In Hebrew:
Orange = tapuz (which is 2 words mashed together, tapuach (apple) & zahav (gold))
Taxi = monit
Tomato = agvania
Are any words the same in all languages?
461–470 of 511 posts
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#462Baal?
As in, Dutch for (hay) bale?
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#463Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
what? linguists would universally consider d and p extremely similar, they're near identical plosives
Plosives are a big category. "k" is also a plosive, but does not sound anything like a or . d and p are plosives but are made using completely different parts of the mouth (dental vs labial). Perhaps some linguist will consider them "close" but "near identical" is almost certainly wrong, but I am happy to be proven wrong with a citation.
both you and the comment I'm replying to are hilariously hackernews pedantic
consider all the sounds humans can produce
now ask yourself
1) amongst them, if p and d are close (there is no world in which the answer to that is "no")
2) if there are real life examples of languages shifting between them or using them interchangeably (there are, papa and dada being a prime example)
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#465I've often wondered how widespread "okay" is. I remember standing on the deck of a Washington State Ferry about 20 years ago, listening to a couple of Arabic men speaking. At the end of a long string of Arabic words, one of the men said "Okay?" with exactly the same inflection an English-speaker would, to solicit agreement, and his companion echoed "okay" in the apparent affirmative.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#466These 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…
OTOH mother/mom in Finnish is "äiti" which sounds (to the foreign ear) like a distress call.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the Finnish children I know use äiti for mother, but I've seen a lot of variation with regards to naming fathers: isä, isi, and iska. I must admit I've always meant to look at the differences, and see where they come from, but I've never quite remembered.
Dad in Estonian: isa, issi Mom in Estonian: ema, emme
ema,emme is interesting. Finnish has (as a variant form of "mother") "emo", as in "emolevy" motherboard.
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#468Coffee fails the test in my locale which is interestingly the supposed origin[0] of the drink/plant. We call it Buna in Ethiopia and it's a big symbol/part of the national identity not to mention the most important export commodity. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee
This sort of makes sense, almost everyone else in the world learnt of coffee directly or indirectly via Arab-speaking people and so use their name for it, but Ethopians had it first and so have their own word for it.
interestingly in my locale the language is arabic and one of the names of coffee is "Bun"
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#469A lot of comments mention a lot food items or beverages. I think a specific drink or food is likely to be well recognized globally. E.g.
Pizza Sushi Cola Vodka Gin Kebab Grill
Another category would be modern inventions/phenomena like Internet Sms Selfie
Yet another would be countries which are well known, but with not so many cultural mixes (e.g. not Germany), e.g. Peru Australia Sudan
Re: Are any words the same in all languages?
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/german-english/k... Am I missing something?
Kindergarten to Americans: when most children start elementary school, usually age 5 (maybe 6 if their parents didn’t think they were quite ready), Grade 0. What Germans would call “Vorschuljahr” (last year of Kindergarten, where there’s less play and more learning how to count, recognize letters, and sit still at a table) Kindergarten to Germans: usually its own establishment, available but not mandatory from age 3,…
The Kindergarten to Germans you're describing seems like the "Kita": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertagesst%C3%A4tte - but the whole education system is very confusing and it's generally not language-specific but more culturally specific AFAIK