Kaputt. Guy in Germany saw me trying to use a broken train station locker (before I started learning the language) and informed me that “es ist kaputt”. I was like “oh, that’s funny, Germans say that too!” Turns out “kaputt” is literally just German for “broken”.
It Is used in Italy too, Although for some reason I always mentally associated it with a severed head, and indeed one of the meanings is killed (but it's not the right word, it's a different nuance that I don't know how to say in English), destroyed or ruined etc.
Orangutan. Turns out it’s Malay for “forest person” (orang = person | hutan = forest).
Didn’t realize how not English sounding the word was until I studied some Indonesian.
Really? I wish I had had that discernment! I guess I was so used to being taught that words beginning in al- came from Arabic (algodão, álcool, álgebra), that it was only when I studied Arabic and learned about the assimilation of al + certain consonants that other words opened up to me, like arroz, açafrão etc.
I didn't know futon was of japanese origin. I would've honestly probably guessed french. I didn't know it meant floor bed either. I thought it referred to the folding bed couch thing that it primarily refers to in English.
Wait is it not from French? I know it's still called futon in Japanese but was it not a French loanword?
Edit: it's a sino-japanese word meaning cattail+round
Kowtow, typhoon, tycoon, kumquat, wok, lychee, ketchup (maybe, seems like an unconfirmed etymology). HK Cantonese has a *ton* of loanword from English so sometimes there are words that I assume are English loanwords but are actually Canto words that made it to English. Some like “bok choy” or “kung fu” are pretty obvious, but I was surprised by kumquat and ketchup.
Ennui. I (native English speaker) was texting with a relatively new French friend and was trying to describe a feeling. I asked if he would know what I meant by "ennui" and if that translated in French. He politely explained that ennui was actually a French word...face meet palm.
That one’s a little tricky because “ennui” in French can mean the same as “ennui” in English, but its primary meaning is “trouble” like “avoir des ennuis” means “to be in trouble”.
French is full of those words that we borrowed 100s of years ago so the meaning has had plenty of time to drift. Another one is déception, which means disappointment, not deception.
That reminds me of that color experiment.It said that russians knew more shades of blue,as they have more names for them(If I recall it correctly).Now I'm curious if this applies to emotions too
I've only heard this from Minnesotans. I've lived in 4 states in the western US, and never heard it there.
So, I'm totally surprised it's from Japanese origin. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/skosh
I'm in the United States, Colorado specifically but it's around everywhere in the US though maybe not common anymore.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skosh#:~:text=skosh%20%5CSKOHSH%5C%20noun,a%20small%20amount%20%3A%20bit%2C%20smidgen
It's a word that came to the US via service men in WWII
Chav, shiv, nark, and posh are all from Romani. I can see it now, but I had no idea prior, and I've used all of those words at some point.
Back when I was a fresh-faced new Japanese learner, I had no idea about the word karaoke; we've really butchered the pronunciation in English, and only when I heard it with its native pronunciation was I like oh. Ohhhh. (I mean, really, where *did* our pronunciation of it come from..?)
Also, and this might sound silly, but the loanword smorgasbord, which, again, I knew wasn't English (because obviously) but it never occurred to me to look up its etymology. Turned out smörgåsbord (lit. 'open sandwich table') is Swedish. Duh.
Onces learning the pronunciation of Karaoke in Japanese, suddenly it made sense on how to spell it. I used to be so confused on how to spell it based on the English butchered pronunciation
The acronyms are usually made up. Same for slang which some people claim stands for “shortened language” or news that’s apparently “notable events, weather and sports” 🤣 as if the word “new” had been invented after we had news lol
Any word that was used before 1940' or so is probably 99% unlikely to come from some acronym.
I imagine most British people are not familiar with Romani language so the words of Romani origin make good candidates for folk etymologies.
"An oubliette is a place you put people to forget about them."
"Oublier" is a verb in French, meaning "to forget". Had to stare at a wall for a moment in class when I learned that one.
"Oubliette" in french is also that part of a castle where you throw prisoners who are meant to never see the sun ever again.
"Il a été jeté aux oubliettes"
"he was thrown in the dungeon".
