opalescentWhy words like 'okay' and 'taxi' are universally understood across the world but survival related ones like 'help', 'water', 'food' remained nation specific?
From learning a new language, one thing I noticed is that the more modern the word, the more likely it will be the same or similar in your own language. Thus computer is very close across many languages where as help can be quite different. I think taxi would be a very new concept. Ok. That might just be due to the word being so simple thus it was adopted fast. Much like we nod for yes.
Not an expert but just an observation I had found interesting.
HamartiogonicBiochemistry and bioinformatics are just full of English terms. This branch of science is relatively new, and since that stuff was mostly published in English, other scientists just copied the English words and proceeded to write their articles in their own language.
That’s nothing new though. Throughout history there has been a lot of word borrowing and stealing going back and forth. If you invent a fancy new sword and you happen to be speaking Spanish, French, German or whatever, then the rest of the world will just have to deal with calling your sword by a name they can’t pronounce. Usually they’ll start using a distorted version, but the connection is still there. If you give it an easy name, then everyone might actually still use the original name. Espada ropera is too hard, so people will just call it a rapier instead. If it’s an easy word like pomel (Old French), it’s not going to change much (pommel). Taxi, and pizza are fairly easy to pronounce, so they haven’t change much while traveling around the world. OK is a different story, because writing it as okay is a very English think. Also the pronunciation has some variation, but nothing too big.
That is what I found interesting. Some words obviously have been around for thousands of years and likely originated on their own with little to no foreign influence. They would often have no simularities across languages. But if you did notice a word that was similar, you could almost gauge when that word originated by how far it has diverged between languages.
English has so many loan words that it’s getting difficult to write anything without using many loanwords. After going through a few rounds with Bing, I managed to write a brief explanation of what a table is.
A table is a thing that men use to put other things on. It is made of wood, and it has four sticks that hold it up from the ground. Men can sit around it and eat, talk or work. Sometimes, they hide it with a cloth to make it look fair or to keep it clean.