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Are any words the same in all languages?
- jcrash 3y agoSurprised bread wasn't mentioned, seems like there are more than a few languages where the word for bread is 'pan'
- Dr_Birdbrain 3y agoAre they all Latin-derived languages? Because that’s the Latin root :)
- poizan42 3y agoNot Japanese. They got the word from Portuguese missionaries though.
- OJFord 3y agoSo.. no but actually yes?
- fuzztester 3y agoMu. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)
- poizan42 3y agoI mean, Japanese isn't a Romance (i.e. Latin-derived) language, but the word "pan" is a loan word from one.
- midoridensha 3y agoThe interesting thing about Japanese is that, unlike most other languages, it writes loanwords differently than native words: they're written in the katakana character set rather than kanji (Chinese characters) or hiragana. So "pan" is one of these, since it was borrowed from Portuguese. This rule isn't absolute, though: coffee has a (rarely-used) kanji version, and tobacco ("tabako") is written in hiragana, as is tempura. Sometimes if the word is old enough, it gets treated as a native word.
- OJFord 3y agoMy point is that it just seems like a pointless exception, it's not a coincidence with a separate etymology, it's not that oh actually they both trace their route way further back than Latin, it's just taken from a romance language, so 'really' the answer to the question is yes (on evidence so far). Similarly tamatar in Hindi isn't like tomato (resp. tomate, etc.) because of some Proto-Indo-European root, it's just a devanagari approximation of the Portuguese. I assume the intent in asking 'are they all romance languages' is 'do they all get it from Latin', to which the answer is certainly yes even if the language as a whole is mainly not.
- once_inc 3y agoAfghans use the word Naan.
- fuzztester 3y agoAFAIK, naan stands for some kinds of Afghan bread, maybe not all. E.g.: https://www.tasteatlas.com/most-popular-breads-in-afghanistan https://www.tasteatlas.com/most-popular-breads-in-afghanista... There is one called bolani.
- bafe 3y agoNaan simply means bread in Persian.
- est 3y agoIt's the same in Chinese 馕 (nang)
- martopix 3y agoUhm, not even English...
- ban-lan-gen 3y agoHaha?
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoBaal?
- Aachen 3y agoAs in, Dutch for (hay) bale?
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoNo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal
- Aachen 3y agoHm, very universal then if I can't recognise it
- mcswell 3y agoThat's even the name in Goa'uld! As I verified that, I discovered that the actor who played Ba'al in Stargate SG-1 died a couple years ago. No word about his symbiont.
- legohead 3y agoMy first thought was "mama" (and possibly "dada"), as I believe I've seen it attributed to the fact it's an easy word for babies to make since it mimics the first sounds we make. But it's not even mentioned..
- jangliss 3y agoIn Turkish those are "anne" (an-ney) and "baba"... And "mama" means baby food!
- Cyph0n 3y agoIn Tunisian Arabic baby speak, “mama” means “mama” but “mam-ma” (see [1]) means food/eat. Quite confusing, but it seems to work? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadda
- sambapa 3y agoNope, see finnish for supereasy counterexample
- magicpin 3y agoAnd yet the word for grandma is suspiciously similar to mama.
- 3y ago
- self_awareness 3y ago"Hotel" could be pretty close?
- OnlyMortal 3y agoWater is a common word across Germanic languages. It also appears to be a very old word as I saw a documentary about the Hittites and the interviewee stated that they may have migrated from Europe.
- kepler471 3y agoEven within Europe there are many different words used for water, very cool! This is not a comprehensive list: Germanic - wasser/water/voda/woda French - eau Italian/Spanish - aqua/agua Greek - nero (νερό) Danish - vand Romanian - apă Latvian - udens Turkish - su Welsh - dwr
- TRiG_Ireland 3y agoThe Irish uisce is the source for the English word whiskey.
- vidarh 3y agoThe Danish belongs in the "Germanic" list; as does the Norwegian "vann" and "vatn" (the latter also Faroese, Icelandic, Norn), and Swedish "vatten". The Romanian and French both comes from the latin aqua, just like the Italian/Spanish.
- kepler471 3y agoThanks for this! Looking into it a bit more, the French is also from the latin source (aqua) - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eau https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eau
- cafard 3y agoThe Welsh suggests the Ancient Greek "hudor".
- richardfontana 3y agoThat resemblance is coincidental: hudor derives from Proto-Indo-European *wed- (as does English water, wet, winter) while dwr derives from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewb- "deep" (as does English dip, deep) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/d%CA%B0ub%CA%B0r%C3%B3s https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... https://www.etymonline.com/word/*wed- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*wed-
- mci 3y agoMy two candidates are pepsi and amen. Coke is known as coca-cola where I live.
- self_awareness 3y agoAmen is Hebrew?
- irrational 3y agoLooks like it is Semitic (maybe AfroAsiatic?). https://www.etymonline.com/word/amen https://www.etymonline.com/word/amen
- jj999 3y agoTo be understood I learned to use "blue cola" and "red cola".
- jangliss 3y agoA Dutch friend once said that the one word from his language that has had universal reach was "apartheid"... I'm sure that if there are any truly global words they are probably ones like that (initially) attached to a specific geographical context.
- vidarh 3y agoApartheid translates to entirely different words in a number of languages it seems.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoThere is another Dutch word that must be pretty widespread in STEM circles: ‘eigenvector’.
- eru 3y agoI always thought Eigenvektor was borrowed from German, not Dutch? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalues_and_eigenvectors#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalues_and_eigenvectors#H... seems to confirm the German origins, citing David Hilbert and Hermann von Helmholtz as originators of the word.
- ernesth 3y agoIn french, it is "vecteur propre" (which has the same meaning).
