111–120 of 511 posts
Cats "meow" (miˈaʊ̯) in all languages. Dogs can woof, blaf, ham, ao, ...
Japanese uses “nyaa” for meow. I’m sure there are other counterexamples.
"Taxi" is universally understood, in my experience. (TFI calls it a "runner up" candidate.) "Kaput" is another.
Cats "meow" (miˈaʊ̯) in all languages. Dogs can woof, blaf, ham, ao, ...
Well other than Chinese and Arabic (which also use very different words for "taxi" than most other widely spoken languages).
Btw my other candidate is "chihuahua" (though there's probably other dog breeds...). And yes it's the essentially the same in Chinese and Arabic if Google translate is to be believed.
Water 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
hungarian chimes in, the words mentioned in the article in hungarian: tea - tea (different pronunciation) pineapple - ananász orange - narancs taxi - taxi (slightly different pronunciation) tomato - paradicsom now let's look at the article's champions coffee - kávé chocolate - csokoládé both the same origin, but distorted so much, that i could not order those things in starbucks... so in my books, taxi is the winner
"Taxi" is universally understood, in my experience. (TFI calls it a "runner up" candidate.) "Kaput" is another.
Baal?
As I verified that, I discovered that the actor who played Ba'al in Stargate SG-1 died a couple years ago. No word about his symbiont.
Any languages that use a distinctively different word for "robot"? Well other than Chinese and Arabic (which also use very different words for "taxi" than most other widely spoken languages). Btw my other candidate is "chihuahua" (though there's probably other dog breeds...). And yes it's the essentially the same in Chinese and Arabic if Google translate is to be believed.