According to Conservapedia, "Ecology" is a German word

[ck4829]

I kid you not!

Here is the entry:

Ecology is the study of relationships among organisms in ecosystems. The term comes from the German "oekologie."

http://www.conservapedia.com/Ecology

Oh my God, I'd think a person with just a high school education would be able to tell that "ecology" is not a German word.

And this isn't a new thing either, it's been there for over a year, and it even seems to be accepted as 'fact' on the Right Wing Wiki.

[bryant69]

1. What is it's derivation?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[ck4829]

2. Greek for "House Study"

[bryant69]

3. That's not what Wikipedia says.

Oh wait . . . never mind.

[karlrschneider]

4. It does come from the German with distant Greek roots

...

[eShirl]

5. that is correct

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

ecology

SYLLABICATION: e·col·o·gy
PRONUNCIATION: -kl-j
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. e·col·o·gies
1a. The science of the relationships between organisms and their environments. Also called bionomics. b. The relationship between organisms and their environment. 2. The branch of sociology that is concerned with studying the relationships between human groups and their physical and social environments. Also called human ecology. 3. The study of the detrimental effects of modern civilization on the environment, with a view toward prevention or reversal through conservation. Also called human ecology.

ETYMOLOGY: German &Odie;kologie : Greek oikos, house; see weik-1 in Appendix I + German -logie, study (from Greek -logi, -logy).

http://www.bartleby.com/61/10/E0031000.html

[Beausoleil]

6. It's Greek to me! n/t

[Zookeeper]

7. Is there something bad about the word having German roots? n/t

[provis99]

8. isn't Conservapedia lovely?

If I don't know about a concept, I look them up, and then assume the facts are totally opposite from what they stated.

Conservapedia most viewed pages as of today:

Most viewed pages

1. Homosexuality‎ <2,335,434>
2. Main Page‎ <2,261,603>
3. Teen Homosexuality‎ <409,286>
4. Arguments Against Homosexuality‎ <329,736>
5. Homosexual Agenda‎ <326,460>
6. Ex-homosexuals‎ <314,590>
7. Homosexuality and Choice‎ <309,551>
8. Wikipedia‎ <301,141>
9. Homosexuality and Anal Cancer‎ <297,217>
10. Homosexuality and Health‎ <291,067>

[LiberalFighter]

9. Over 2 million views about homosexuality by conservatives? Hmm

[LoZoccolo]

10. And even more than the main page! n/t

[DCKit]

11. Hey, at least they're studying it before trying to join up!!

It would be ironic if only these filthy minded cretins weren't passing for morally conservative.

I wonder if the gay Republics get any more or better sex than their kinky, angry, frustrated, sexually incompetent heterosexual counterparts.

[Igel]

12. Language is messy.

Borrowing and calquing make it messier.

If the word's first attested in German as 'oekologie', it's likely that it borrowed. Whether the borrowing was direct (and 'oekologie' was simply Anglicized) or calqued (with the roots oeko- and -logie finding parallels in English eco- and -logy) or refashioned (with the translator/transferrer thinking, 'Gee, German oekologie looks like it would be oikologia in Greek, and oikologia English would have turned out as oecology or ecology) seems like a foolish kind of thing to ponder.

They'd all amount to the same thing on paper, and very similar--albeit not identical--"things" in the mental reasoning of the person to transfer it to English.

Similary, we get a lot of Greek and Latin words from French.

For a similar kind of goofy problem, consider the Serbian word 'bioskop'. It means 'movie theatre'. Obviously it's from Greek, bios 'life' and some root 'skop-' which must mean something like 'see' (I'm not a Hellenist). So Serbian got it from Greek; after all, Greek was a common language there in 100 AD, Greece is in that neck of the woods, Greeks and Serbs are both Orthodox, so it only makes sense. It even shows a stress shift that hundreds of years old (= first hint that something's wrong, since movie theatres aren't hundreds of years old). No, that would be a wrong guess. From German, possibly via Croatian. "Bioskop" is the old German word for a 'film projector'; might be a current one, too, for all I know (I do Slavic and Romance language, thank you.) Got into Indonesian, as well (I'm guessing through Dutch, but somebody other than me would have to firm up that guess). So, yeah, words can be coined from classical roots and then get borrowed--borrowed directly, re-formed (paralleling the formation in the first language), or calqued (using roots already extant in the language, which in this case is about the same as re-formed). A word's history can't always just be read off it's easy-to-see etymology.