- planede 3y agoYou mean "sajátvektor"? (Hungarian) https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saj%C3%A1tvektor_%C3%A9s_saj%C3%A1t%C3%A9rt%C3%A9k https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saj%C3%A1tvektor_%C3%A9s_saj%C...
- Ekaros 3y agoNow consider the SI units. Could those be some of the most common words between all languages?
- rvieira 3y agoCats "meow" (miˈaʊ̯) in all languages. Dogs can woof, blaf, ham, ao, ...
- airza 3y agoJapanese uses “nyaa” for meow. I’m sure there are other counterexamples.
- lampington 3y agoThanks! TIL that nyancat is something like "meowcat"
- kortex 3y agoI would actually contend that "meow" and "nya" are pseudo-cognates, they are onomatopoeia of the same sound. M and N are both nasals, and iˈaʊ̯ and ia are close in vowel space.
- resonious 3y agoCan also add that dogs say "wan", which I found surprising. Seems even the onomatopoeia can differ quite a bit!
- Petrosz007 3y agoIn hungarian when “[the cat is] meowing” we say “[a macska] nyávog”, which means to make sounds similar to ‘nyí’ [1]. Now that I think about it, it’s weird, because the we use “miáú” for the actual sound, but we don’t use the verb “miákol”, which apparently exists. [1]: https://uesz.nytud.hu/index.html?uuid=a95e306a-7590-1014-8655-f6dd518faf98 https://uesz.nytud.hu/index.html?uuid=a95e306a-7590-1014-865...
- LorenPechtel 3y agoOne would think animal sounds would be basically universal but it isn't so--other than meow I can't recall any animal sound that was understandable to my wife (native Mandarin speaker.)
- 3y ago
- xnx 3y ago"OK is frequently used as a loanword in other languages. It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK
- self_awareness 3y agoIsn't it simply an English "word" which is very popular?
- delecti 3y agoThe etymology of "okay" is so disputed that it almost feels like something that must have popped up independently multiple times.
- mminer237 3y agoHow is that different than "chocolate" simply being a Spanish word which is very popular? Stealing words from other languages is arguably how most words get created.
- moralestapia 3y ago"Chocolate" is not Spanish, it's Nahuatl.
- tough 3y agoxocolatl In catalan still is -xocolata- close nough
- klausa 3y agoI think the line is _very_ thin, but I think I understand what OP means: "ok" is taken verbatim from english and has not undergone any "modifications" to adopt it to a local language (though, I guess, that is not 100% true? in polish we sometimes spell it "okej", but I would argue that "ok" and "okej" have slightly different connotations.) Whereas "chocolate" is "localized" into many other languages, "Schokolade" in german, "czekolada" in polish, etc.), and is not the _exact same word_.
- toppy 3y agoQuiz
- Javalicious 3y agoA little pedantic, but it's worth mentioning that the assumption here is _spoken_ languages. There's a whole set of sign languages around the world as well.
- graypegg 3y agoI think that would also be something interesting to look into as well! Not only are spoken words borrowed, but so are signs and simple gestures. I guess you'd have to make some delineation about where the line in the sand is, since a smile could be considered a sign, and is probably (no evidence) nearly universal. Still interesting though. If you ever wanted to do a little research on something like that, I'd read your write up.
- notatoad 3y agodo sign languages even have words? i understand that they have signs, and they have methods to communicate words from a spoken language. but is there a sign language that has words, not signs, that are specific to the sign language?
- scarmig 3y agoSign languages are full fledged languages in their own right; they aren't simply a series of visual renditions of the words in the spoken or written language. Their grammars are often fundamentally different. E.g. ASL is closer in syntax to Japanese than it is to English.
- notatoad 3y agoyeah, i understand that they're not visual renditions of spoken or written words. but as far as the possibility for a sign language to share a word with a written or spoken language - how? does a sign language have words, in the sense that a spoken language does, that could be shared with a spoken language and aren't simply a transliteration of a spoken-language word into signing? from the example in the article, is there any way that a sign language could share the word for coffee, or we could say that the sign for pineapple was more like pineapple vs more like ananas? or is the sign simply a sign, that could never be compared to a spoken word?
- fuzzbazz 3y agoPizza is pretty universal too
- eru 3y agoThat word has different meanings in different parts of the world, even if they share a common etymology.
- sdfghswe 3y agoCoffee isn't coffee in Polish.
- vidarh 3y agoThe article means pretty much "descended from or sounds like" when they talk of "the same", not that it's spelled or sound exactly the same. Kawa is borrowed from Ottoman Turkish kahve just like most of the other European words for coffee.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoWhat is it?
- sdfghswe 3y agoIt's tea.
- pieterr 3y agoWhat about "Opera"? It's the first word that I use in 4 different language "wordle" games.
- vidarh 3y agoDifferent in Chinese, according to some clicking around translate.google.com. That seems to be one of the big hurdles for a lot of words that are otherwise very widespread.
- sambapa 3y ago"Czaj" in polish is very uncommon, pretty much not in use.
- self_awareness 3y agoIt's popular in "grypsera", a dialect used in prisons by recidivists, means a very strong tea with some drugs inside it
- jagrsw 3y agoThe idea here is that in Polish it's 'herbata' - which is 'herba' 'thea'
- thunderbong 3y agoFrom the article, two words which are common to all languages are - 1. Coffee 2. Chocolate
- yen223 3y agoChecks out in Mandarin, which is interesting, since Mandarin is the exception to almost all proposed alternatives in this thread
- econonut 3y agoIn Vietnamese, "sô cô la" is chocolate, and I think it's bit of a stretch to say those are the same. Coffee is cà phê, which is good. Tea is another that doesn't work in Vietnamese (trà), but taxi is great (xe tắc xi).
