Sliding Sideways

Sometimes, when I write my little posts about words, I imagine you, my reader, kicking the slats out of your bed and screaming, "What?  Those aren't even close to the same ________ (words, letters, sounds, whatever)."  So this post is for all of you with broken beds and sore throats.

Are too!

Let's see if I can school ya a little bit on this one.  Did you read my post on "Our Father..."?  Let's look at the words for father in several different languages.
              Ancient Indo-European root: p'ter
              Latin: pater (pronounced pot-air)
              Old Irish: athir (pronounced AH her)
              Old English: faeder (pronounced fy-der)
              German: fadar (pronounced faw-der)
Clearly these are all related in terms of sound qualities, but there are also quantitative differences that create distinct languages.  Notice the difference in pronunciation between Old Irish and Old English.  That's quite a difference.  In English, we grabbed the Old Irish th, but we actually pronounce it.

A friend of mine does a little doodling under the banner of Pez Martillo.  Ah, Pez.  I know Pez - that little candy thingy, right?  Not unless it is fish-flavored candy!
               Ancient Indo-European root: peisk
               Latin: pisces (like the zodiac sign)
               Old English: fisc
               Spanish: pez
Fish < > Pez.  On their face, there is little similarity between the English and Spanish variations.  But when you look at the whole group together, you see a lot of similarity.  That's how linguists go about figuring out the connections and conjecturing what the Indo-European root was.  By the way, Pez Martillo is the Spanish name of the... hey, you look it up, I had to.
 
And by the way, I didn't pick the image above just for the perky spokesmodel.  Look at what she is sitting on.  No, not her bum, the package.  Notice the flavor.  In German, that would be spelled pfefferminz.  How is that for changing the letters around?  Hey, wait a minute, pfefferminz. PfeffErminZ. 

I wonder...