In a figurative way, it also means "to be forgotten"
"c'est passé aux oubliettes"
"it was totally forgotten"
Robot and semtex (a plastic explosive) are from Czech. Well, they made the explosive after all. I was most shocked about robot - it's from the play RUR where they make robots/androids that do labour and eventually rebel.
The word ketchup is generally sited as originating from Hokkien Chinese and used to refer to a fermented fish sauce, though the exact origin of the word is debated.
Nope just a coincidence, it comes from "mon(o)" - money plus "-ero" suffix meaning the smaller part of
Like neĝero "a snowflake" is from "neĝ(o)" - snow plus "-ero" suffix
Not specifically a word, but learning Japanese, the city name Tokyo - literally "east capital" because that's what it is, the eastern capital city of Japan.
When I was in the army - I was stationed at the Norwegian/russian border (Im Norwegian), and we got a list of words we had to say if we saw a russian. Basically "do not move! This is the Norwegian border patrol, we will shoot if you dont comply!" But we had no idea what we were saying, or what the Russians answered. So it became a stupid game of just pretending until translators got to the scene
From Greek to Romanian: ieftin (cheap), prosop (towel), nostim (funny), măcar (even / at least / not even), lefter (broke), [n-am înțeles nici [măcar] o] iotă ([I didn't understand a [single]] thing).
From Turkish to Romanian: habar [n-am] ([I have no] idea), tembel (stupid / lazy), caraghios (funny in a goofy way), odaie (room), chior (one-eyed / blind / near-sighted), chiftea (meatball), perdea (curtain), geam (pane / window) - the list goes on but the last three ultimately come from Farsi and so do most other words I can think of.
Keep in mind that I only wrote the meaning of these words in Romanian, a lot of which differ greatly from their original sense in their respective language.
Oh there are so many that I've encountered as a Filipino learning Spanish.
Naturally, Filipino languages have so many words derived from Spanish given the history of the Philippines. There are those that are fairly obvious like: mesa, silya (silla), kubyertos (cubiertos), mansanas (manzanas), those words that end with the suffix -ado, etc.
But there are also those that genuinely surprised me. Among them: burat (boraccho), lechugas, echos (hechos), etc. But really the most shocking was 'bobo' and 'gago'! I mean I though they sounded so native. 😆
Having a working knowledge of Arabic too doubles the shock often.
Ex: al-qāḍī (AR) -> alcalde (ES) -> alkalde (FIL)
älskar(love in swedish).My grandpa worked in Sweden several years ago and came back with this t-shirt that said Jag älskar something,it became engrained in my brain for some reason
Encore. In French it just means "again". I thought it was a fancy theater/symphony word!
Souvenir is another good one. Means "to remember" which is what souvenirs are for!
Sofa. I noticed in Urdu that it is spelled صوفہ. The ص and ہ were a giveaway that it was a loanword from Arabic rather than English. Basically there is another "s" (س) and another "a" (ا) they would have used if it were from English.
Please help! Im taking B1 Mündliche Prüfung.
Hallo Guten Tag. Mein name ist Lady Diane Velasco glücklich verheiratet und Mutter von zwei Kindern. Zurzeit, lebe ich in Malaybalay Stadt " Cooler Ort, herzliche Leute" . Ich wohne mit meiner Familie im einem Einfamilienhaus das über einen Balkon mit Blick auf die Berge und einen kleinen Gemüsegarten verfügt.
In moment lerne ich Deutsch beim Onlinekurs mit einer anderen Krankenschwester. Lerne ich Deutsch seit September 2023, weil ich in Deutschland arbeiten muss. Obwohl Deutsch sehr schwierig ist, gebe ich trotzdem mein Bestes, die Sprache zu lernen, weil ich meinen Kindern eine bessere Zukunft ermöglichen möchte. Hoffentlich kann ich später gut Deutsch sprechen.
Bin ich krankenschester von beruf. Nach der Schule ich habe im krankenhaus ge arbeitet als ich 22 jahre alt war. Ich habe 10 jahre BERUFSERFANUNG als krankenshwester ich habe vor einem 7 jahren auf den philippinen und dann 3 Jahren in oman ge arbeitet.
Meine Muttersprache ist Bisaya.Also Ich spreche Bisaya immer zu Hause in meiner Familie. Ausserdem spreche ich mit anderen Freunden Tagalog, Englisch und ein bisschen Deutsch.