- MandieD 3y agoSounds related to German “Schokolade”
- jterwill 3y ago“Huh?” Is strong candidate, if you accept it is a word. Here is a fun talk in the subject https://youtu.be/rHHJ3hSppEA?feature=shared https://youtu.be/rHHJ3hSppEA?feature=shared It seems the demands of asking for clarification in conversation shapes the word to be easy and fast to pronounce.
- dottedmag 3y agoNorwegian uses «Hæ?» instead
- wushupork 3y agoChai or tea
- simlevesque 3y agoThis is discussed in the article.
- kevinmchugh 3y agoThe article says they couldn't find exceptions, but Polish is one.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jstarfish 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list
- bloppe 3y agoThese words are called translingual. Probably the largest collection of them are recent scientific coinages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_scientific_vocabulary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_scientific_vocab...
- nonfamous 3y ago"Taxi" is universally understood, in my experience. (TFI calls it a "runner up" candidate.) "Kaput" is another.
- lopis 3y agoHow is kaput universal? That's just a German word that some people might know, but most won't.
- OJFord 3y agoIt's at least as commonly used in English as say Yiddish words like klutz and schmuck.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoMy dictionary suggests that the noun 'Schmuck' in modern German comes from the Low German adjective 'smuk' meaning beautiful; I can't even find it in an exclusively Yiddish dictionary however.
- OJFord 3y agoOh sorry, I thought they were, but regardless I think kaput is used (in English) at least as much. Br vs Am maybe.
- lopis 3y agoYou'll be surprised to know that English is.. Not a universal language.
- OJFord 3y agoNo I won't, मैं हिंदी सीख रहा हूं, what's your point anyway? You realise I was responding to English speakers claiming a non-English word wasn't used/heard of in English with my own claim that it is?
- 3y ago
- shrubble 3y agoAside from English, "ananas" for pineapple and "lox"; however 'lox' and 'water' are the 2 of the oldest words still in use, but not the most widespread across many languages...
- scotty79 3y agoIf taxi is an option, why not laser or computer?
- matsemann 3y agoIn Norwegian we say "datamaskin" for computer, aka "data machine". Laser we do say, however.
- tshaddox 3y agoThose are options! "Computer" in French is "ordinateur" and there are several other exceptions.
- zabzonk 3y agowell, laser is actually an acronym.
- b3orn 3y agoFor computer I give you a French ordinateur and a German Rechner (computer is more common but Rechner is still used).
- lopis 3y agoComputer isn't universal at all
- grishka 3y agoFunnily, Russian used to have its own acronym for computer — ЭВМ, literally "electronic calculating machine". My understanding is that it fell out of use when personal computers started getting imported into then-USSR sometime in the 80s.
- skykooler 3y agoComputer in Chinese is 电脑, pronounced “dian nao”; it roughly means “electric brain”.
- twosdai 3y agoSurprised it didn't mention the word or rather not word, "uhhh" or "umm" when we don't know what to say and need to fill silence. I know other languages and cultures have slight variations but the ending sound as far as I have seen is the same.
- philipov 3y agoI don't think that's a word. It's an utterance, but not a lexical one. It's not onomatopoeia, either: 'bark' is onomatopoeia, but actually barking isn't.
- overlordalex 3y agoThey're considered fillers that mark a continuance on part of the speaker so that the other participants know that they will continue speaking. Different languages not only use different sounds, but in many cases continuation markers can also be "normal" words from the language. In English some examples would be "well", or "yes" which can be pure filler words to bridge to the next utterance. That being said, what is a word anyways? You could argue that they're well understood units of language that convey meaning, which I would argue is pretty much a word
- philipov 3y agoYou make a good point. I looked it up and it's in MW and even scrabble recognizes it as an interjection. I think to be a word, at a minimum an utterance would have to conform to the phonemic structure of a language, but that's a low bar, and 'uh' passes. I guess it's a word!
- eru 3y ago> [...] would have to conform to the phonemic structure of a language [...] I don't think that's a good criterion, because it would exclude a lot of loanwords.
- 3y ago
- matsemann 3y agoSlightly related. But I've seen documentaries from other remote countries, where children use the same sounds when mocking people. Not the same words, but kinda the same melody. Is it kinda universal, or was it just chance? I feel like if I heard children speak in a foreign language, I wouldn't be able to understand if they made fun of someone in a way that need no cultural context, somehow.
- WalterBright 3y agoYou can tell if people speaking a foreign language are making fun of you, even if you don't understand a word.
- hahajk 3y agoIt's universal! Radiolab has an episode on it [1]. We've been talking to babies the same way for thousands of years. [1] https://radiolab.org/podcast/91514-sound-as-touch https://radiolab.org/podcast/91514-sound-as-touch
- kevinwang 3y agoFrom the description, this sounds different than what the parent was talking about
- koliber 3y agoIt seems that many languages use mama or something close for mother.
- _1 3y agoProbably because it's easy for babies to say.
- mrits 3y agoTV? WiFi? Bus?
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago> TV? WiFi? Bus? At least the first two words are different in German: - TV: [der] Fernseher - WiFi: WLAN (Wi-Fi is rather a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance; in my observation spreading the usage of this trademark was mostly successful in the USA)
- narag 3y agoBummer, I believed I could use ich glotz tv if someone asked me if I can speak some German. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWzPcDtZZZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWzPcDtZZZo
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoIf you read the lyrics of this song > https://genius.com/Nina-hagen-band-tv-glotzer-white-punks-on-dope-lyrics https://genius.com/Nina-hagen-band-tv-glotzer-white-punks-on... you realize that this song is about some lowly educated proll who watches TV all day. By deliberately using quite some colloquial and unsophisticated words and phrasings in the lyrics, the singer/songwriter sends a very clear message how much TV dulled this person's mind.
