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

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.

English: mushroom
French: champignon
German: pilz
Italian: fungo
Spanish: seta
Russian: grib

I *think* these are the most common names for mushrooms but there are so many variations (wild vs cultivated vs specific common varieties) I'm not sure.

xp

ahh I see, did not check that.

would Swansea/Abertawe be another?

I feel like they should be numerous (but I'm ignorant) – like any small language group that has a big power next to it will produce them, bet there are a ton in the old Soviets.

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

Hmm, are 'prank' and 'farce' too close in English to allow this? Not sure. Also, is 'burla' the root of 'burlesque'?

this is kinda opposite this thread, but i blew my own mind a while ago learning that Jakob, James and Diego are all the same name

Oh man, if you track all the versions of 'John' you get some far-out shit.

there's a nena (of 99luftballoons) movie called "gib gas" that's supposed to mean "let 'er rip"
i don't know how to search for these in other languages without getting transliterations.

It's like the last time anyone thought up a new boy's name was 3000BC, until you started getting your Nikes and Adidases and so on (ha! and Adidas is from the Adrian root anyway)

Touched on Jacob, James, Diego, Tiago thing here Does anyone here speak Portuguese?, where there is another handy link.

xp

About one fifth of all males in the UK between 1800 and 1850 were christened John and the vast majority of the other men and boys around at the time were Joseph, James, Thomas or William.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n18/james-davidson/flat-nose-stocky-and-beautugly

Still can't find any more exotic fruit names aside from "abacaxi" and for sure it is doubtful for that I will find any that would satisfy the original requirements of this thread. Sorry to imply this linguistic El Dorado that turns out not to exist, unregistered.

James, your first interpretation of my original question is correct.

english: caterpillar
spanish: oruga/gusano
french: chenille
german: Raupe/Raupenfahrzeug
italian: bruco
irish: bolb

Perhaps there are better things i could be doing in my lunch break than looking up central / eastern European names for the tadpole but it's really interesting:

Belarus: Apoloniki
Bulgaria: Popova Lizhichka
Croatia: Punoglavac
Czech Rep: Pulec
Germany: Kaulquappe
Hungary: Ebihal
Latvia: Kurkulis
Lithuania: Buožgalvis
Poland: Kijanka
Romania: Mormoloc
Russia: Golovastik
Ukraine: Gugolovok

english: caterpillar
spanish: oruga/gusano
french: chenille
german: Raupe/Raupenfahrzeug
italian: bruco
irish: bolb

― gyac, Tuesday, February 26, 2013 6:56 AM (2 hours ago)

Lightning has a nice variety of roots, but plenty of cognates too:

English Lightning
German Blitz
French foudre/éclair
Spanish relámpago/rayo
Italian fulmine/lampo

I figured lightning and Blitz would eventually have the same Germanic or PIE root, but apparently not.

And there goes that lamp again.

I can't let go of lamp.

i like lampo

Iampo italiano

RosemaryClooney.jpg

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.