301–310 of 511 posts
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/8lefir/why_doe...
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"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 [Englis…
Mama and Papa are virtually the same in every language that I've been exposed to. My theory is that "babies first words" aren't actually words; "ma" and "pa" are just the easiest syllables for a baby to make and society has interpreted them as meaning mother and father.
Do you propose an explanation for why they are always this way round? Eg. you may expect some language to use 'mama' for father and 'papa' for mother based on your reasoning.
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.
Mandarin and Cantonese: Jīqìrén https://translate.google.de/?sl=de&tl=zh-CN&text=robot Meaning: http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/22467/
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and "uncle" in hindi (mother's brother, specifically; hindi has different words for various kinds of uncle/aunt/grandparent depending on the path through the family tree)
I’ve never really thought about it, but that most sounds simpler than all the step/in-law/twice removed nonsense in English.
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…
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
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…
Japanese has mama and papa, but only as relatively recent loanwords. The closest (at least phonetically, though not necessarily in usage) native equivalents are haha and chichi
Mama and Papa are virtually the same in every language that I've been exposed to. My theory is that "babies first words" aren't actually words; "ma" and "pa" are just the easiest syllables for a baby to make and society has interpreted them as meaning mother and father.
Do you propose an explanation for why they are always this way round? Eg. you may expect some language to use 'mama' for father and 'papa' for mother based on your reasoning.
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…
K'iche (Mayan): chuch, qajaw
Mam (Mayan): txu, man
Kaurna (Pama-Nyungan): ngangkita, yarlita
Gurindji (Pama-Nyungan): ngamayi, ngaji
I doubt there are any words meaningfully conserved across all languages. That sort of thing would be the holy grail of phylolinguistics and a lot of very smart people have spent good chunks of their lives turning up nothing of the sort.