- narag 3y agoThank you! no way that I could know that words and phrasings were intentionally dumb from the translation, though the meaning I knew. I'll better look for a different nonsensical bit taken from another song :)
- mrits 3y agoI thought too long on this and was just thinking of words that almost everyone would know the definition of.
- 3y ago
- oh_sigh 3y ago"Idealist" is unexpectedly "idealist" or very close to that in almost all European languages.
- spamtarget 3y agohungarian chimes in, the words mentioned in the article in hungarian: tea - tea (different pronunciation) pineapple - ananász orange - narancs taxi - taxi (slightly different pronunciation) tomato - paradicsom now let's look at the article's champions coffee - kávé chocolate - csokoládé both the same origin, but distorted so much, that i could not order those things in starbucks... so in my books, taxi is the winner
- wizofaus 3y ago"Taxi" is quite different in Chinese and Arabic for a start. I'd guess it's likely to be almost universally understood among all humans that have had exposure to the concept though.
- spamtarget 3y agoso no winner then?
- whitten 3y agoI think taxi (spelled differently) is in Russian, Greek, and Spanish
- themoonisachees 3y agoTaxi in Russian is indeed pronounced the same and is written Такси.
- qingcharles 3y agoThe Hungarian language is totally different to the dialects spoken by its neighbours, which usually speak Indo-European languages. Hungarian comes from the Uralic region of Asia and belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group, meaning its closest relatives are actually Finnish and Estonian, which are two other really difficult languages for foreigners to learn because they are pretty alien compared to any other languages. I'm guessing the words you mentioned are all close because they are modern. In the same way that many words that have entered Japanese in the last 200 years are actually English or Portuguese words brought in by foreigners and adapted to the local pronunciation. You can cheat so much in Japanese by simply learning to read katakana and finding all the English words.
- jesprenj 3y agoWhat about stop? It had likely spread to most latin-type countries due to traffic signs.
- version_five 3y agoFrench stop signs say "stop" of course, and stop is a pretty commonly used word in France for stop. In Quebec, they insist on putting "arrêt" on the signs because of their insecurity about English.
- bitbckt 3y ago“Alto” or “Pare” in Spanish. The Latin “stuppa” is unrelated to either as far as I know.
- tmtvl 3y agoIn Japan they use 止まれ (tomare).
- wizofaus 3y agoAny languages that use a distinctively different word for "robot"? Well other than Chinese and Arabic (which also use very different words for "taxi" than most other widely spoken languages). Btw my other candidate is "chihuahua" (though there's probably other dog breeds...). And yes it's the essentially the same in Chinese and Arabic if Google translate is to be believed.
- hyperthesis 3y agoI think new words is the right approach in general, but golem.
- wizofaus 3y ago"Sushi" and "jazz" seem to be good candidates too. Chinese often seems to be the language that adopts very different terms even for quite culturally specific terminology (e.g. I'd tried niqab/burqa plus a bunch of less common musical instruments or styles from other cultures and they all seemed to have their own word in Mandarin. But the word for "jazz" superficially sounds similar at least).
- eru 3y agoMany things considered to fall under the umbrella of 'sushi' in English would probably be called 'gimbap' in Korean. Japanese also has different words for what English speakers would call 'sushi'.
- wizofaus 3y agoOne strike against "jazz" - in Irish it's "snagcheol" - no idea how it's pronounced but it's definitely etymologically unrelated.
- ralfd 3y agoMandarin and Cantonese: Jīqìrén https://translate.google.de/?sl=de&tl=zh-CN&text=robot https://translate.google.de/?sl=de&tl=zh-CN&text=robot Meaning: http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/22467/ http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/22467/
- judah 3y agoI suspect "hallelujah" (from the Hebrew הללו-יה, a command to praise God) and its variants are common across many languages.
- davidw 3y agoHow much does 'no' vary? Non, niet, nein... but I don't know much about non-European languages.
- bafe 3y agoAs you might imagine the similarities are limited to Indo-European languages. Take Arabic for example: na'am means yes, but it resembles the words you listed for no
- jgtrosh 3y agoIn Japanese: いいえ(īe)
- PuleMeOriz 3y agoThat is similar to the Albanian word: Jo
- pezezin 3y agoAnd 'no' itself (の) is the genitive particle, kind of English "of" or -'s.
- whitten 3y agoIn Indonesian I think no is “tidak”
- geraneum 3y agoIn Persian it’s “na”. Also the words for Mother, Father, Daughter, Brother and some other primitive concepts are very similar. But it’s not really surprising.
- fuzztester 3y agoThat's because Persian is an Indo-European family language, probably. Those words are similar in many languages in that family, such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Latin, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc.
- 3y ago
- PopAlongKid 3y agoI read a long time ago that "Amen" was a word that was the same in nearly all languages.
- saalweachter 3y agoThe weird thing is, I had to look up just now what "amen" means, because in my mind, it just means ... amen.
- rootsu 3y agoThis is not a word in Marathi.
- zhengiszen 3y agoAlcohol Sugar Words of Arabic origin
- AareyBaba 3y agoSugar has origins in ancient India where it was known as 'sharkara' in Sanskrit[1]. For reasons I haven't been able to figure out, some modern Indian languages (like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi) call it 'cheeni' which is the same word to refer to someone as Chinese. Other languages use variations of the Sanskrit 'sakhar', 'sakkare' [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kushan2020 3y agoIn Hindi we only call the crystallized version chini possibly due to Chinese figuring out the crystallization process. The crude version is called Shakar in Hindi.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoIn the near future it will be “subscribe”. Watching YouTube videos in different languages and eventually you hear “subscribe”
- numpad0 3y agoActually you don't in CJK...
