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

In Finnish, the colloquial term for "television" during it's early years was "seeing radio".

Barnes's Outline of English Speech-craft is quite something btw
http://archive.org/details/anoutlineenglis00barngoog

I don't like seeing English words borrowed then used both non-indigenously and wrong - 'un parking' or 'un shampooing' (that's Turkish, but the -ing isn't)

I am pleasingly confused by the German "Handy", which appears to be an adoption of an English word which doesn't exist, or at least, doesn't mean "mobile phone".

There are some others words like this... In German, the word for panties/briefs is "slip", which is borrowed from English, though I don't know why the Germans wanted to use that English word for that product. I once told a German friend that English-speakers don't call those things "slips", and she was surprised by this, she'd assumed they use the same word.

Another amusing example: in the Nordic countries and Germany (possibly in other parts of Europe as well) toilets are often marked with the letters "W.C.", which comes from "water closet", except that term isn't used in English anymore. In Finnish, the most common local word for toilet, "vessa", is derived from how Finns pronounce the letter "W.C.".

the initialism 'wc' is still used in english speaking countries despite the demise of the phrase itself

Ah, I didn't know that! Are toilets commonly marked with those letters?

maybe not commonly, but you will see it around the place from time to time, especially on a diagram of a building or example

/for/ example

In here it's still the most common way to mark a toilet.

I call it the necessary room.

Another example of odd use of English terms: in Finland, collarless sweaters made of thick fabric (except wool) are often called "college shirts" ("college-paita"). For proof:

https://www.google.fi/search?hl=fi&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1361&bih=872&q=gollege-paita

I'm not sure what's the origin for that.

Actually thought about starting a thread about things like the German "Handy" but figured it would be all downhill from there, and mostly stuff from Japanese so thanks for proving me wrong. In any case we should probably just use this thread.

Only sort of related, but it really interests me when a group of words has sort of different boundaries of meaning in different languages.

Like, in Danish and English To Float and At Flyde is the same verb. But when it is sorta adjectivised: 'is Floating' / 'er Flydende', the Danish word kan both mean something that is floating, and something that is liquid, like water. The word Liquid is like the word Likvid, which mainly has meaning in economic terms. And Liquid can be nounified, 'A Liquid', but that would be 'En Væske' in Danish. And Væske can be verbified and adjectified again: 'at Væske' 'et Væskende' but that is used when wounds become disgusting and start dripping liquid.

Anyhow, it fascinates me...

Just now remembered a popular favorite "un smoking" in which the French took the term from English and dropped the word "jacket."

If i could find my copy of this book, i could just take pictures of the pages and post them instead of typing typing typing

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xz%2B38mm8L._SL500_SS500_.jpg

haha, yeah, I am wanting to get home and go through

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QQQEJ9VZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

does anyone else have that book? it's apparently not very tough to get ($0.01 price point) and it's one of my favorites! so many differently shaped words. it's like a picture book for words where you can think about what they mean or not, you can just browse them and think about their various distinctive features.

this is a lovely thread btw, nice work (if, as fh has stated, on a little shaky ground re: semantic shift -- but who cares, not me)

That thing must be like a brick/ladrillo/Backstein, La Lechera, how could you misplace it? I guess it must be very concise indeed.

And thanks. I think we might be winging it a bit, but we can leave it to the big boys to vet them later for their official certification.

Only sort of related, but it really interests me when a group of words has sort of different boundaries of meaning in different languages.

I always put it back somewhere "safe" but it changes every time, so I can never remember where I put it! I'm gonna look in a couple other places.

My other favorite dictionary is Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang (this is the edition i have) http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yqLQO2E%2BL._AA160_.jpg

and I also have his Gentle Art of Lexicography and Origins, all very enjoyable if you like that sort of thing.

love partridge, keep his Dictionary of the Underworld by the loo.

So this doesn't quite work because of - surprise- English and French
En: the summit
Fr; le sommet
De: der Gipfel
Es: el colmo

Also points off for Latin-derived cognate with the Spanish, "culmination"

wait, el colmo is not right, it's la cumbre.

Also I feel there's no better place to put this thought, but speaking of cognates every time someone on the radio says "sequestration" I not only see it with a c, but I think about hostage holding/kidnapping. Interesting choice of words, political strategists.

"Fjäril" is Swedish, in Finnish "butterfly" is "perhonen

Never thought this thread would hit 200 posts.

How do you people even do this?

