I and some e-friends who are striving to learn a bit of Dutch began a discussion today about ’ neighbour ’ being or not related to Dutch ‘buur’, Swedish ’ by(gg)’, German ‘Bau’, and even Portuguese ‘morar’ (to dwell).
Is there a PIE root behind this all ?

Thanks a lot,

Wilson P. Quinette, Sumaré - Brazil

Hallo Wilson P Quinette!

Welcome to the Agora.

The word ‘neighbour’ comes from the Old English neahgebur meaning ‘near-dweller’. That verb, meaning ‘to dwell’, is buan. Exactly the same word existed in Old High German, where it led to the Modern German bauen, ‘to build’. The word Bau is thus clearly connected with ‘neighbour’. This connexion holds true for the Swedish by and bygge (from bygga ‘to build’). In Dutch, buur has retianed its meaning of a dweller. A variation is the word boer, meaning ‘farmer’. These all come from of a form of the PIE root *bheu-, ‘be’.

The Portuguese morar is a red herring here. It comes from the Latin morari, ‘to delay’. This word became used to mean ‘to dwell’ in Late Latin.

- Garzo.

English "neighbour" is nêah "near" + bûr "husbandman, peasant".
The same origin goes for buur and the synonyms old Swedish and current Danish and Norwegian nabo and German Nachbar.

Buur, bouw(en), bûr, build, Ger. Bau, bauen, Sw. by (village), bygga (build), bo (live, dwell) all seem to go back to PIE *bhu- to be, to exist.

Swedish bur with cognates in other languages means "cage, (prison) cell". An old Sw. word fatabur means appr. "(food storage) shed"

Latin moror = "dwell"; nothing resembling in Sanskrit.

<addendum:> I should have guessed that Garzo would finish before me while I was doing the last checks.

Where did you get that idea? :o

Hey Garzo and Anders, thanks a lot for answering, really.
Yes, there are lots of connections, some not so evident, and that only adds to the pleasure tracking them down…

Spiff: Me I intended at first to learn German.  Then I thought its concepts too radically different from my mothertongue’s so I decided to shift to Dutch instead, which is almost free of those damn cases, so it could act like a decompression chamber.  Now I intend to go on with Dutch and let my date with German for some time later.  
One of my sisters is married to a dutchman but he, for some reason, prefers talking to us, brazilians, only in portuguese.  I’m losing a good chance to practice a bit with a native, but perhaps it’d be boresome to him. I dunno.

Maybe he’s a wise man and doesn’t want you to learn the Dutch variant of Dutch, which is of course vastly inferior to Flemish.  ;)

The Portuguese morar is a red herring here. It comes from the Latin morari, ‘to delay’. This word became used to mean ‘to dwell’ in Late Latin.

I didn’t know that the Portuguese like herring.  My recollection is that they are crazy about bacala (cod).

Perry