- clearmind 3y agoPineapple
- Ekaros 3y agoAnanas
- godelski 3y agoThese seem like very bad candidates. All are loan words, which is interesting, but we could go deeper if we're considering pineapple/ananas and coffee. And let's be real, words like robot and computer are mostly the same in this respect too, especially if we're considering taxi. But what about words that are more "native"? How about "mama" and "papa"? There are variations, but these seem to be pretty small and mostly replacing the plosive in papa with a b or t. You can pretty much go down the google translate list and see. For mama sometimes the last a changes to an i. Here's some examples (not a linguist or many language speaker so please correct me if I'm wrong. Trying to add some sounding help) Nearly identical in: Afrikaans, English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Japanese, Filipino Albanian: mama, babi Arabic, Chinese: mama (妈妈/媽媽), baba (爸爸) Bulgarian: mama, tatko (татко) Chez: mama, tatínek Hebrew "i-ma" (אִמָא), "ah-bah" ̶"̶b̶a̶h̶-̶b̶a̶h̶"̶ (אַבָּא) (edited: thanks zimzam and ars!) Korean: "Oh-mah" (엄마) "Ah-pa" (아빠) My understanding is that these are pretty early words and need to be pronounceable by infants. I wonder what the first human words were and if we still use any of them. We have some constellation myths that are probably older than written language (not recorded, so can never confirm). The 7 sisters is a good example, but remember these are all always contested. We'll never really know tbh.
- mikepavone 3y agoJapanese has mama and papa, but only as relatively recent loanwords. The closest (at least phonetically, though not necessarily in usage) native equivalents are haha and chichi
- ashleney 3y agoWorth noting they evolved from papa and titi.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago> But what about words that are more "native"? But what does that even mean? "Computer" or "robot" are too modern? Where do you draw the line? What about "piano" ? That one is centuries older and is similar in a shitload of languages. Some do use a variation of "clavier" (keyboard) for "piano" though. Is "piano" native enough or is that thing already too modern?
- coryaf 3y agoNo.
- harel 3y agoThere is one word which I think is the same in all languages: Tariff. And it makes sense - it's the "how much?" that would be (and is) asked at any port and travelling hub.
- jongjong 3y agoThat's an interesting one. I haven't used that word in a while but it is used across many languages. I guess maybe it's because it's most often used in the context of global trade, travel and politics which is inherently multi-lingual. It's something which affects almost everyone (hence everyone knows the word) but only a few people have control over it and use it frequently (hence there was not much incentive for people to change it as it propagated outside of its domain).
- Hasnep 3y agoOne counterexample: the Mandarin word for tariff is 關稅 (guānshuì).
- wizofaus 3y agoEven Greek has a quite different word for it.
- eru 3y agoGerman doesn't use that. The word 'Tarif' exists in German but it's used in different contexts, eg for collective bargaining agreements between labour unions and employers.
- ajuc 3y agoPolish has cło (modern, borrowed from German) or myto (archaic, Slavic root, implies it's different in every city). There's taryfa but it's mostly used as a slang word for taxi or any kind of constant payment for a service with slightly mocking tone. There's also taryfikator which is the word for the list of fines for speeding tickets depending on the speed :)
- timeon 3y ago
- iraqmtpizza 3y agouint64, probably
- u801e 3y agoI believe mango is another candidate for a word that's nearly the same in many languages. Like chai vs tea, the two words (that I know of) are aam and mango.
- wizofaus 3y agoYep, "mango" is surprisingly consistent across every language I checked, but in Bengali and possibly quite a few other similar widely spoken languages it's different. Whereas "sushi" I haven't found a language using a distinct word for so far.
- jononomo 3y agoThat's because sushi doesn't exist in any other language
- eru 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbap is pretty close. An English speaker would likely use 'sushi' to things that Koreans would call 'Gimbap'.
- bobthepanda 3y agoIn parts of the US with large korean communities, gimbap is its name, if only because the ingredient list is so different. Sushi, for the most part, is seafood raw, and gimbap often has heavily marinated beef or other non-fish meat.
- wizofaus 3y agoSushi is a method of preparing rice with vinegar, usually then eaten with Nori (seaweed), and often combined with other ingredients that may or may not include fish, either raw or cooked (and then served as 'finger' food). The sushi that's most often sold outside Japan is in the form of "California rolls", which I'd say rarely include raw fish (but often includes ingredients almost never seen in sushi found in Japan, like avocado or smoked salmon or cooked chicken etc.). But the sushi rice itself is what makes it sushi.
- krollick 3y agoI would think newer scientific/technical words would be more likely to spread unchanged from their origin. Like "boson" or "quark".
- alexpotato 3y agoI've been on the hunt for the equivalent of "preaching to the choir" which, as far as I can tell, only really exists in English. For non-English speakers it translates to: "Attempting to convince a group of people who are already convinced of something" Anyone have an example in another language?
- hotdogscout 3y agoPortuguese: Pregar ao convertido. English: Preach to the [already] converted. Very equivalent.
- 77pt77 3y ago> Portuguese: Pregar ao convertido This is really not a common expression.
- thijsvandien 3y agoDutch: preken voor eigen parochie
- BWStearns 3y agoNot quite the same but there's "A pig teaching Minerva" https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2020/08/11/a-pig-teaches-minerva/#:~:text=The%20saddest%20adage%20among%20Latin,they%20should%20rather%20be%20taught https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2020/08/11/a-pig-teaches-mine... Similarly giving redundant advice but with the added connotation of the advisor being less knowledgable on the matter.
- PhasmaFelis 3y agoInteresting! A more direct English equivalent of that would be "teach your grandmother to suck eggs," which isn't used much these days. That's probably a good thing. I have no idea why grandmothers are supposed to be especially good at sucking eggs.
