebook friend Dan says: I am torn. Loved reading everything above, but now feel as though my stove-related knowledge has always been inadequate. Gonna go study some stove facts and be back.

To which I reply, I just want to know if a viking ever said “Please remove your bloody garments before sitting on the sofa in my stofa.”

By: bob smith

bob smith — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:35:02 +0000

In the US stove is very often a heater. I guess older country homes are where you would find them. The word most certainly has two distinct meanings. The problem is Japanese only have the one meaning for the word stove. So many words are like that… renew, bike, and sand are a few.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:43:04 +0000

Facebook friend Yngve adds: “Stofa” is actually Old Norse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Norse_language

Today the word reads “stove”(pronounced ストーヴェ） or “stue” depending on where in Norway you come from. It still means “living room”. The word for “a stove” is “ovn”, as in English “oven” or Japanese “オーブン”.

Many Old Norse words were adopted into Old English during the Viking age, when Scandinavian language still had some influence in the world. Those were the days … :-)

Very cool.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:13:07 +0000

Facebook friend Jon says: Interesting how the usage of a word changes. Stove derives from the old English stofa, meaning living room. It was used in English from around the 15th century to describe a heated room, and a couple of hundred years later the word started to be used to describe the enclosed fire used to heat the room, and also heat up food. Cool point! It also reminds me of something I forgot to mention - the English word stove is still used to mean heater judging from Google Images. So I guess ストーヴ = stove sometimes.