The German Question, Part Seventy-Four

"Kaiser Wilhelm & World War I" Part Two/D "The Germans At War"
"Italy Jumps"

In April of 1915, Italy, which had been in alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary since the 1880s, but which had declared neutrality upon the outbreak of the war,* signed a secret agreement with the Allies in London. The agreement promised Italy substantial territorial gains if/when the Allies won the war. Other provisions of the agreement laid out plans for much of the Balkans. In exchange, Italy would declare war against its former allies, which it did in May 1915. The agreement is important because the territorial gains for Italy would include areas with substantial German populations, especially the South Tirol.

* Italy saw their alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary as purely defensive, and they noted that Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, which was not a defensive measure. Others, including historians later on, saw the Italians as indecisive, even waiting to see to which side would be the likely winner. Fair or unfair, it is a view that has persisted to this day.

WORD HISTORY:
Same-This goes back to the Indo European root "sem," which had the notion of "one, together, united." This gave Indo European "samos/somos"), which meant "same." Sanskrit, an ancient Indo European language (still in use on a limited basis, primarily in India) had "sama(h)," which meant "identical," and also "level, even," all obviously with the basic meaning of "same." The Indo European form gave its Old Germanic offspring "samaz," with the "same" basic meaning. This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "same" (I "believe" with a short "a" sound back then, and the final "e" would have been pronounced as short), which mainly seems to have been used in "swa same," an expression that meant "the same as" ("swa" having a long "a"). Old Norse, a North Germanic language, brought "samr" to England (simply the North Germanic form of the word), which seems to have reinforced the original English word, so much so, that "same" overtook the common English word for "same," which then was "ilca," whose descendant is modern English "ilk," most commonly used in the comparative expression "of that ilk," meaning "the same as." Various forms of the word are quite common in the Germanic languages. German uses the base word in different forms and anyone learning German will have to learn these various forms, as they are EXTREMELY common: "samt" = "together with, all together;" "zusammen"="together, jointly," which is very common in verb compounds, for example, "zusammenarbeiten," which literally means "to work together;" that is "cooperate, collaborate," and also in noun compounds, "Zusammenarbeit," the noun form of the previous verb; thus, "cooperation." Bavarian dialect, and in some areas which speak Thuringian dialect or Upper Saxon dialect have "zam." Further, German has "sammeln," a verb meaning "to gather, to collect," and "versammeln," "to assemble;" that is, "to collect together," these from one of the original meanings, "together, one." Low German has "zamelen," Dutch has "inzamelen," Frisian has "sammelje," all meaning "to collect." Danish and Norwegian have "samme," Swedish has "samma," Icelandic has "sama," all meaning "same."

English had other words related to "same," but with its further meaning of "gather, collect, bring together as one." All of these words still go back to their Indo European ancestor's basic notion of "one, together." Old English had, for example, "samnian," "gesamnian," and "tosamnian;" all with the "general" meaning of "gather, collect."* Over time, these words, which often had very slight variations in meaning, died out in English, with words of similar meanings overtaking them in common usage, like the old form of modern "gather," which was already an English word, and it took on all of the nuanced meanings of the above words. Further, English eventually borrowed "collect," which is a Latin-based word.

* As noted in the history above, other West Germanic languages closely related to English still have similar words: German has "sammeln," Dutch has "inzamelen," and Frisian has "sammelje," all still meaning "gather, collect."