- wizofaus 3y agoEven "hacker" isn't a bad candidate, though it does seem to be different in Arabic.
- eru 3y agoIn German, if you pronounce 'Hacker' the English way, you mean the computer kind. If you pronounce 'Hacker' the German way, you mean a guy who physically hacks with perhaps a hoe.
- Eliah_Lakhin 3y agoPerhaps, it would be more useful for students if foreign language courses start with explaining one thing that is well known to linguists, but maybe does not have enough recognition by a wide audience. Most European languages are at some extent just dialects of the same common language[1]. And most of the words we use in distinct languages are (at some extent) just different pronunciations of the same vocabulary. This happened no just because of the borrowings between cultures, but because centuries ago these nations speak one single common language that has diverge in centuries into different dialects. More over it is more or less researched how the words and the grammar rules have evolved from the proto-language up to it's modern form. So in fact we can (again, at some extent) translate many modern words to their ancient form, and then translate them back into another modern European language. Of course it is not always that simple process, and there is a lot of exceptions and difficulties, and the true borrowings too. But I think that understanding just some common ideas of linguistics could help in studying of foreign languages (from the same family of languages). At least maybe it will be more fascinating than just a pure memoization. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language
- eru 3y ago> [...], but because centuries ago these nations speak one single common language that has diverge in centuries into different dialects. It's more complicated than that. First, it's more than just 'centuries ago'. Second, there weren't any nations back then. Third, it wasn't necessarily the case that a common language, proto-Indo-European, was spoken over a large area. There was just as much, and even more, diversity of languages back then. It's just that the speakers of proto-Indo-European brought their language with them when they migrated and/or conquered. Just like the Romans later brought Latin with them and influenced what would later become French and Spanish. The people living 2100 years ago in what is not France did not speak Latin. The people living 600 years ago in what is now South Africa, did not speak Middle Dutch, even though people there now speak a language descendant from Middle Dutch.
- bobthepanda 3y agoYes, language standardization is relatively recent with the advent of mass education and mass media (radio/tv/etc.)
- etothepii 3y agoVery surprised to see Amen not making the list. I know it is a Christian word at the end of a prayer meaning "so be it". However, even if the prayer language is changed I understand Amen to remain untranslated.
- jscipione 3y agoOrange is also fairly universal, something similar to naranja or portokáli. In English we say the word with a hard g but with a soft g as in German it sounds closer to naranja - oran-ja.
- Ekaros 3y agoFruit or colour? In Finland the fruit is appelsiini. Chinese apple...
- MandieD 3y agoGerman has a similar, semi-archaic word for it: Apfelsine, still in some use for its juice (my 80-ish year old mother in law uses it) I think “Sinaasappel” is still the more common name for the fruit in the Netherlands.
- cperciva 3y agoYes, Bouba and Kiki are the same in all languages.
- jrflowers 3y agoThe noise one makes by blowing through pursed lips (sometimes referred to as blowing a raspberry in English) seems like a pretty universal way to indicate “fart” though it is spelled differently in various cultures Pfffffttttt
- coding123 3y agoI'm guessing the closest is "no"
- Delk 3y agoThat would probably be the case for Indo-European languages, but it's way too easy to find counterexamples from outside of those languages. In Japanese it's "iie" (いいえ), in Finnish it's "ei", and the latter shares roots with other Uralic languages which probably have something similar. I wouldn't be surprised if a whole bunch of African or Native American languages happened to have entirely unrelated words for "no", although I don't speak those.
- coding123 3y agoEven so, many of the languages have it similarly short, it either has n or o, or at least would rhyme in some way with no. Of course there are exceptions, but all the examples in this article are dumb because they're just mostly modern words where the english version of it just gets copied. I guess I'm just more interested in the old stuff.
- Delk 3y agoFair enough. I think loan words from a single source language are really the only ones that could potentially be found to be the same in all languages, though. There are several large language families outside of the Indo-European one that are distinct enough that it's hard to see nearly all of them actually sharing the same words except for relatively modern loan words, or possibly onomatopoeia. It's not particularly surprising that something like "no" would be short in most languages, considering that it's a very common interjection, but that doesn't mean it's the same. (The top examples in the article are originally from Arabic and Nahuatl, and the spread of both words is old enough that it predates the hegemony of English, and I think many languages probably got their equivalent of "chocolate" via other Indo-European languages instead. I'm not sure the other examples are actually cases of an English version being copied either. Spanish, German, French, Portuguese etc. were significant enough international languages not that many centuries ago that English probably wasn't most likely conduit for loan words that are nowadays commonly shared. It certainly wasn't the only one. Of course nowadays it tends to be a predominant one.)
- harimau777 3y agoMama and Papa are virtually the same in every language that I've been exposed to. My theory is that "babies first words" aren't actually words; "ma" and "pa" are just the easiest syllables for a baby to make and society has interpreted them as meaning mother and father.
- joe__f 3y agoDo you propose an explanation for why they are always this way round? Eg. you may expect some language to use 'mama' for father and 'papa' for mother based on your reasoning.
- Condition1952 3y agoYou need to be a little bit more lenient when comparing different languages. As far as I know, “cat” shared the same build pattern in many languages: guttural-a-dental Cat - gato - katze - qOt This, like the case of shai/tea implies that the animal expanded rather late and quickly from the same region (Asia?) Mobile phone, giraffe, etc. sound and are written also similar in all Arabic and Latin scripts. You can download the translations from the HTML source of any Wikipedia article and put them on a spreadsheet, if that’s what you’re into
- hnaccountme 3y agoThis is such a bad post, all the winning words are very recent creations. I was expecting words that are more core to a language.
