171–180 of 511 posts
"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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Russian there's no "dada", it's "papa" instead.
'd' and 'p' are close enough. specially since the point of contrast is the 'm' of the opposite(complimentary) concept/sound/principle: ma ma
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sign languages are full fledged languages in their own right; they aren't simply a series of visual renditions of the words in the spoken or written language. Their grammars are often fundamentally different. E.g. ASL is closer in syntax to Japanese than it is to English.
yeah, i understand that they're not visual renditions of spoken or written words. but as far as the possibility for a sign language to share a word with a written or spoken language - how? does a sign language have words, in the sense that a spoken language does, that could be shared with a spoken language and aren't simply a transliteration of a spoken-language word into signing? from the example in the article, is…
In ASL, there are some words where you just spell it out. But most things have their own dedicated sign, or maybe a compound of a couple of signs, or a sign that looks -almost- like a related concept but with a modifier (it almost feels like Chinese in that respect). The sign usually represents some aspect of what you're describing (as an example, "banana" is signed by peeling an imaginary banana).
ASL grammar is nothing like English, and has concepts that have no verbal equivalent. Conjugation works completely differently, and it's common for sentences to have a directional component and/or a facial-expression component.
There is one word which I think is the same in all languages: Tariff. And it makes sense - it's the "how much?" that would be (and is) asked at any port and travelling hub.
Alcohol Sugar Words of Arabic origin
For reasons I haven't been able to figure out, some modern Indian languages (like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi) call it 'cheeni' which is the same word to refer to someone as Chinese. Other languages use variations of the Sanskrit 'sakhar', 'sakkare'
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.
I think new words is the right approach in general, but golem.
These seem like very bad candidates. All are loan words, which is interesting, but we could go deeper if we're considering pineapple/ananas and coffee. And let's be real, words like robot and computer are mostly the same in this respect too, especially if we're considering taxi. But what about words that are more "native"? How about "mama" and "papa"? There are variations, but these seem to be pretty small and mostly…
These seem like very bad candidates. All are loan words, which is interesting, but we could go deeper if we're considering pineapple/ananas and coffee. And let's be real, words like robot and computer are mostly the same in this respect too, especially if we're considering taxi. But what about words that are more "native"? How about "mama" and "papa"? There are variations, but these seem to be pretty small and mostly…
These seem like very bad candidates. All are loan words, which is interesting, but we could go deeper if we're considering pineapple/ananas and coffee. And let's be real, words like robot and computer are mostly the same in this respect too, especially if we're considering taxi. But what about words that are more "native"? How about "mama" and "papa"? There are variations, but these seem to be pretty small and mostly…
What about stop? It had likely spread to most latin-type countries due to traffic signs.