221–230 of 511 posts
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.
The word 'Tarif' exists in German but it's used in different contexts, eg for collective bargaining agreements between labour unions and employers.
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…
In Georgian “mama” means father
A Dutch friend once said that the one word from his language that has had universal reach was "apartheid"... I'm sure that if there are any truly global words they are probably ones like that (initially) attached to a specific geographical context.
There is another Dutch word that must be pretty widespread in STEM circles: ‘eigenvector’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalues_and_eigenvectors#H... seems to confirm the German origins, citing David Hilbert and Hermann von Helmholtz as originators of the word.
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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…
Is that a common way of describing the Norman invasion?
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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…
You make a good point. I looked it up and it's in MW and even scrabble recognizes it as an interjection. I think to be a word, at a minimum an utterance would have to conform to the phonemic structure of a language, but that's a low bar, and 'uh' passes. I guess it's a word!
I don't think that's a good criterion, because it would exclude a lot of loanwords.
Pizza is pretty universal too
Even "hacker" isn't a bad candidate, though it does seem to be different in Arabic.
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Turkish has an interesting deviation from the pattern: the Turkish word for mama is 'anne'. Turkish dad's follow the usual pattern though with 'baba'.
Is this similar to the name Annie? Or more like "ah-knee"? Either way, interesting note! I'm just really surprised that these words are similar across such varieties of languages. Like the fact that you have Asia, Europe, Africa, and from what I can find even the mama is similar in Cherokee[0]. So that's all continents! To me that's crazy. And extra fucking interesting that there appears to be (from my non-expert poi…
I read a long time ago that "Amen" was a word that was the same in nearly all languages.