- nothacking 3y ago"Tea" is ruined by my native language, Polish: herbata. Robot seems to be a good candidate though: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robot https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robot
- yakubin 3y agoHalf the world also calls it “cha” or some variant thereof.
- jim180 3y agoand apparently Lithuanian borrowed that from Polish: arbata. Quick Google showed, that herbata comes from Latin: herba thea
- yakubin 3y agoWhere the “thea” part comes from Chinese. It would be bizarre for a beverage discovered in ancient China (and brought to Europe only a couple centuries ago) to be named in latin.
- fy20 3y agoHerbal teas were common in Europe before camellia sinensis tea was imported, so I find it hard to believe the Latin origin is correct. In Lithuanian 'arbarta' colloquially refers to all types of hot water infused drinks, there isn't any distinction of what kind of leaf or fruit (e.g. raspberry or buckthorn tea) is used. On the other hand, the consensus in English is that where wasn't a word for this type of drink, you just used the herb's name itself.
- yakubin 3y ago> Herbal teas were common in Europe before camellia sinensis tea was imported They weren’t called teas though. tê is the name in Hokkien and that’s where all the similar-sounding names for tea come from originally… in countries where tea was originally brought from China via sea. The Polish name herbata was coined in the XVIIth century specifically for camelia sinensis, but due to general ignorance about what it actually was beyond “an infusion from some weed with medical applications” the word lost precision.
- kushan2020 3y agoThe article incorrectly states orange is derived from the Sanskrit word Narang नारङ्ग, but this word itself is a loan word from proto Dravidian (ancestor of Tamil) நாரம் (nāram)
- hgraves1991 3y agoBrands and models tend to be unanimously identified: iPhone, Huawei, Mercedes, BMW, etc. Do these count as words, or names?
- denysvitali 3y agoI think names. But they're not part of the language per se. One funny thing is that some brands (like McDonald's) are actually translated / changed in some countries or languages
- t3rra 3y agoTea in Korean is neither "tea" or "chai" after all. It is "cha". Very bad post.
- MandieD 3y agoThat’s rather close to “chai,” and it’s also “cha” in Portuguese.
- vippy 3y agore: the Nahuatl origin of chocolate, my money is obviously on xocolatl.
- gscott 3y agoThe word Email is the same in every language.
- themoonisachees 3y agoOfficially, the Académie Française recommends the word for email be "mél" for message électronique (lit. Electronic message). In practice everybody says mail or email, but the official word is voluntarly chosen to not be the English word, as the Académie often does.
- denysvitali 3y agoYes, french is very weird when it comes to English terms - and especially IT related ones. A computer is called "Ordinateur", Bytes are called "Octets" (and prefixed with the usual kO, MO, ... IIRC). Bits are surprisingly called Bits
- anticensor 3y agoI would have expected "binaire" (short form of "numero binaire") instead of "bit".
- denysvitali 3y agoI'm not french, so I might be very wrong
- midoridensha 3y agoThe French are still mad that their language is no longer the Lingua Franca and has been supplanted by English, so they (or at least the academic types) really hate English borrow-words. Most other languages don't have this inferiority complex.
- Ekaros 3y agoSähköposti might disagree...
- jjallen 3y agoAfter being an amateur linguist for quite a while and living in Switzerland, where everything you buy is translated into at least 3 if not more like dozens languages for toys I recently noticed a word that was the same in dozens of languages. We also having a toddler so we buy lots of toys (that have to have lots of disclaimers and warnings in many languages to reduce liability). The word that I have seen that is the same in the greatest number of languages is "slime". It was basically the same in the greater than 30 or so languages I saw it translated into. I think it is a word that no one wants to claim and make theirs, I suppose. I was going to say it is a new word and that that is the reason it is the same in many languages, which I think is probably true - but it shouldn't be. Because after all slime grows on many things that are decomposing.
- HenrikB 3y ago"shh"? (to calm, to silence) with spelling variations
- 77pt77 3y agoOnomatopoeias don't really count.
- dman-os 3y agoCoffee fails the test in my locale which is interestingly the supposed origin[0] of the drink/plant. We call it Buna in Ethiopia and it's a big symbol/part of the national identity not to mention the most important export commodity. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee
- borlanco 3y agoHere in Spain it's 7:43am, and I'm enjoying my daily cup of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe right now.
- kawhah 3y agoThis sort of makes sense, almost everyone else in the world learnt of coffee directly or indirectly via Arab-speaking people and so use their name for it, but Ethopians had it first and so have their own word for it.
- slim 3y agointerestingly in my locale the language is arabic and one of the names of coffee is "Bun"
- Chirael 3y agoI thought I learned at one point that “kaka” (poop) was one of the earliest proto-Indo-European words [0] and think it is present in many languages but “all” is a pretty high bar. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/8lefir/why_does_cacakaka_mean_poop_in_so_many_languages/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/8lefir/why_doe...
- dottedmag 3y agoIn Norwegian this word is not recognized. Norwegians hear it as «kake» (kAh-keh), cake.
- Izkata 3y agoFun thing I only recently realized, that's what the Gremlins are calling Gizmo in the movies (and just shouting in general in the recent cartoon). Apparently that word is cross-species.
- dotcoma 3y agobanana? robot ?
- divbzero 3y agoAnother commonality across many languages is naming days of the week after celestial bodies: Sunday Sun Sōlis Hēlíou 日曜日 Monday Moon Lūnae Selḗnēs 月曜日 Tuesday Mars Mārtis Áreōs 火曜日 Wednesday Mercury Mercuriī Hermoû 水曜日 Thursday Jupiter Iovis Diós 木曜日 Friday Venus Veneris Aphrodítēs 金曜日 Saturday Saturn Sāturnī Krónou 土曜日 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week
- godelski 3y agoNote that some of these are technically loan words. I even made a similar mistake with my post about Japanese.
