Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
But there's a word for "all of the Eastern Roman Empire, except for the parts that are not Greece". We just call that "Greece". Greek used to be the language of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it was almost completely extirpated; it is not a good example of persistence.
Are any words the same in all languages?
451–460 of 511 posts
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#452Very surprised to see Amen not making the list. I know it is a Christian word at the end of a prayer meaning "so be it". However, even if the prayer language is changed I understand Amen to remain untranslated.
A _Christian_ word? It's a Hebrew word: "אָמֵן"
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is kaput universal? That's just a German word that some people might know, but most won't.
It's at least as commonly used in English as say Yiddish words like klutz and schmuck.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#454"OK is frequently used as a loanword in other languages. It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK
Weird thing is that it’s only about 200 years old and seemingly American in origin. I would have guessed that a Sanskrit word like khanda aka “candy” or something like “chai“ would have spread faster and longer ago.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#455Earlier 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.
"Chocolate" is not Spanish, it's Nahuatl.
In catalan still is -xocolata- close nough
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#456In English, it's turkey, in reference to it's supposed origin from Turkey.
In French it's dinde, which could be viewed as d'Inde, or "from India".
In Arabic it's "habash" which refers to the Horn of Africa.
Clearly one of the most confused birds around ...
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#457Really would strongly recommended it, he is one of the most entertaining people that I have ever listened to.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
It won't exclude anything. Loanwords can only be expressed in the phonemic structure of the language, because the speaker isn't capable of doing anything else.
> [...], because the speaker isn't capable of doing anything else. Huh? Japanese people have the same vocal tracts as Germans who have the same vocal tracts as Egyptians. Just because someone's native languages don't have a particular sound or sound combination doesn't mean they can't learn. That's especially true for sound combinations: a Turkish speaker might find a word that doesn't follow Turkish vowel harmony a…
"Fight" is a word in english, but the loan word in japanese is pronounced "faito" because the language demands that all words end in either a vowel or syllabic 'N'. Japanese people are capable of saying english words without ending them in a vowel, but then they're speaking english, not japanese.
The word for salmon roe in japanese is 'ikura'. This is a loan word from russian: 'ikra' for caviar. But because of the Consonant-Vowel structure of the language, a 'u' was added when the word was borrowed.
One of the funniest examples is when a word is borrowed by japanese speakers and then gets translated back into english, the translators won't always return it to the original form. The name Lily would be pronounced "Riri" in japanese (japanese speakers might not even notice the difference between R and L because they're the same phoneme), and when it's translated back into english, it might come back as "Really". This has been a source of consternation for video game players before.
Likewise, when american english speakers borrow a word from a language with a trill or rolling R, they make it conform to the phonemic structure of the language by changing to a retroflex R.
And these sorts of examples are found everywhere. Every language has a particular structure for how valid words can be formed, and speakers of the language will modify foreign words to fit the sounds they're trained to emit unless they're consciously trying to speak a different language.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#459The correct answer is "spam". Spam was a novel problem that hit the entire world almost at once, just as that entire world was becoming able to talk with itself easily. So an invented word was immediately adopted in all languages. Just check out the bottom of the wiktionary page. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/spam
Not that spämmi isn't used as word as well.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#460A 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’.