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

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?

I thought this would work:

English: hedgehog
French: hérisson
Italian: riccio
German: igel

But no. Looking at the Spanish (erizo) made me realise I'd overlooked the connection between hérisson and riccio.

Still interesting, though.

hedgehogs are excellent

the near-misses like hedgehog and squirrel are still awesome.

"computer" in icelandic is "tölva" which apparently comes from the Old Norse word for their compass-like unit, talwôn.

Another miss here, but three distinct strands of naming.

English: buttercup
German: Butterblume

French: bouton d'or
Spanish: botón de oro

Italian: ranuncolo

Probably not worth posting any more of the three-stranders, as there will be shedloads out there.

Speaking of which (and this is via google translate, so I'm aware there may be synonymous cognates that just haven't come up)...

English: shed
French: hangar (not counting as a similar cognate because hangars are pretty different to sheds, right? Or is this cheating?)
German: Schuppen
Spanish: cobertizo
Italian: capannone

Are there any resources in English that let you trace foreign etymology, like etymonline?

Dunno. I hope fh can help us.

What about this kind of thing:
En: the honeysuckle
Es: la madreselva
Fr: le chèvrefeuille
De: das Geißblatt

So here we have the Spanish being the wonderful "mother (of the) jungle" and both the German and the French meaning "goat leaf," with the constituent parts for "goat" and "leaf" being unrelated.

The word for it in Czech is pretty cool:
http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=3363

Welsh too, on that same page.

Wiktionary is pretty good for English web sites with foreign etymologies, emily.

Shed has some hidden cognates... Italian capannone = Spanish cabana, and Spanish cobertizo = English cover, for example. Badger is another where they look quite disparate but turn to be all pretty much from the same origin!

(not counting as a similar cognate because hangars are pretty different to sheds, right? Or is this cheating?)

That's a pretty deep question, and it's why I was harping on the fact that cognates have similar origins, not meanings. If you start with an English word like shed, you've got to also consider similar English words such as hut, hide, cover, blind, lean-to, shelter, even stuff like gazebo or house.

But not for this game, surely? Those are far too wide. It's not about "does this word have a cognate in English/French/Spanish/German?" but "does this thing have an expression that is a cognate in English/French/Spanish/German?" The reason why I was unsure about hangar is that you can make a case that a hangar is synonymous with shed (it's just a big one), whereas something like "cover" is not synonymous. Metonymy, meronymy, etc etc, those things change language and give us interesting branches. Just because 'chevalier' is from the same root as 'cheval', it doesn't mean we discount 'horse'.

Wait, the second question isn't even phrased right, I don't think. How about "Does this thing have a pan-language consistent cognate from whence it draws its name?"

i think its funny that almost every language - european language - uses a variation of maiz for the word corn except english. even the dutch and german is from maiz and the word corn comes from germany (word for seed).

not funny ha ha, but i'd never really thought about it.

I think your formulation is pretty close, emil.y.

Just investigated
En: the hummingbird
Sp: El picaflor
Pt: o beija-flor

which in most other languages seems to take more or less the scientific name 'colibri.'

So this is what we kind of expect: two interesting colorful distinct words, but then a variant of one of those and then the whole thing dead-ends in the scientific name. And this is why it is kind of interesting that the winners in this thread were able to hold on for so long and not get absorbed into another word. Is it only wishful thinking on our part or are they something more special and unique than mere statistical outliers?

"Does this thing have a pan-language consistent cognate from whence it draws its name?"

Well, take shed as an example. What are the essential properties of a shed for English speakers? Do those properties correspond exactly with the properties of things you have chosen from other languages as equivalents of shed? You can match some aspects, especially if you've specified a particular context, but often you'll end up with a thing in Spanish or German that has incomplete (but sufficient) shedness, or multiple things that satisfy your criteria for shedness. Some of these things will have cognates, and some will not. What, for example, is difference between the words cobertizo, tinglado, and galpón? They all mean shed in Spanish, but all three have separate etymologies.

Maybe that sounds philosophical, but in translation work or etymological research it's a concrete problem. If we're starting from an English thing, we probably want to consider a lot of synonyms in our search for cognates. And the more languages we are searching across, the more abstract that thing is going to get.

I'd search this way: find a common thing where English uses a Celtic word, German uses a Germanic one, Spanish uses something from Arabic, French something from Latin, and Italian something from Greek or even Turkish.

What are the essential properties of a shed for English speakers? Do those properties correspond exactly with the properties of things you have chosen from other languages as equivalents of shed?

See, I'm very interested in this, and it informs my choices and discussion here, I just don't follow you all the way into widening the synonyms until they're no longer synonyms. My boundaries are blurry, I'll accept, but it's a case of you know a shed when you see one, and you know when a shed is no longer a shed.

Having said that, of course your contributions are very interesting! I just think trying to discount stuff ruins the game, whereas I accept fully that discounting stuff is essential to real linguistic work.

English brogue (from Irish)
Spanish dialecto (from Ancient Greek)
French patois (from Old Frnech paw/foot)
German Mundart (from Old High German)
Italian vernacolo (from Latin domestic/home-born slave)

...this is of course cheating big-time, because dialect and vernacular are present in English, Spanish, French, and Italian, while brogue is a little over-specific. Still!

You've got a good chance of finding non-cognate English and German words with similar meaning due to English wandering quite far, but Spanish/French/Italian is always going to present a big danger... they're almost always related!

That said...
English glasses
Spanish anteojos
French lunettes
German Brille
Italian occhiali

I guess you could sub in Spanish gafas, since ojo and occhi are cognates.

How do you people even do this?

That's why I made Italian optional to give us a fighting chance with the Romance languages. Otherwise occhiali and anteojos would have got you. Although you could have swapped in gafas. (xp!)

Oh, Wiktionary is a big grip, xpost to myself.

Uh, help, not grip.

This is the best thread, very Language Log / Hat.

wood
bois (French)
legno (Italian)
madera (Spanish)
Holz (German)

En: the leg
Fr: la jambe
Sp: la pierna
Ge: das Bein

Good thing Italian optional because
It: la gamba

Possible spoiler or marrer of perfection:
Latin word "perna" root of "la pierna" looks like it might be related to Latin word "pes" source of French word for foot "le pied"
Fact that "das Bein" etymologically related to the English word "bone," or so Ezekiel says.

Speaking of logs:
English log
French rondin
Spanish leño
Italian ceppo
German Baumstamm (or... Log)

you figure something like "kneecap" could have shaken out a lot of different ways.

perna in Latin probably maps out to peroneal in English (Wikipedia says via Greek perone), no reason it should have anything to do with pied (Latin pes), anatomically easily distinguishable.

How do you people even do this?

― Margaret Vegemite Sanger (Leee), Sunday, February 24, 2013 11:11 PM (29 minutes ago)

fh, I am starting to suspect you were coming up with strict rules as a way of stalling until you came up with some of your own;)