- sn41 3y agoI think of naming the days after planets (in more or less the same order) this system is due to a common source : Sumeria, and made popular by the Babylonians who used it for their astronomy and their astrology. In fact, one could argue that in its place, naming after the days of a fortnight is more intuitive : since it coincides with the phases of the moon. Indeed, the Sanskrit way of naming days (not used popularly except in religious and astrological settings) uses a 15-day system, two in a month: The waxing phase is called the Shukla Paksha (the white part) and the waning phase is called the Krishna Paksha (the dark part): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paksha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paksha
- _8j50 3y agoThere are exceptions I know of for sure to their winner words. I would have told you duolingo except you wanted an email! But my winner words are the two words all humans learn without being told: abba and umma which what babies actually say universally us ba or da and ma when referring to their father and mother. Adult languages take these words and add to them like with english it is pa or pappa or dad for father and mom or mommy or momma for mother. But I challenge anyone to find me babies that don't use those words or languages without an evolved form of those root words.
- fleur-de-lotus 3y ago"Mafia" is an italian word understood by everybody on earth.
- anticensor 3y agoIt is from an Arabic word, ma'afiyyah.
- est 3y agoNo in Mandarin. It's 黑手党 (black-hand mob)
- martopix 3y agoFor an appropriate definition of "everybody on earth" as "people who read international news to sufficient depth or are otherwise well acquainted with Italy"? Many people in the world wouldn't even know Italy exists.
- est 3y ago> Exceptions: Mandarin Chinese uses a different word for pineapple. Actually two words for pineapple: 凤梨 & 菠萝 On the topic, I think one word is defintely the same in all languages: "OK". Yeah, even in Mandarin.
- miraji 3y agoTwo words of Finnish origin seem pretty universal: sauna and rapakivi.
- teleforce 3y agoThis is a very popular modern riddle/joke, "The most understood word in the world is Coke (Coca-Cola), what is the second most popular word?", and the correct answer is "OK". I once asked this question to a friend, and after a while he said "OK, I give up", without realizing that he had just answered the riddle. Joking aside, I think beer is a very universal word. It's probably come from the Proto-Indo-European origin, meaning meaning "brewer's yeast". [1] Beer In Other Languages: https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/beer-in-other-languages/ https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/beer-in-other-languages/
- thedravos 3y ago[dead]
- timonoko 3y ago"Kana" seems to have longestmost Wiktionary page. Some might draw a map how these different Kanas relate. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kana https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kana
- dcb_lu 3y agoThere is also an interesting contrast with the word for "butterfly" which tends to be quite different between languages[0] -- "mariposa", "papillon", "farfalla", "borboleta", and "fluture" all come from romance languages, for instance. [0] https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/butterfly https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/butterfly
- AndrewThrowaway 3y agoI think "one two three" sound very similar in a lot of languages. Like pronouncing them "a e i".
- dpq 3y agoOne of their main candidates [coffee] is incorrectly selected: it is something like "sourch" in Armenian (սուրճ) [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D5%BD%D5%B8%D6%82%D6%80%D5%B3 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D5%BD%D5%B8%D6%82%D6%80%D5%B...]. Also, in Hebrew an orange is a "tapuz" (תפוז), which is short for "tapuach zahav", or a "golden apple" [https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%96 https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%96]. A pity that this isn't highlighted, given that Hebrew is supported in Duolingo.
- kuon 3y agoI though banana was one of those words.
- em500 3y agoIt's very different in Chinese: xiang jiao 香蕉
- leovk97 3y ago[dead]
- aristus 3y agoThe correct answer is "spam". Spam was a novel problem that hit the entire world almost at once, just as that entire world was becoming able to talk with itself easily. So an invented word was immediately adopted in all languages. Just check out the bottom of the wiktionary page. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/spam https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/spam
- Ekaros 3y agoNot that other words have not been adopted. Like Finnish roskaposti "trash-mail". Not that spämmi isn't used as word as well.
- dghughes 3y agoI recall reading about ESSO the gas company how the company tried to find a neutral name that didn't mean anything in any language. edit: but now I see it just means Standard Oil as in 'S' and 'O'.
- gatestone 3y ago"Kiosk" is pretty universal, Persian originally.
- anonu 3y agoTurkey, the bird, is one of my favorite quirks of etymology. In English, it's turkey, in reference to it's supposed origin from Turkey. In French it's dinde, which could be viewed as d'Inde, or "from India". In Arabic it's "habash" which refers to the Horn of Africa. Clearly one of the most confused birds around ...
- flanked-evergl 3y agoJohn McWhorter gives a very good critique of this in one of his excellent course from the great courses, it is called the story of human language. Really would strongly recommended it, he is one of the most entertaining people that I have ever listened to.
- Fatnino 3y agoIn Hebrew: Orange = tapuz (which is 2 words mashed together, tapuach (apple) & zahav (gold)) Taxi = monit Tomato = agvania
- themadturk 3y agoI've often wondered how widespread "okay" is. I remember standing on the deck of a Washington State Ferry about 20 years ago, listening to a couple of Arabic men speaking. At the end of a long string of Arabic words, one of the men said "Okay?" with exactly the same inflection an English-speaker would, to solicit agreement, and his companion echoed "okay" in the apparent affirmative.
- playingalong 3y agoA lot of comments mention a lot food items or beverages. I think a specific drink or food is likely to be well recognized globally. E.g. Pizza Sushi Cola Vodka Gin Kebab Grill Another category would be modern inventions/phenomena like Internet Sms Selfie Yet another would be countries which are well known, but with not so many cultural mixes (e.g. not Germany), e.g. Peru Australia Sudan