Whenever I listen to people speak in another language they seem to use English for certain words. Currently listening to two Turkish people speaking in a cafe near me but they use an English word every so often. Do some languages just not have words for things like ‘automatic’ or ‘mortgage’?
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Yeah, that’s very often how language evolves – you could even say that English doesn’t have a word for “automatic”, that word is originally Latin. It became adopted into English because it had a meaning that was useful, and became a full English word despite coming from another language first.
Lots of words come to new languages that way – ammunition is from French, cow is from German, etc.
There are often loan words, automatic might be greek, and mortgage I think was French.
Occasionally two languages will both use the same word from somewhere else.
Yes. Most languages don’t have the equivalent to the Portuguese word “saudade”, a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia, for example.
Each nation has their own history, special interests, culture and language structure.
Based on those some phenomenon are communicated about more often then others and to do so efficiently we create words for them.
Often there are old words that mean the same, but they dissappear out of the general lexicon, because in contemporary culture there simply isn’t a need for them to be used so often they’re taught to newer generations.
There’s tons and tons of words that exist in specific cultures and not others. If one culture doesn’t use the concept of loans, they won’t have a word for ‘mortgage’.
There’s also sayings and phrases that English doesn’t have an equivalent word for, and someone needs to figure out the closest translation. Sometimes in another language they might have a single word that conveys a concept, but in English you’d need a whole sentence to explain the same concept.
Most languages won’t be 1-to-1 with each other. Especially with English, since its so many other languages mixed in and changed around.
I’m sure someone else more versed in linguistics can explain even better.
This is just how langauge works. English speakers use lots of foreign words too. Why invent a new word when we already have one?
Some examples:
Mosquito is Spanish
Cafe is French
Tsunami is Japanese
Kindergarten is German
Algebra is Arabic
Yeah, some more complicated things are common enough within a culture that they ended up with their own word for it. I can’t remember which language but it’s one if the Asian ones where there is a single word which translated to English would most closely be “the feeling you get when looking at someone you are in love with but know that they are in love with someone else”
Multilangual here.
Yes, there are words in different languages that are not present in other languages. For example in english you have a word for blue but you don’t have a special ford for light blue. In Slavic languages there’s a word for light blue, eg “goluboi’ (голубой). This also change the world perspection btw, in languages where there’s no word for light blue the rainbow colors don’t include it so there are 7 colors of rainbow in Ukrainian for example but 6 in English.
Another thing is how complicated the word is. When I’m speaking with someone who know’s multiple languages I might use words from non-main language just because it’s easier to pronounce them.
Short answer: Yes, some languages do not have words for certain concepts and so use loanwords from other languages
Slightly less short answer: At a certain point, that word simply becomes the word for that concept in that language. Think of the word “sushi”. Is that an English word or a Japanese word? What about “kindergarten”? English or German? How about “jungle”. It would be silly to say “They don’t have a word for a a dense, tangled rainforest in English, so they just use the Hindi word”.
English is the number one offender of this. Practicly half the language is just borrowed from other languages.
Though you gotta remember just because they use the same word doesnt mean it has to have the same meaning.
English lacks the word for the pleasure one derives from the reversal of fortune in another; the Germans do: schadenfreude.
As far as I’m aware English doesn’t have an equivalent to German ‘scharf’. In German this means hot, or spicy, like burns yours mouth on chilli peppers. So Indian would have a scarf rating. English doesn’t really have this. Hot and spicy can refer to a very warm meal filled with many bland spices. We tend to associate these words with certain types of foods like Indian. But not the scharf level.
I’m happy to be corrected here.
There are quite a few reasons for this.
First, you might think that you’re hearing an English word, but the truth is that the English word and the same word in the foreign language are derived from the same root word. This happens quite a bit within language groups – in addition to English, I speak German, and I can usually puzzle out what someone is saying in Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish because all of those languages share a common ancestor, so many of the words are very similar between the two languages.
Second, the language might not have a word for it because it wasn’t a concept or a thing that was relevant to the language when it was being formulated. Going back to German… do you know what the German word for tapir is? It’s Tapir. There weren’t any tapirs in northern Europe during the evolution of German, so they didn’t bother coming up with a word for tapir because they didn’t know that they needed one. So when they found out about tapirs, they didn’t bother creating a new word for them… they just called the animal der Tapir.
It also comes down to how strictly the language polices itself, and how firmly the language speakers feel about keeping the language distinct. French is notorious for introducing French terms for every new concept and for resisting the impulse to adopt English loanwords. Japanese used to be that way (especially before the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century), but now enthusiastically adopts loanwords. You can even trace when a Western concept was introduced to Japan based on whether the word for it is a loanword or not. Baseball, for example, was introduced to Japan in the 19th century and has its own Japanese term – Yakyu. Email was (obviously) introduced in the late 20th century, and is simply called “meru.” If that doesn’t strike you as anything… say, “Mail” with a very thick Japanese accent and it’ll come out sounding like may-ru.
