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

Vogel / fowl

Okay, thanks but “fowl” and “bird” are not related.

Think maybe I found another, if my Zing search worked properly

Not a 'thing' per se depending on your definition but…

E: now
F: maintenant
S: ahora
G: jetzt

Bonus Romanian: acum

Inspired by Learned League.

E: ugly
F: laid
I: brutto
S: feo
G: hässlich

E: duck
F: canard
S: pato
G: ente
I: anatra

Maybe ente and anatra are related?

Apparently so, if you go as far back as proto-Indo-European, which seems kind of tenuous anyway.

This is the one I was thinking of
E: room
F: pièce
S: habitación
G: Zimmer

Which is somewhat unsatisfactory because of the chambers and salons I am avoiding.

Yeah I think there are metaphysical problems there of what is a room

English: pillow
German: Kissen
French: oreiller
Spanish: almohada
Italian: cuscino
Portuguese: travesseiro
Welsh: gobennydd

― Alba, Friday, July 14, 2017 5:51 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

this one occurred to me today.

although "guanciale" might have been a better, if slightly awkward, choice for the italian — since both "Kissen" and "cuscino" seem to come via old french "coussin"

This thread inspired me (in part) to name a set of songs i recorded after HEDGEHOGS in 7 different languages. Thank you to emil.y for the hedgehog inspo and all thread contributors for non-cognate inspo <3

https://on.soundcloud.com/xW2Xp

English/French/Spanish/Language Makes No Sense

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

Listening to the hedgehog songs now - they're great, LL!

Thanks for listening!! 💕 I’m proud of these, hence the proper names.