A Foreign Language Vocabulary Thread: In Which We Look For Things That Have A Different, Non-Cognate Name in English/French/Spanish/German.

offal in hebrew: psolet

he second fact might have helped Wolf Blitzer lessen his defeat against Andy Richter on "Jeopardy!"

walked, at shoulder, down the street, you weenie

you couldn't tell penne from fetuccini

do you think there's a cutoff date when no newer words can have this property?

I think it's interesting that animal names in particular seem resistant to Latinization. (Is this true of flora, too?) Maybe because they were important words to rural/agricultural life, where people remained illiterate for centuries after the spread of Romance languages?

English: grouse
French: lagopède
Spanish: urogallo
German: Meckern

& Italian: tetraonidi

But as far as "rabbit," which I had thought of before but forgotten, aren't "conejo" and "Kaninchen" related?

Yep. English has a cognate for this as well, which is "coney". So bear in mind that if you're looking to find something with no cognates in those five languages, you have to be aware of related terms. A bit of semantic drift in cognates is to be expected.

does 'pimp' work?
I don't trust google translate -- i thought pimp was 'mec' but it says 'souteneur'

Thought "mec" was just slang for "guy," originally from Arabic, I think. Think the the word you want is "maquereau," which also means "mackerel."

If I could cheat by swapping French for Finnish and Polish, the word for "German" works here:

English: German
Spanish: alemán
German: Deutsch
Italian: tedesco
Polish: Niemiecki
Finnish: Saksa

If "mec" isn't slangy enough you can always use verlan and say it backwards to get "keum"

Italian: tedesco
Polish: Niemiecki

And yeah, 'coney.' Presumably at one point Coney Island was overrun with rabbits.

i only know 'mec' because james lipton from the actor's studio was briefly a pimp in france.

maybe 'mack' comes from 'maquereau'?

Always wondered where 'tedesco' came from, if maybe the word was related to 'Deutsch.'

Apparently you're right. From a language message board I get the explanation that "theodiscus" was a German dialectal word meaning something like "of the people," first cited in 786 AD and which later evolved into Deutsch (German), tedesco (Italian), and teuton (French).

English: boy
French: garcon
German: junge
Italian: ragazzo
Russian: malchik
Spanish: nino

I'm probably too sleepy to think these through properly.

re: boy, i looked up 'cowboy' and couldn't find one for german, which seems odd.

Old Shatterhand?

Cowboy is Cowboy in German.

Hut is German for hat. Pizza Hut chose not to change its name when they expanded into Germany, so it's known there as Pizza Hat.

'Boy' looks good. thanks, ShariVari. iirc, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian all have a different word for this. Is "child" related to "Kind"? If not, then that also should work.

Thanks to everybody else as well- I was afraid this thread would end up a barren Bergmanesque howl into the void on a dreary winter Sunday aka What You Talkin Bout, Willis? but it has shaped up pretty nicely. Now back to my errands.

oh 'nightmare' seemed close except for the mar part of 'cauchemar'

The OED is undecided as to whether "child" is related to "Kind":

from root *kilþ- , whence also Gothic kilþei womb, inkilþô pregnant woman. Not found elsewhere: in the other West Germanic languages its place is taken by kind.

As the form of Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Frisian kind is not satisfactorily explained from the root ken- (Aryan gen-) ‘beget, bear’, and is, for Low German at least, quite irregular, Prof. Sievers suggests the possibility that kind is a perversion of cild, kilþ-, by assimilation to the derivatives of root ken-, which may have spread from Old High German to Old Saxon and Frisian.

Also pied wagtails are great. (Sorry, I only really came in here to suggest "butterfly", but no need, as it was example #2)

if there are related terms that are cognates, you're not finished yet.

pow!
es: pum
de: zack
fr: bang
it: prigioniero di guerra ????

Not quite sure what you mean, fh, that this thread does not meet academic standards and will be rejected by a journal? Please elucidate.

The butterfly page that was linked is great, especially the "ladybug" digression. One more thing about that is the Portuguese word "borboleta" also means "turnstile," in Portugal at least.

Pow! reminds me to list:
En: Ready, Set, Go!
Es: Preparados, Listos, Ya!
De: Achtung, Fertig, Los!
Fr: A vos marques! Prêts? Partez!

Back to boy:
Swedish: pojke
Norwegian: gutt
Danish :dreng

Oh, the Swedish is like the Finnish, "poika".

(As featured in chapter 1 of "Teach Yourself Finnish", the only chapter I made it through.)

Not quite sure what you mean, fh, that this thread does not meet academic standards and will be rejected by a journal? Please elucidate.

you're starting with an english word and then trying to find non-cognates of it from other languages based on the meaning of the english word. but cognates don't necessarily have the same meaning... they have the same origin.

Fr: A vos marques! Prêts? Partez!

Isn't the first part of this "on your marks", though? Which is an often used English alternative, and surely cognate?

fh, isn't that the point? Trying to find phrases where the expressions that transmit the same meaning are non-cognates in multiple languages? I'm not sure what your problem is with the idea.

