How much does 'no' vary? Non, niet, nein... but I don't know much about non-European languages.
In Japanese: いいえ(īe)
That is similar to the Albanian word: Jo
Are any words the same in all languages?
131–140 of 511 posts
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#132I read a long time ago that "Amen" was a word that was the same in nearly all languages.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#133hungarian 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
The Hungarian language is totally different to the dialects spoken by its neighbours, which usually speak Indo-European languages. Hungarian comes from the Uralic region of Asia and belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group, meaning its closest relatives are actually Finnish and Estonian, which are two other really difficult languages for foreigners to learn because they are pretty alien compared to any other languages.
I'm guessing the words you mentioned are all close because they are modern. In the same way that many words that have entered Japanese in the last 200 years are actually English or Portuguese words brought in by foreigners and adapted to the local pronunciation. You can cheat so much in Japanese by simply learning to read katakana and finding all the English words.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#134hungarian 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
"paradicsom" just goes to show that this article is confidently incorrect:
> Exceptions: Italian uses pomodoro, and some other languages use a word similar to the Italian one. Mandarin Chinese is another exception!
"paradicsom" is not similar to pomodoro, in either pronounciation or meaning.
And if the author has made one so simple mistake, we have to assume there are many more with the more exotic languages.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#135Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#136How much does 'no' vary? Non, niet, nein... but I don't know much about non-European languages.
In Indonesian I think no is “tidak”
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#137Alcohol
Sugar
Words of Arabic origin
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#138What about stop? It had likely spread to most latin-type countries due to traffic signs.
“Alto” or “Pare” in Spanish. The Latin “stuppa” is unrelated to either as far as I know.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it simply an English "word" which is very popular?
How is that different than "chocolate" simply being a Spanish word which is very popular? Stealing words from other languages is arguably how most words get created.
"Stealing words"
That's a bit harsh. We borrow words (or loan them). We certainly don't steal them - you are welcome to take them back at any time.
My favourite borrow word conundrum is "biftek". That is a loan word from French by quite a few languages (not English) - bifteck. Now, bifteck is derived from "beef steak" (English)
English is a bit odd due to having several different words for an animal and its flesh via the Norse invasion in 1066. Here we have a cow and beef for the flesh. Cow is a Saxon word and beef is a French word. We also have sheep (Saxon) and mutton (French) and a few others (eg chicken and pullet, pig and pork).
So we have biftek -> bifteck -> beef steak. However beef is a French word (boeuf).
I gather that during a siege of Paris by British troops back in the day, the Parisians noticed that the rostbifs, roasted their beef over barbies. The locals usually boiled their beef, which was a heinous crime. My mother in law also managed to remove all flavour from beef, despite using a sanctioned method of cooking.
Thankfully the Parisians noted that frying or roasting beef was the best way to do the job and also invented "medium", "rare" and "blue". The Brits basically charcoaled their beef.
Despite being British, I like my steak blue.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#140How much does 'no' vary? Non, niet, nein... but I don't know much about non-European languages.
In Persian it’s “na”. Also the words for Mother, Father, Daughter, Brother and some other primitive concepts are very similar. But it’s not really surprising.