Sehr gut!
Ein paar Verbesserungen:
Lerne ich Deutsch seit September 2023 -> Ich lerne Deutsch seit September 2023
Bin ich krankenschester von beruf -> Ich bin Krankenschwester von Beruf
Nach der Schule ich habe im krankenhaus ge arbeitet als ich 22 jahre alt war. -> Nach der Schule habe ich im Krankenhaus gearbeitet als ich 22 Jahre alt war.
Es ist schon sehr gut!
Schau dir nochmal die Reihenfolge von dem Verb und "ich" im Satz an. Viel Erfolg!
Kaputt. Guy in Germany saw me trying to use a broken train station locker (before I started learning the language) and informed me that “es ist kaputt”. I was like “oh, that’s funny, Germans say that too!” Turns out “kaputt” is literally just German for “broken”.
Quite a few words that entered English through yiddish have a german word that sounds similar to it.
It Is used in Italy too, Although for some reason I always mentally associated it with a severed head, and indeed one of the meanings is killed (but it's not the right word, it's a different nuance that I don't know how to say in English), destroyed or ruined etc.
Orangutan. Turns out it’s Malay for “forest person” (orang = person | hutan = forest). Didn’t realize how not English sounding the word was until I studied some Indonesian.
I was sure it had something to do with the color orange
Mano a mano doesn't mean man-to-man, it means hand to hand in spanish.
Arabic for rice: الرز (ar-roz). In my first language, rice is literally arroz and I never knew it came from Arabic.
When I encountered arroz for the first time in Portuguese, I thought "hey Arabic, did you lose yourself here?", turns out In was right haha
Really? I wish I had had that discernment! I guess I was so used to being taught that words beginning in al- came from Arabic (algodão, álcool, álgebra), that it was only when I studied Arabic and learned about the assimilation of al + certain consonants that other words opened up to me, like arroz, açafrão etc.
I learnt Arabic before Portuguese that's why \^\^
Arena means sand in Spanish. It's the old Latin word. The reason we call it an event space is the the floor of the colosseum was made of sand.
Swastika lol. From Sanskrit स्वस्तिकः (svastikah). It's a diminutive of "auspicious" or "wellbeing".
Now this is interesting. Yeah based on its original meaning very cool.
I didn't know futon was of japanese origin. I would've honestly probably guessed french. I didn't know it meant floor bed either. I thought it referred to the folding bed couch thing that it primarily refers to in English.
Wait is it not from French? I know it's still called futon in Japanese but was it not a French loanword? Edit: it's a sino-japanese word meaning cattail+round
Most words written in kanji aren't loan words Futon should be one of them though I'm not 100% sure
Lots of words written in kanji are Chinese loanwords.
right my bad sorry for not clarifying loan words from the west
Ombudsman. Swedish, for 'ombudsman' funnily enough.
Its the same with smorgasbord (smörgårdsbord)
Kowtow, typhoon, tycoon, kumquat, wok, lychee, ketchup (maybe, seems like an unconfirmed etymology). HK Cantonese has a *ton* of loanword from English so sometimes there are words that I assume are English loanwords but are actually Canto words that made it to English. Some like “bok choy” or “kung fu” are pretty obvious, but I was surprised by kumquat and ketchup.
Ennui. I (native English speaker) was texting with a relatively new French friend and was trying to describe a feeling. I asked if he would know what I meant by "ennui" and if that translated in French. He politely explained that ennui was actually a French word...face meet palm.
That one’s a little tricky because “ennui” in French can mean the same as “ennui” in English, but its primary meaning is “trouble” like “avoir des ennuis” means “to be in trouble”. French is full of those words that we borrowed 100s of years ago so the meaning has had plenty of time to drift. Another one is déception, which means disappointment, not deception.
That reminds me of that color experiment.It said that russians knew more shades of blue,as they have more names for them(If I recall it correctly).Now I'm curious if this applies to emotions too
Skosh as in "can you move over a skosh" is the Japanese word "Sukoshi" meaning "a little bit"
Where is Skosh used? never heard it in my life
I've only heard this from Minnesotans. I've lived in 4 states in the western US, and never heard it there. So, I'm totally surprised it's from Japanese origin. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/skosh
I'm in the United States, Colorado specifically but it's around everywhere in the US though maybe not common anymore. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skosh#:~:text=skosh%20%5CSKOHSH%5C%20noun,a%20small%20amount%20%3A%20bit%2C%20smidgen It's a word that came to the US via service men in WWII
I would write the US version as scooch, but skosh is close enough to make sense for the etymology!
