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Are any words the same in all languages?

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Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#441

Post by OJFord »

poizan42 wrote: post #354
OJFord wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. no but actually yes?

I mean, Japanese isn't a Romance (i.e. Latin-derived) language, but the word "pan" is a loan word from one.

My point is that it just seems like a pointless exception, it's not a coincidence with a separate etymology, it's not that oh actually they both trace their route way further back than Latin, it's just taken from a romance language, so 'really' the answer to the question is yes (on evidence so far).

Similarly tamatar in Hindi isn't like tomato (resp. tomate, etc.) because of some Proto-Indo-European root, it's just a devanagari approximation of the Portuguese.

I assume the intent in asking 'are they all romance languages' is 'do they all get it from Latin', to which the answer is certainly yes even if the language as a whole is mainly not.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#442

Post by rootsu »

albert_e wrote: post #233
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…

Some examples from India Telugu/Kannada : mother is "amma" Hindi: "maa"

Marathi differs a bit here.

Mother - aai Father - Baba Maternal Uncle - Mama Paternal Uncle - Kaka

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#445

Post by lopis »

nonfamous wrote: post #80
lopis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is kaput universal? That's just a German word that some people might know, but most won't.

I have no idea, but pointing to some non-working thing and saying "kaput" gets action in any language. It was a tip I picked up back in the backpacking days, and it does seem to work.

I accept your anecdote but it's still hardly a universal word. In how many languages did you try this?

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#446

Post by moralestapia »

mminer237 wrote: post #74
self_awareness wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it simply an English "word" which is very popular?

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.

"Chocolate" is not Spanish, it's Nahuatl.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#447

Post by brabel »

bdw5204 wrote: post #257
thaumasiotes wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm much less familiar with Eastern European history but that appears to be due to another wave of migration in early medieval Europe where Slavic peoples who originally lived further east moved into those areas after the Huns drove the Germanic tribes westward.[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#Migrations

That's an amazing piece of history I was not familiar with. I have recently travelled around the area between Belarus, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Austria and their history is obviously complex and interlinked, but I only saw in the museums the history starting from around 1000 years ago... I didn't consider that much of this region, which today includes mostly slavs, had not actually been populated by slavs just a few centuries before the history I was looking at (literally) which starts more or less with the Rus, Vikings (which apparently initially ruled Kievan Rus[1], despite the region being already slav at around the time ~800AD!), Bavarians and Balts to the north (which became the Grand Duchy of Lithuania later - which for some time actually extended to now-Russian Smolensk, covering most of today's Belarus and a part of today's Russia!)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#448

Post by jaclaz »

eru wrote: post #201
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…

> [...], but because centuries ago these nations speak one single common language that has diverge in centuries into different dialects. It's more complicated than that. First, it's more than just 'centuries ago'. Second, there weren't any nations back then. Third, it wasn't necessarily the case that a common language, proto-Indo-European, was spoken over a large area. There was just as much, and even more, diversity…

>influenced what would later become French and Spanish

To be picky, also Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.

If you are native or fluent in any of these languages and also have a basic knowledge of Latin, you are usually capable of reading simple texts in any of the other ones, deriving the meaning of the "diverging" words by the rest of the sentences or by connecting the word with a different Latin root.

Paradoxically, the bigger issues come from "false friends" that - while not very common - can be deceiving.

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