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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?

#501

Post by eru »

denysvitali wrote: post #349
eru wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whereas "sushi" I haven't found a language using a distinct word for so far. Actually, there is: Japanese (and Korean)! The English word 'sushi' can be translated into Japanese as 'sushi' or 'sashimi' or even 'gimbap'. (Careful English speakers also use the borrowings 'sashimi' and 'gimbap' etc, but casual English speakers will refer to all of these and more as just 'sushi'.) Similar to how Kindergarten means diffe…

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/german-english/k... Am I missing something?

You are missing the subtleties.

Perhaps simpler: naively German Brot and English bread are the same words. Similar for German Kuchen and English Cake.

But there are lots of things that an English speaker might call bread, that a German speaker might call Kuchen. (Brioche might be one such example.)

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#502

Post by eru »

jaclaz wrote: post #448
eru wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...], 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…

> To be picky, also Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.

Well, and a lot more. Latin also influenced eg German and English etc, but less so.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#503

Post by pyinstallwoes »

helmchenlord wrote: post #483
pyinstallwoes wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters' lands and is derived from rab, meaning "slave".”

This is an incorrect interpretation by people who want to see Karel Čapek's play "R.U.R."(Rossum's Universal Robots), which famously introduced the word "robot" into the English language, this way. While the root "robot" in Slavic languages goes back to "rab" for slaves, Robotnik (Russian/Polish), Robota (Czech) etc. has simply meant "worker" for ages, without any connotation to forced labour. Fun fact: The word "sla…

That smells like propaganda to me, sure, the automaton is a worker, but also a slave.

Slavs, slaves, robots, workers, oh my. A play on words, a tactic of spellings, coincidences abound, don’t be proud, it’s not sound, then just go on and turn around;; we assure you it’s no thing to keep in mind.

May we pray for the next generation called a robot for their children may tell of the times when their mind was paid no time, they’re workers they insist, how can they have sound mind? Consciousness oh my, they’re just robots spending time. Boundaries abound, mental confines surround, let my thoughts fly, but never mind. The thoughts were never mine.

Off I go, to the mines, pay no mind when I share mind, existence as I, robot, shall I, go on minding, my time.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#504

Post by maltelau »

kubanczyk wrote: post #484
godelski wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, there is a thing called a "noun class" which some people use synonymously with "grammatical gender"[0]. (not all noun classes are gendered) Personally I always liked the former term better because really just from a statistical point of view it doesn't make sense to me to call the "gender" conjugations gender based. There's far more inanimate objects that have a g̶e̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ categorical class than there are…

I think that "noun class" muddles the picture. Experience of learning some gendered languages makes it painfully obvious that it's a runaway effect, some kind of a mind virus. If 3 alcohols the wine , the champagne , and the sangria happen to use 3 distinct rules for declination in a language (and make you sound like a nitwit if you misremember one) something must have gone seriously awry. Partying hard cannot requir…

Noun class is a benefit for reliable communication, and that's why most languages evolved (and kept) those mechanisms.

Languages are optimized firstly for the people that speak it as their first language. There are some suggestions that in some cases, a group of people that learned a language later in life can influence the development of the language too, but it's not the primary mover. When you are a L1 speaker, the grammatical gender doesn't really require any cognitive effort in most cases.

And there is an actual benefit in a conversation between two proficient speakers: redundancy. If you're in a bar that serves those three kinds of alcohol, if you were speaking a language without grammatical case, you'd only have to miss one word (the alcohol) to misunderstand the order. If there is also a gendered article, you'd be able to mostly understand the order even if you missed the alcohol.

They also let you communicate more complex ideas more easily but letting you use two or more pronouns in parallel without ambiguity. This sentence is confusing in English, but makes total sense in gendered languages: "Hand me the wine and the sangria. It's in the tall bottle, and it's behind that door"

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#505

Post by kubanczyk »

maltelau wrote: post #504
kubanczyk wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "noun class" muddles the picture. Experience of learning some gendered languages makes it painfully obvious that it's a runaway effect, some kind of a mind virus. If 3 alcohols the wine , the champagne , and the sangria happen to use 3 distinct rules for declination in a language (and make you sound like a nitwit if you misremember one) something must have gone seriously awry. Partying hard cannot requir…

Noun class is a benefit for reliable communication, and that's why most languages evolved (and kept) those mechanisms. Languages are optimized firstly for the people that speak it as their first language. There are some suggestions that in some cases, a group of people that learned a language later in life can influence the development of the language too, but it's not the primary mover. When you are a L1 speaker, th…

> Languages are optimized firstly for the people that speak it as their first language.

Truly optimized? I'd rather say: having arrived at a random local minimum.

The anecdata I can offer. The people who speak this (non-fictional) language as their first one, struggle very much in the beginning. It's far from being given for free: children are not immune from opportunity costs.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#506

Post by LorenPechtel »

downvotetruth wrote: post #42
LorenPechtel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would think animal sounds would be basically universal but it isn't so--other than meow I can't recall any animal sound that was understandable to my wife (native Mandarin speaker.)

Imitative hiss noise? owl who?

I'm talking about the word for the sound, not imitations of the animal's actual sound. I have been understood imitating an animal.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#507

Post by philipov »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #493
philipov wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Japanese speaker can learn to speak German, but that's not the same as a loan word. Japanese is a great example for how loan words are modified to conform to the phonemic structure of a language because it absorbed so much english in the past century. "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'. J…

> but the loan word in japanese is pronounced "faito" because the language demands that all words end in either a vowel or syllabic 'N'. By the way, it's worth observing that that is a requirement of the kana writing system, but it's not a requirement of the language. [It also isn't a requirement of the kanji writing system, in which a symbol can indicate any arbitrary sequence of sounds, but that system is difficult…

I was taught in Japanese language class that unvoiced vowels don't get entirely deleted. You're still supposed to aspirate them, which affects the pacing of the language, but it's hard to hear it because unvoiced vowels don't really make a sound.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#508

Post by askonomm »

euroderf wrote: post #467
askonomm wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Estonian motherboard is emaplaat.

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#509

Post by MandieD »

eru wrote: post #496
MandieD wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mayor of a small German city near me (that’s home to three giant multinationals, two of which everyone in the world knows about) is “Dr. German Hacker.” He was a high school physics teacher.

His first name is German?

Yep!

Re: Are any words the same in all languages?

#510

Post by fuzztester »

I_am_uncreative wrote: post #239
fuzztester wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nahi in Hindi Naahi or Nako in Marathi Naa in Gujarati Illai in Tamil Illaa in Kannada Allaa in Malayalam (both are palindromes :) Naa in Bengali etc. https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=gu&text=no&op=transla...

Well, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, and Gujarati are all Indo European, interestingly enough. Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam are all Dravidian.

All of those have some Sanskrit words in them, though. And probably vice versa.
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