Unlikely as many Germanic languages have it, with similar meanings. It’s a variant of “ja”, yes. Add a bit of laconicy and you can make “Well.” a sentence in itself.
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dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 1 week agoAnd this is the moment I realized that German “tja” (“well”) probably comes from French “tiens” even though I’ve had five years of French in school.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 week ago
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 week ago
My understanding is french is the most Germanic of the romance languages, so I’d guess it came to them both from an older Germanic language
dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 1 week ago
I don’t think so. French “tiens” is a form of the verb “tenir” (“hold”). German “tja” is pronounced almost exactly the same and is only used as an interjection with a similar meaning but doesn’t have any related forms that I could think of.
Especially the southern German dialects have quite a few words that originated as loan words from French so it’s at least plausible. Could of course just be a coincidence as well.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah. Definitely might be a false cognate (if even that). Always look up etymologies if they interest you! Because so many that people repeat aren’t true. I was just speculating and hoped that was obvious, but maybe it wasn’t to everyone.