― Margaret Vegemite Sanger (Leee), Sunday, February 24, 2013 11:11 PM

This thread is ILX's Puppy Bowl counterprogramming to OSCARS 2013.

― Plasmon, Monday, February 25, 2013 1:21 AM (9 hours ago)

many xps remind me that the swedish word for "corduroy" is "manchester".

Woah, superb! Corduroy United.

My name is Sam Tyler. I went to Stockholm on vacation, put on some corduroys, and now I'm back in 1973.

re: false friends

I had an Italian student (learning English) in a class once who was asked 'what would you do if you found a spider in your bath?' and he just looked as if the questions was completely insane and kept saying 'but this is impossible!'. It took quite a while to work out that 'spider' appears to mean some kind of sports car in Italy.

JamesDeanCarCrash.jpg

I was gonna say, was this 1964 or something? What an antiquated sounding anedote! I remember my parents joking about the Nova in Mexico to similar effect.

I would prefer the ensuing confusion had he said "I would break down the bathroom wall to have it lifted out, then I would ride it past the cafés where the pretty girls sit, and maybe the next day I would sell it for a lot of money"

English: kite (toy)
French: cerf-volant
Spanish: cometa
German: Drachen
Italian: aquilone

Etymonline says the English word comes from the bird kite ((Milvus ictinus), derived from Old English cyta "kind of hawk," probably imitative of its cries (cf. Old English ciegan "to call," German Kauz "screech owl").

the French word comes from the Occitan "sèrp-volanta" (flying serpent). it's apparently unrelated to "cerf", the French word for deer. "cerf-volant" also means "stag beetle" in French and comes from the beetle's ability to fly and the resemblance of its mandibles to deer antlers.

the Spanish word, unsurprisingly, means "comet", and comes from the Greek "kometes" (literally "long-haired").

the German word is a form of "Drache" (dragon).

the Italian word comes from "aquila" ("eagle" in Italian and Latin). but "aquilone" also means "north wind" (from the Latin "aquilonis").

kites were introduced to Europe from China, so I wonder if the French and German terms originally referred to Chinese kites in the shape of dragons or just to the dragon as a symbol of Chinese culture.

the bird "kite" doesn't belong in this thread, but here it is in five languages:

English: kite
French: milan
Spanish: milano
German: Milan
Italian: nibbio

the French, Spanish, German, and Italian words come from the Latin "milvinus" (a form of "milvus", which refers to the bird). "milvinae" in scientific terms is a subfamily of the kite. the word is unrelated to the Italian city

the English word comes from the bird kite ((Milvus ictinus)

correction: "Milvus inctinus" seems to be an outdated term for the common European kite. In general the word "kite" refers to a number of species of birds from the family Accipitridae. I don't know what species the common terms originally referred to.

Nice. Had forgotten about "kite." I knew "cometa" and "Drachen" but never came across the French term. Also, this one is analogous to the chess piece in that it is the name of a thing that expresses how it is like four or five different types of other things.

A similar word is "ananas", which is the same in pretty much all the European languages, except in English, where they apparently were like, "that looks like an apple with pines, that's what we call it!"

Meant to say that there a bunch of these for fruits, but I can't recall any offhand.

"Lamp" seems to be one of the most consistent words in the Indo-European language family, save the Indo-Iranian branch. Across hundreds of languages, it's pretty much lamp all the way down... lamp, lampa, lampi, lampo, lampada, lamba... even Sardinian and Basque!

Cold lampin' with f. hazel

do you have a whole list of these, JRB? I'd be interested in seeing it.

i was looking up cauchemare and apparently the mar part means spirit, but that doesn't make sense since it's a horse. is it a pun, then? so if nightmare in english comes from horse but cauchemare in french comes from spirit, then maybe it could slide in?

The mare in the English nightmare does not come from horse... it's an old English word meaning "evil spirit" in particular one that sits on you while you sleep, preventing you from breathing.

(xp)
No, I only had the three I had when I started the list. I had thought about a few others but hadn't chased them down and then I forgot about them until somebody posted them here. This thread is the list!

Maybe it's a seahorse spirit?

I thought it might have come from the sea.

When I started the listthread

Looks like the French mare in cauchemare has the same meaning and origin... the French borrowed it from the Middle Dutch, which got it from the same Proto-Germanic word as Old English did.

So, fun cognates: nightmare and the Irish phantom queen from folklore called Morrígan, ultimately both derived from the Proto-Indo-European *mor- meaning (rolleyes) "malicious female spirit".