Water
Why the words cluster
Related languages descend from a common ancestor, and everyday words come along. English water, German Wasser, Russian voda and Lithuanian vanduo all go back to Proto-Indo-European *wódr̥. Latin aqua became eau, agua, acqua, apă.
Families also swap in new words for old ones. Hindi pānī comes from Sanskrit pānīya, “drinkable.” Tamil taṇṇīr is literally “cold water.” Malagasy rano is kin to Indonesian danau, “lake.”
Nibi is Ojibwe (Anishinaabemowin), a language of the Great Lakes, spoken in the Great Lakes region long before English arrived.
Recordings and licenses
Volunteer speakers on Wikimedia Commons, including the Lingua Libre and Shtooka projects. Ojibwe: Eugene Stillday, © The Ojibwe People’s Dictionary, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Audio trimmed and volume-matched; words and etymologies checked against Wiktionary.