I thought fh meant something like your example, emil.y, where another word or phrase exists like "on your marks," but I guess not. Truth be told I didn't remember or know the French expression and had to look it up, I guess it doesn't quite work.

Not starting with the English word, fh, starting with the idea that there is a thing that is a *Shark* which has names in four (or more) languages that are not etymologically related. Don't want to get into any philosophical discussion of Signifying Intentional Zombies or "What is it like to be a bat?" or 'Der Schnee ist weiß' if and only if snow is white.

Oh, the Swedish is like the Finnish, "poika".
This happens a lot in Swedish, I think Finnish is an official language in Sweden. Just looked up "butterfly" in a Swedish dictionary and got "fjäril" which I guess is from Finnish but it turns out they also have "sommarfågel."

Well, take the French garcon. It does have a German cognate, Recke, which means warrior. An English one as well... wretch. So... it's not a non-cognate with German, or English. See what I'm saying?

I should come clean and say my ultimate goal is to not let another interesting linguistics thread disappear.

OK, here is the thing that prompted the creation of this thread, long in gestation, this weekend. I still keep wondering whether I am missing something, if I have formulated the problem correctly or if it really works. Or if it really works, is it anti-climactic, so what?. So, my theory, which is mine is that there is a certain chess piece, which moves diagonally on one specified shade of light or dark throughout the entire game which is called

En: the bishop
Fr: le fou
De: der Läufer
Es: el alfil

The bishop, the fool, the runner, and (from the Persian) the elephant rider(!?).

fh, I kind of thought that's what you meant but I guess is should have specified, and I think it is fair to specify, that is OK if a cognate exists, as long as it is not a common word for the exact same thing.

OK, alfil is just an elephant.

But still.

(It's that "the" "the" thing that happens when Spanish and Arabic mix)

It's a different thing then the rest, it is not a name of an animal, like tipsy mothra mentioned, which makes it that much more amazing that it didn't get more standardized.

Your move, ILX.

Shark is actually pretty disparate... German and Icelandic words for shark are cognates (Haifisch and hákarl), but I can't chase down much else!

you really gonna make me google "non-cognate" on a sunday afternoon?

― scott seward, Sunday, February 24, 2013 2:40 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

little-known original line in the Rascals' "Groovin'".

― Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:16 PM (4 hours ago)

Songs this thread is making me think of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgB1Jfpjdw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYk1iVEezAg

^ YES

Holy Haifisch, Fledermausmensch, I never knew this version existed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcnEur8lrXc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXJ3OXWaOY
(You've got to wait through some Broadway ad)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpe_KHDEfgw
DO U SEE?

en: spats
es: polainas
fr: guêtres
de: Gamaschen

is ruined slightly by French origin of "gaiters" and by the fact that spats are short and gaiters are long, whereas afaik the same word is used for both in other languages, or really only for the long form.

(En) bird
(Es) pájaro
(Fr) oiseau
(De) Vogel
(It) uccello

Oiseau and uccello both come from the same Latin word, aucellus.

Was wondering. But the first four seem to work, I think.

Vogel / fowl

Okay, thanks but “fowl” and “bird” are not related.

Think maybe I found another, if my Zing search worked properly

Not a 'thing' per se depending on your definition but…

E: now
F: maintenant
S: ahora
G: jetzt

Bonus Romanian: acum

Inspired by Learned League.

E: ugly
F: laid
I: brutto
S: feo
G: hässlich

E: duck
F: canard
S: pato
G: ente
I: anatra

Maybe ente and anatra are related?

Apparently so, if you go as far back as proto-Indo-European, which seems kind of tenuous anyway.

This is the one I was thinking of
E: room
F: pièce
S: habitación
G: Zimmer

Which is somewhat unsatisfactory because of the chambers and salons I am avoiding.

Yeah I think there are metaphysical problems there of what is a room

English: pillow
German: Kissen
French: oreiller
Spanish: almohada
Italian: cuscino
Portuguese: travesseiro
Welsh: gobennydd

― Alba, Friday, July 14, 2017 5:51 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

this one occurred to me today.

although "guanciale" might have been a better, if slightly awkward, choice for the italian — since both "Kissen" and "cuscino" seem to come via old french "coussin"

This thread inspired me (in part) to name a set of songs i recorded after HEDGEHOGS in 7 different languages. Thank you to emil.y for the hedgehog inspo and all thread contributors for non-cognate inspo <3

https://on.soundcloud.com/xW2Xp

English/French/Spanish/Language Makes No Sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shorts

Listening to the hedgehog songs now - they're great, LL!

Thanks for listening!! 💕 I’m proud of these, hence the proper names.

E: clove
G: Zehe
F: gousse
S: diente

Not 100% happy with that because of the two body parts

Or because there is a word in Spanish, clavo, but that is for the spice clove, not the section of garlic.

So yeah, not actually an original word for the thing in each language