Comment on Full Circle
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days agoIn my view, “migrate” according to Etymonline originates from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *mei which means “to change, go, move”.
I don’t believe this term refers to moving in or out of something, or any other preposition.
As we’ve been discussing in this post, immigrate and emigrate represent inverses of each other. It makes sense to look for logical ways to combine those.
I think the best prefix for this would be trans- for, according to Etymonline, this means “across, beyond, through, on the other side of; go beyond”. Specifically, I would refer to trans- as meaning “out from and in to”, which gives us the word “transmigrate”. Etymonline has a dictionary entry for “transmigration”.
scholar@lemmy.world 5 days ago
From wiktionary: Verb migrate (third-person singular simple present migrates, present participle migrating, simple past and past participle migrated)
(intransitive) To change habitations across a border; to move from one country or political region to another. To escape persecution, they migrated to a neutral country.
This is already common usage and I don’t see the need for any prefixes to the word. The Etymonline definition is giving the definition of the root, not the current english word.
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
As we’ve already seen in this thread, sometimes prefixes are needed to help establish the arrow of causation when people do migrate. Did they come to or leave from this or that country? Etc.
Good thing language can change over time :)
scholar@lemmy.world 5 days ago
The problem we’re addressing is that the prefixes are made redundant by the syntax of to and from. ‘immigrating to europe’ ‘emmigrating from europe’. Dropping the prefix in this context doesn’t change the meaning: ‘migrating to europe’ ‘migrating from europe’.
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
I agree. Maybe immigrating Europe or emigrating the US, but that does seem odd.