Haukur wrote:

>>>P.S. "Cry" hardly does justice to "grenja"; anyone got a better word?

Óskar replied:

>>"Whine".

hm - I thought "grenja" was more similar to "scream", "wail" or "bawl"

Keth asked:

>Is this verb related to English "to grin"? (swed/norw grina
>also means to cry)

It certainly appears to be - Swedish "grina" is related to the English
"grin", Danish "grine", Dutch "grijnen" and German "greinen"... and less
directly to the English "groan" and "grunt" (which then have more direct
cognates in the Swedish "grymta", Danish "grynte" and German "grunzen")

gah - constantly seeing cognates like this has the advantage and
disadvantage that I sometimes forget some of the differences between the
languages - it just seems so straight-forward that all of these words have
similar meanings that I can gather the meaning of something written in a
language I've never studied that much, but then I can end up making the
mistake of not paying attention to the vastly different usage between
related words in different languages...

the above is a perfect example - all the words come from a basic meaning of
"drawing back the mouth", and I can easily tell that each of these words is
going to mean that I'm dealing with an odd facial expression, probably
accompanied with some sounds from the throat, but there's as much
difference between "grenja" and "grin" as there is between "groan" and "grunt".

-Selv

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