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Note that a large number of these examples in European languages are calques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque In thes
by schoen 5y ago
Note that a large number of these examples in European languages are calques
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque
In these cases, people who knew both languages consciously adopted the structure of a foreign word by translating its components (morphemes). For example, German has a lot of calques from Latin compounds.
That is to say that it's not always a coincidence or an indication that people inherently think of the concept in the same way; sometimes it's an indication that people thought a foreign word for a concept was awesome, and wanted to borrow it by translating it literally.