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

I'm curious about any differences between foudre/éclair. Eclair seems to describe a flash of lightning, whereas foudre refers to lightning more generically and has a connotation of divine wrath. Interestingly, in the masculine, le foudre refers to the bundle of three lightning bolts Jupiter carries in hand.

Obviously not qualifying, but I have to admire that something as noble as a fart (cognate with German farzen) comes from PIE perd-, with the French (péter) and Spanish (peerse) cognate as well. Weirdly, though, Italian (scoreggiare) is the odd one out.

found it!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8518/8518198015_9450ec875a.jpg

I was thinking of starting another thread with another challenge this weekend and posting some other stuff of interest, but I dunno, now that this topic has, um, stabilized and La Lechera has found her Twenty-Six Languages book, maybe we should repurpose, but not necessarily retitle, this thread as a Rolling Thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWhzG9cQGgc

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_urG3jyCy7Ls/SPF__YtYRWI/AAAAAAAANxE/qjE155DSM5U/s320/Lou-Reed.jpg
I can't seem to make up my mind

i'll take requests -- but i already looked for lamp and it wasn't in there!

Well, that clears up where the English word "haversack" comes from at least.

and this is the song this thread makes me think of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99-7NTP7PM0

This morning wondering about words that clearly derive from another language but with different meanings, like "library" and "libraire." I guess that's going to be affected a lot by historical and cultural factors. Anyway, do these kinds of words have a name?

False cognates? Embarrass/embarazada being the example that springs to mind.

False friends

Which are called by basically the same name across the board:
faux amis
falsos amigos
falsche Freunde

strictly speaking, false friends and false cognates aren't exactly the same... two words that appear to have a shared etymology but do not are false cognates, such as English light and German blitz "lightning" for example. Two words that sound alike but have different meanings are false friends, and they usually are cognates (English molest and Spanish molestar "to bother") but don't have to be (English galena "lead sulfide" and Portuguese galinha "hen").

That reminds me of that embarrassing incident with the lead sulfide on my Portuguese holiday...

Isn't that the name of a Fairport Convention album?

liege and lief are false cognates

I'm glad this thread made me dig out Partridge's Origins. Otherwise, I would have not made a connection (although it's totally obvs now that I think about it) between hymnal and hymen.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8248/8527358827_4213032133_c.jpg

that's just a random page! there 971 others!

Well, that clears up where the English word "haversack" comes from at least.

I'm pretty sure French got it from English

OED lists both the French havresac and German habersack as sources for the English, so it seems like things are not cut and dried.

The French seem to think they got it from German. Haber and haver for oats is common to both English and German, apparently.

Man, I wish English had ended up with oatsack as the word for backpack.

Weird thing across the US is the varying use of the terms "bag" "sack" or "pack." Vestigial trace of the Old Weird America.

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_109.html

don't forget poke!

Ha, thanks.

I do know that the Spanish equivalent of "to buy a pig in a poke," from the opposite point of view, is "dar gato por liebre" - to give a cat for a hare.

this reminds me of that time i resisted buying all of the DARE volumes

confident use of the past tense there.

once the sale was over i felt safe from dropping $400+ on recreational dictionaries

but it's a vacation... in your mind!

The only vacation that matters.

en: dog
de: hund
fr: chien
es: perro

I assume Italian "cane" is a cognate with French "chien", and of course other cognates lurk (hund/hound).

Fine, I can admit that I regret not shelling out for the DARE.

en: hat
cz: klobouk
dt: hoed
fi: hattu
fr: chapeau
de: Hut
gr: καπέλο
hi: topi
it: capello
pl: kapelusz
ro: pălărie
ru: shlyapa
sp: sombrero
sw: hatt

idk what's up with czech and romanian there but that's a pretty clear romance/germanic split

шапка is probably my favourite example of the problems that come with trying to identify Russian words by visual similarity with English letters.

Another page from that book -- its browseability illustrated here with a page featuring the following four words:

advice after affair afternoon
or
after afternoon affair advice
and so on

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8516/8597304343_6f184b71c5_b.jpg

wow, afternoon looks like a winner!

also, cannot recommend this book enough:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816652724/

or its cheaper cousin by the same author:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195387074/

he is fun to read!

wow, afternoon looks like a winner!
Close. But aren't the "mit" in "Mittag" and the "mi" in "midi" related?

Will be checking out Word Origins, thanks.

is mittag used differently from midday?

Don't think so.

Hm. Brief search indicates the French is coming from Latin and the German and English more from something Germanic.

yeah, they all seem to lead back to the same Proto-Indo-European root (*medhyo meaning "middle")... including the Italian, which got by me initially, it's basically "post-meridian."

Plant known in English as monkshood or wolfsbane has all sorts of great names in various languages including

D: Eisenhut , "iron hat"
P: carro-de-venus "carriage of Venus"

Full list here:http://irapl.altervista.org/botany/main.php?taxon=Aconitum+napellus

Wikipedia has some good names too:

Aconitum (pron.: /ˌækəˈnaɪtəm/ A-co-ní-tum),[1] also known as "the queen of poisons", aconite, monkshood, wolf's bane, leopard's bane, women's bane, devil's helmet or blue rocket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconitum

One old reference has in it a listing for a Danish term, Blauemunke- "Blue Monk." Who knew?

Wikipedia table of chess piece names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_piece#Piece_names

Wikipedia links to this interesting article, originally written in Finnish: http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm

hmm interesting common groupings for "bishop"

And thank you for this:

Behind, en
Hinter, de
Detrás, es
Derrière, fr
Bag, da
Achter, nl

― Liz Phair Dinkum (Leee), Monday, 25 February 2013 05:29 (1 month ago) Permalink

hinter has a common root with hind.

I was wondering about Poulenc/Pollo -- seems likely but the spelling and pronunciation have kind of obscured it. German "huhn" (presumably the origin of "hen") is nothing like the english "chicken."