I think "one two three" sound very similar in a lot of languages. Like pronouncing them "a e i".
Are any words the same in all languages?
421–430 of 511 posts
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#422These 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 a lot of words for mother and unlike in English with mom, mommy and mother, they aren’t related. The most common are okaasan (with a few variations of its own), haha and mama. But mama is written with katakana suggesting it is a loan word. Which I find interesting in terms of the babble word theory. It could also be katakana because it is considered derived from a sound like how onomatopoeia are often wr…
haha is Chinese, so also a "loan" word
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Wi…
Chinese and Japanese = formally 電子計算機 (electronic calculating machine), everyday language uses a transliteration of "computer" in Japanese and 電脳 "electric brain" in Chinese.
電腦 in Chinese (rather than Japanese) characters to be pendantic :)
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#424These 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…
Hindi/Gujarati/Sanskrit has mata and pita.
And mummy/pappa would be used be used colloquially in Gujarati, apart from the more formal mata/pita and other terms like ma/bapu.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#425One of their main candidates [coffee] is incorrectly selected: it is something like "sourch" in Armenian (սուրճ)
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D5%BD%D5%B8%D6%82%D6%80%D5%B...].
Also, in Hebrew an orange is a "tapuz" (תפוז), which is short for "tapuach zahav", or a "golden apple" [https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%96]. A pity that this isn't highlighted, given that Hebrew is supported in Duolingo.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#426Perhaps, 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…
There's also the issue of drift [0]
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#427I though banana was one of those words.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or simi for telephone. Another near universal word would be police, wouldn't it? Iceland of course is one of the exceptions! I found those fun facts about Icelandic very fascinating when I first visited decades ago as a teenager.
Is 'police' that universal? I know Irish have the Gardaí - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_S%C3%ADoch%C3%A1na . Yes, Icelandic has 'Lögreglu' and Greece has Αστυνομία ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Police ) but indeed most places use some variant of 'police'.
`Gardaí` is more of a formal name for a specific insitution. The Irish language still has the more generic word `póilín`, which appears to be at least phonetically related to the english `police`.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japanese has a lot of words for mother and unlike in English with mom, mommy and mother, they aren’t related. The most common are okaasan (with a few variations of its own), haha and mama. But mama is written with katakana suggesting it is a loan word. Which I find interesting in terms of the babble word theory. It could also be katakana because it is considered derived from a sound like how onomatopoeia are often wr…
haha is Chinese, so also a "loan" word
Wiktionary seems to disagree, saying it’s a Japanese origin word. https://ja.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/はは
At least in modern mandarin mom is “ma”, but Chinese has so many dialects …
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's amazing : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/t%C3%B6lva "A portmanteau word, coined by Sigurður Nordal in 1965 from tala (“number”) + völva (“prophetess”)."
Or simi for telephone. Another near universal word would be police, wouldn't it? Iceland of course is one of the exceptions! I found those fun facts about Icelandic very fascinating when I first visited decades ago as a teenager.
Police is Rendőrség in Hungarian, translating to something like “order guard establishment” (-ség corresponds to -ness or -ery suffix in English, more or less, like “pékség” is bakery)