If taxi is an option, why not laser or computer?
well, laser is actually an acronym.
Are any words the same in all languages?
61–70 of 511 posts
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#62"OK is frequently used as a loanword in other languages. It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK
In Turkish, the word "ok" means "arrow". But people sometimes use "okay" in conversations as well.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#63If taxi is an option, why not laser or computer?
For computer I give you a French ordinateur and a German Rechner (computer is more common but Rechner is still used).
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Tunisian Arabic baby speak, “mama” means “mama” but “mam-ma” (see [1]) means food/eat. Quite confusing, but it seems to work? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadda
In Korean, "mamma" is baby-talk for food, "eomma" is mom, and "mama" is "Your Highness" (which is also a euphemism for... measles).
So measles is a royal sickness.. I guess Korean wins haha
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#65Water is a common word across Germanic languages. It also appears to be a very old word as I saw a documentary about the Hittites and the interviewee stated that they may have migrated from Europe.
Even within Europe there are many different words used for water, very cool! This is not a comprehensive list: Germanic - wasser/water/voda/woda French - eau Italian/Spanish - aqua/agua Greek - nero (νερό) Danish - vand Romanian - apă Latvian - udens Turkish - su Welsh - dwr
It is strange to see Slavic lumped in with Germanic. Is this common practice?
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#66"Taxi" is universally understood, in my experience. (TFI calls it a "runner up" candidate.) "Kaput" is another.
How is kaput universal? That's just a German word that some people might know, but most won't.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#67Surprised it didn't mention the word or rather not word, "uhhh" or "umm" when we don't know what to say and need to fill silence. I know other languages and cultures have slight variations but the ending sound as far as I have seen is the same.
I don't think that's a word. It's an utterance, but not a lexical one. It's not onomatopoeia, either: 'bark' is onomatopoeia, but actually barking isn't.
They're considered fillers that mark a continuance on part of the speaker so that the other participants know that they will continue speaking. Different languages not only use different sounds, but in many cases continuation markers can also be "normal" words from the language. In English some examples would be "well", or "yes" which can be pure filler words to bridge to the next utterance.
That being said, what is a word anyways? You could argue that they're well understood units of language that convey meaning, which I would argue is pretty much a word
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#68If taxi is an option, why not laser or computer?
Computer isn't universal at all
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#69Surprised it didn't mention the word or rather not word, "uhhh" or "umm" when we don't know what to say and need to fill silence. I know other languages and cultures have slight variations but the ending sound as far as I have seen is the same.
Fillers are cultural. Japanese speakers use ano.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#70Surprised bread wasn't mentioned, seems like there are more than a few languages where the word for bread is 'pan'