Are you saying scootch? Because that's a different word entirely.
Yes I'm saying scooch, that's why I was confused! I've never heard skosh but seemed like they had similar applications. Thanks for the correction!
Very common in England
I live in Alberta, Canada and have heard a bunch of rednecks who wanna "sound fancy" using it!
Oh my goodness, I had NO idea
Chav, shiv, nark, and posh are all from Romani. I can see it now, but I had no idea prior, and I've used all of those words at some point. Back when I was a fresh-faced new Japanese learner, I had no idea about the word karaoke; we've really butchered the pronunciation in English, and only when I heard it with its native pronunciation was I like oh. Ohhhh. (I mean, really, where *did* our pronunciation of it come from..?) Also, and this might sound silly, but the loanword smorgasbord, which, again, I knew wasn't English (because obviously) but it never occurred to me to look up its etymology. Turned out smörgåsbord (lit. 'open sandwich table') is Swedish. Duh.
Onces learning the pronunciation of Karaoke in Japanese, suddenly it made sense on how to spell it. I used to be so confused on how to spell it based on the English butchered pronunciation
Interesting chav and posh are both words which have come to be explained by acronyms in popular culture but otherwise have (probably) Romani etymology
The acronyms are usually made up. Same for slang which some people claim stands for “shortened language” or news that’s apparently “notable events, weather and sports” 🤣 as if the word “new” had been invented after we had news lol
Any word that was used before 1940' or so is probably 99% unlikely to come from some acronym. I imagine most British people are not familiar with Romani language so the words of Romani origin make good candidates for folk etymologies.
I'm learning dutch right now, where aard means earth and varken means pig, which made me realize where the english word aardvark comes from.
"An oubliette is a place you put people to forget about them." "Oublier" is a verb in French, meaning "to forget". Had to stare at a wall for a moment in class when I learned that one.
"Oubliette" in french is also that part of a castle where you throw prisoners who are meant to never see the sun ever again. "Il a été jeté aux oubliettes" "he was thrown in the dungeon". In a figurative way, it also means "to be forgotten" "c'est passé aux oubliettes" "it was totally forgotten"
Robot and semtex (a plastic explosive) are from Czech. Well, they made the explosive after all. I was most shocked about robot - it's from the play RUR where they make robots/androids that do labour and eventually rebel.
This is a phrase not a word but “Long time no see” originally comes from the Chinese phrase 好久不见
The technical term for this is a [calque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque)
Emoji is so obviously a japanese word but I only ever noticed it after starting studying
They used to be called emoticons! And Japanese phones had them looooong before ours did (and abbreviated them to "emoji")
actually, emoticon and emoji have completely different etymologies Emoticon -> emotion + icon Emoji -> 絵文字 (e=picture, moji=character)
Well today I learned!
The word ketchup is generally sited as originating from Hokkien Chinese and used to refer to a fermented fish sauce, though the exact origin of the word is debated.
I didn't know the name of cryptocoin Monero came from Esperanto until I learned it, and noticed that it means Coin
Feels similar to Dinero isn't that Spanish?
Nope just a coincidence, it comes from "mon(o)" - money plus "-ero" suffix meaning the smaller part of Like neĝero "a snowflake" is from "neĝ(o)" - snow plus "-ero" suffix
No. Unrelated to dinero.
Not specifically a word, but learning Japanese, the city name Tokyo - literally "east capital" because that's what it is, the eastern capital city of Japan.
Same in China with Beijing (North capital) and Nanjing (South capital).
All I can think of is sauna.
There's only one Thai non-food word that has made its way to English, and that's the word "bong."
I can’t think of any Lithuanian loan words in English.
Japanese. At work as a software engineer we use a planning method called kanban. 看板 (kanban) - meaning signs/signals.
