Are any words the same in all languages? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#241

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC

bdw5204 wrote: post #234

Eliah_Lakhin wrote: post #193

Perhaps, it would be more useful for students if foreign language courses start with explaining one thing that is well known to linguists, but maybe does not have enough recognition by a wide audience. Most European languages are at some extent just dialects of the same common language[1]. And most of the words we use in distinct languages are (at some extent) just different pronunciations of the same vocabulary. Thi…

If you're familiar with ancient and medieval European history, you're pretty much familiar with the origins of most of the European languages. Areas that were part of the Roman Empire generally speak Latin dialects like Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. The exception being the eastern part of the Roman Empire which historically spoke Greek and still speaks Greek (except for the parts of the Roman Empire that r…

> The exception being the eastern part of the Roman Empire which historically spoke Greek and still speaks Greek (except for the parts of the Roman Empire that remain Islamic).

Aren't there big chunks of the Eastern Roman Empire that now speak Slavic languages?

Also, the parts of the Eastern Roman Empire that currently remain Islamic constitute nearly the entire Eastern Roman Empire, including the capital.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#242

Post by tetromino_ » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #151

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…

The linguistic term you are looking for is "babble word" or "Lallwort" [1].

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lallwort

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#243

Post by elfahbeht » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:34 AM UTC

Eliah_Lakhin wrote: post #193

Perhaps, it would be more useful for students if foreign language courses start with explaining one thing that is well known to linguists, but maybe does not have enough recognition by a wide audience. Most European languages are at some extent just dialects of the same common language[1]. And most of the words we use in distinct languages are (at some extent) just different pronunciations of the same vocabulary. Thi…

This is the basic idea behind the Language Transfer series of courses - https://www.languagetransfer.org/

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#244

Post by bedobi » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #151

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…

don't mean to nitpick but not sure where you're getting Japanese from, in Japanese mama is Okaasan or Haha and Otousan or Chichi for dada. (I don't know the evolution of either of the words, it may be that they were closer to mama and dada in the past or distant past, but contemporar Japanese doesn't fit the pattern)

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#245

Post by jrflowers » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:41 AM UTC

The noise one makes by blowing through pursed lips (sometimes referred to as blowing a raspberry in English) seems like a pretty universal way to indicate “fart” though it is spelled differently in various cultures

Pfffffttttt

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#246

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:42 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #139

mminer237 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> English is a bit odd due to having several different words for an animal and its flesh

How odd is this? I noticed something odd in Mandarin:

cow: niu 牛

beef: niu rou 牛肉

sheep: yang 羊

mutton: yang rou 羊肉

pig: zhu 猪

pork: rou 肉 [it's possible to specify 猪肉, but not necessary]

deer: lu 鹿

venison: lu rou 鹿肉

And some where the distinction doesn't exist in English:

chicken (animal): ji 鸡

chicken (food): ji rou 鸡肉 [English pullet refers to the animal, not the meat]

goat (animal): yang 羊

goat (food): yang rou 羊肉

But there's also this one:

jellyfish (animal): shuimu 水母

jellyfish (food): haizhe 海蜇

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#247

Post by bedobi » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:43 AM UTC

pkd wrote: post #172

garba_dlm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'd' and 'p' are close enough. specially since the point of contrast is the 'm' of the opposite(complimentary) concept/sound/principle: ma ma

Linguistically, I don't think d and p are close at all. But a sibling comment also links to the Wikipedia entry for this common fallacy.

what? linguists would universally consider d and p extremely similar, they're near identical plosives

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#248

Post by OfSanguineFire » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #133

spamtarget wrote: post #106

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

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 languag…

> meaning its closest relatives are actually Finnish and Estonian

Hungarian’s closest relatives are Khanty and Mansi. While Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian are indeed in the same Uralic language family, they were at the very opposite ends of the dialect continuum that ultimately produced that language family, and they no longer bear any close relationship.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#249

Post by wizofaus » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:49 AM UTC

jononomo wrote: post #203

wizofaus wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, "mango" is surprisingly consistent across every language I checked, but in Bengali and possibly quite a few other similar widely spoken languages it's different. Whereas "sushi" I haven't found a language using a distinct word for so far.

That's because sushi doesn't exist in any other language

I tried that theory with quite a few things that didn't "exist" per se in Chinese, yet there were distinct Chinese words for them. Plus there are plenty of food items from other cultures where we tend to use a native equivalent in English (spring rolls, rice paper rolls, sweet and sour pork, Swedish meatballs etc). Though to be fair we tend just to borrow the word wholesale. Not sure to what degree other languages have consistently done the same.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#250

Post by Delk » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 2:50 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #151

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…

Robot intuitively sounds like it could be a good candidate.

I don't think "computer" is quite that universal, though. AFAIK it's something else at least in French ("ordinateur"), Swedish ("dator"), Norwegian ("datamaskin"), Finnish ("tietokone"; lit. "knowledge/data machine") and Estonian ("arvuti"). I think Chinese has its own unrelated word, too. And about half of the African languages that I can easily check in Wikipedia have words that aren't at least immediately recognisable as related to the English word.

It's a commonly shared loan word but it doesn't seem to be quite that close to being shared by (nearly) all languages.

edit: added translations for the examples