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

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correction: "Milvus inctinus" seems to be an outdated term for the common European kite.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".

wizards of the coast you've led me astray yet again
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/5e/46.jpg

http://mrparsons.webspace.virginmedia.com/assets/images/KnightmareDL.jpg

tying all the loose threads together

this might be more different languages describing something that isn't exactly the same thing but close enough that no one bothers to create a new word for it:

en: doughnut
fr: beignet
de: krapfen
es: buñuelo
it: ciambella

little iffy on bunelo/beignet

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!

ah, I see. I thought when you said there were a bunch of these for fruits, you meant you had some more in mind before you started this thread.

I really like when you get place names that change between languages - Moscow, Mosca, Moskva, etc - but are these ever non-cognates?

we'd better start researching nouns in ye-ye song titles, because there seem to be a lot of those with non-cognate words in them. there's the two France Gall songs already mentioned, and there's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RW0UBXdMQw

I really like when you get place names that change between languages - Moscow, Mosca, Moskva, etc - but are these ever non-cognates?

― Ismael Klata, Monday, February 25, 2013 8:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes! But I'm not sure this happens enough for the strictures of the thread. Best one (lifted directly from wiki):

in German the country is known as Deutschland, in Scandinavian languages as Tyskland, in French as Allemagne, in Polish as Niemcy, in Finnish as Saksa, and in Lithuanian as Vokietija.

And obviously, Germany in English.

my high school German teacher tried to convince my class that "German" literally meant "man with spear" (from the Germanic words "man" and ger"), but I think that's a false etymology.

The Alemans were a tribe as, obviously, were the Saxons. I believe Deutsch and Tysk are cognates (and related to tedesco).

There's Hungary-Magyarorszag and Suomi-Finland, as collectors of panini stickers will know. Extra point for those being Finland's two languages as well!

The Franks were purportedly named for their axes.

Yeah, some of the words for Germany are cognates, but there are a large number of disparate roots that haven't been homogenised in modern languages. The wiki is pretty good for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany

Shqiperia-Albania too, and Hellas-Greece. What about cities, any of those?

Michael! We've been waiting for you.

English: deckchair
French: transat (from "transatlantique")
German: Liegestuhl
Spanish: tumbona
Russian: шезлонг ("chaise-longue")
Italian: sdraio

The problem with this one is that German "Deckstuhl" exists but as far as I can see it's used in the specific sense of a chair used on a ship's deck, but as far as I can see it's rarely used in the general sense of a folding chair used at the beach etc. Hence http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liegestuhl says <<Der Liegestuhl war ursprünglich ein Deckstuhl für Reisende auf Linien- und Kreuzfahrtschiffen>> ("the Liegestuhl was originally a Deckstuhl for travellers on liners and cruise ships").

English: Go!!!
French: Allez!!!
Spanish: Venga!!!
German: Hopp!!!
Italian: Vai!!!

The Venga Bus is coming!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2MftBoioIM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

not to crash the Steve Vai/Vengaboys bus but aren't they from the same root?

As is 'allez', which is 'va' in singular

Okay, I'm pretty sure those better versed in linguistics will point out synonyms here, but from very basic research I have:

English: yob
German: Halbstarke
French: loubard
Spanish: gamberro

As I say, words like this are problematic, because there are just so many interchangeable synonyms, dialect terms, etc. But I figure I might as well post it up seeing as I spent ten minutes looking at it.

Also thought Venga meant come, not go

Fruit list was basically:
Vocabulary list in Portuguese instruction book
Poster in pizzeria on Northern Blvd with Latin American Spanish names for fruits that were possible sno-cone flavor mix-ins

One more thing about city names is the München/Monaco correspondence, to the point where somebody meant to go to one but went to the other one.

And another good one from Italian, Nizza for Nice. How often have I wanted to post "Nizza otm"

Shqiperia-Albania too, and Hellas-Greece. What about cities, any of those?

Donostia/San Sebastian?

Chennai/Madras was the only non-cognate candidate I could think of; but it appears it was named after one predecessor town, then was changed for nationalistic reasons to being named after a different predecessor town, so that doesn't work.

Yes! Donostia is right.

Dublin/Baile Atha Cliath is the same maybe? Except I believe Dublin translates as 'Blackpool', so not sure how it's acquired two quite separate names.

English: prank
French: farce
Spanish: trastada
German: Streich
Italian: burla

^ this might not be 100% accurate b/c I cheated and used google translate & picked the most applicable synonyms. none of the synonyms listed appeared to be cognates.

re: venga -- whoops, they would be different roots then. i looked it up -- it's used something like "come on"?

Don Ostia translates to San Sebastian in Basque.