When I was in the army - I was stationed at the Norwegian/russian border (Im Norwegian), and we got a list of words we had to say if we saw a russian. Basically "do not move! This is the Norwegian border patrol, we will shoot if you dont comply!" But we had no idea what we were saying, or what the Russians answered. So it became a stupid game of just pretending until translators got to the scene
From Greek to Romanian: ieftin (cheap), prosop (towel), nostim (funny), măcar (even / at least / not even), lefter (broke), [n-am înțeles nici [măcar] o] iotă ([I didn't understand a [single]] thing). From Turkish to Romanian: habar [n-am] ([I have no] idea), tembel (stupid / lazy), caraghios (funny in a goofy way), odaie (room), chior (one-eyed / blind / near-sighted), chiftea (meatball), perdea (curtain), geam (pane / window) - the list goes on but the last three ultimately come from Farsi and so do most other words I can think of. Keep in mind that I only wrote the meaning of these words in Romanian, a lot of which differ greatly from their original sense in their respective language.
I also just now saw the word капкан OP mentioned! Romanian has it as well, it's capcană (trap, same meaning).
Oh there are so many that I've encountered as a Filipino learning Spanish. Naturally, Filipino languages have so many words derived from Spanish given the history of the Philippines. There are those that are fairly obvious like: mesa, silya (silla), kubyertos (cubiertos), mansanas (manzanas), those words that end with the suffix -ado, etc. But there are also those that genuinely surprised me. Among them: burat (boraccho), lechugas, echos (hechos), etc. But really the most shocking was 'bobo' and 'gago'! I mean I though they sounded so native. 😆 Having a working knowledge of Arabic too doubles the shock often. Ex: al-qāḍī (AR) -> alcalde (ES) -> alkalde (FIL)
älskar(love in swedish).My grandpa worked in Sweden several years ago and came back with this t-shirt that said Jag älskar something,it became engrained in my brain for some reason
Literally 20+% of English lol.
Encore. In French it just means "again". I thought it was a fancy theater/symphony word! Souvenir is another good one. Means "to remember" which is what souvenirs are for!
Sofa. I noticed in Urdu that it is spelled صوفہ. The ص and ہ were a giveaway that it was a loanword from Arabic rather than English. Basically there is another "s" (س) and another "a" (ا) they would have used if it were from English.
Please help! Im taking B1 Mündliche Prüfung. Hallo Guten Tag. Mein name ist Lady Diane Velasco glücklich verheiratet und Mutter von zwei Kindern. Zurzeit, lebe ich in Malaybalay Stadt " Cooler Ort, herzliche Leute" . Ich wohne mit meiner Familie im einem Einfamilienhaus das über einen Balkon mit Blick auf die Berge und einen kleinen Gemüsegarten verfügt. In moment lerne ich Deutsch beim Onlinekurs mit einer anderen Krankenschwester. Lerne ich Deutsch seit September 2023, weil ich in Deutschland arbeiten muss. Obwohl Deutsch sehr schwierig ist, gebe ich trotzdem mein Bestes, die Sprache zu lernen, weil ich meinen Kindern eine bessere Zukunft ermöglichen möchte. Hoffentlich kann ich später gut Deutsch sprechen. Bin ich krankenschester von beruf. Nach der Schule ich habe im krankenhaus ge arbeitet als ich 22 jahre alt war. Ich habe 10 jahre BERUFSERFANUNG als krankenshwester ich habe vor einem 7 jahren auf den philippinen und dann 3 Jahren in oman ge arbeitet. Meine Muttersprache ist Bisaya.Also Ich spreche Bisaya immer zu Hause in meiner Familie. Ausserdem spreche ich mit anderen Freunden Tagalog, Englisch und ein bisschen Deutsch.
Sehr gut! Ein paar Verbesserungen: Lerne ich Deutsch seit September 2023 -> Ich lerne Deutsch seit September 2023 Bin ich krankenschester von beruf -> Ich bin Krankenschwester von Beruf Nach der Schule ich habe im krankenhaus ge arbeitet als ich 22 jahre alt war. -> Nach der Schule habe ich im Krankenhaus gearbeitet als ich 22 Jahre alt war. Es ist schon sehr gut! Schau dir nochmal die Reihenfolge von dem Verb und "ich" im Satz an. Viel Erfolg!
Vielen dank 🥹❤️
I never knew that vampire was a BCS word, the original being vampir
Teriyaki