The use of loanwords from other languages often reflects cultural association with a certain profession or discipline – so for example many English words to do with cooking and dining (cuisine, menu, a la carte) are from french because restaurant culture originated in 18th century France and then went international. English speakers could have made up a new word for “a short list of foods offered at the eating establishment,” but why would they, when all the best restaurants were trying to seem as French as possible? Better to say it in the de rigueur frenchy way and avoid a faux pas.
Today, a lot of business and tech culture is associated with the English-speaking world, so English loan words tend to be used a lot. I live in Czech republic and it is perfectly normal to refer to ‘home office’ when talking about working from home – not because Czech doesn’t have a way of expressing the idea of working from home, but simply because work culture is English, so English words are the trendy way of talking about working. If you want to start a business here you best have a “business plán” – again not because Czech doesn’t have a way of phrasing that, but simply because finance culture is English
Turkish for automatic: otomatik (borrowed from French, as are many “modern” words in Turkish)
For mortgage: ipotek
But yes, languages adopt loanwords for items for which there might not be a ready equivalent in L1. For example, when speaking English, I use the Turkish term “dolmuş” for “shared taxis that go on a set route and the fare paid depends on distance traveled” because that phrase doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.
It seems to be very common with technical or specialized vocabularies.
I’ve overheard “database” often enough in conversations between two Indian I.T. people.
I’ve seen “rocket”, spelled phonetically, in Hebrew.
I’m not 100% certain, but the Dutch word “Niksen”, meaning “doing nothing” doesn’t have an English equivalent. I might even wager a bet that more languages don’t have a word for it.
In Papiamento, the word for fridge, or koelkast (in Dutch) doesn’t really exist, they call it after the first brand that introduced a fridge: Frigidaire.
Dutch people will often say “Gezellig” doesn’t have an English equivalent, but there is “convivial” that exactly describes the word “Gezellig”.
Sometimes people use words from other languages when they speak. I can speak a mix between Dutch and English with Dutch people. With Arubans I can speak Papiamento, English and Dutch, some might swap Dutch with Spanish. Especially when someone forgets a particular word. Fun fact, when Arubans forget a word, they add “-eren” to Dutchify a word or “-ing” to Englishify it, so record becomes either graberen or grabbing (from grabba).
It is kinda fun how words are introduced into languages, “Boulevard” is a notable one. The Dutch (and other languages) borrowed it from the French. Yet the French borrowed it from the Dutch:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard
> The word boulevard is borrowed from French. In France, it originally meant the flat surface of a rampart, and later a promenade taking the place of a demolished fortification. It is a borrowing from the Dutch word bolwerk ‘bulwark’.[1]
This is also very common with bi-lingual/multilingual people. I’m an Estonian but speak English 50-90% of the time for the past 15 years. I often cannot recall a word in my mother tongue but know it there and then in English. Same happens the other way around, too.
Every language is filled with loan words.
Your first example, “automatic”, is Greek in origin, for “self-doing”. “Mortgage” is French for “death grip”.
Languages don’t tend to make up new unique words for things introduced by people that have a word for it already. They either make a conjunction of other words (Korean calls the platypus “olineoguli” or “duck raccoon”) or just absorb the word as it is introduced to them and fit the pronunciation as best as possible within their linguistic rules (again Korean, “ice cream” is “aiseukeurim”).
Language is fluid and adventurous, it loves to travel.
We use Turkish words all the time, for example : coffee
I’m Turkish, yes, recently gen Z and some millenials do started to randomly add english words to their sentences here and there, but most of the time it’s not because we don’t have Turkish equivalent to those words, people usually do it for funsies.
I can’t add much to what has already been said, but I will just add that it’s really worth looking into the philosophy + science of language!
The languages we speak really shape our view of reality in some major ways. For example, some Amazonian tribes have displayed an utter lack of vocabulary for future and past tense – they have no abstract concept of time having passed or of things to happen. Some philosophers and physicists used to (and some still do) think that languages like German were inherently better for the study of philosophy or physics. It’s a fun subject to look into 🙂
You mean like in English? Are you aware 1/3rd of words in English is French?
English does that too if you didn’t know. You probably know plenty loan words like Kindergarten (German), Schadenfreude (German), tornado (Spanish), tsunami (japanese), pajama (hindi), patio (Spanish)…. Loan words don’t always have the same meaning as in the original language, for instance Germans called mobile phones “handy”.
But anyway yes they are often used where there is no equivalent in the language. (But people who speak two languages might sometimes also just use a foreign word that is no loan word.)
very often. and even if they do have words for “the same thing” oftentimes there’s nuance that is lost in the translation. the classic example of lost nuance is a possibly-apocryphal translation program from the 70’s that was asked to translate “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” from english to russian and back. it returned “the vodka is good, but the meat is rotten”
I would say in your example to view it a bit differently. Many languages have common words. It not that one lacks a word, but has adopted or created one used by both languages. English is very much a mish mosh of all kinds of languages. It is one of the reasons we have no grammar or pronunciation rules.
For examples
The Chaos by Gerard Noist Trenite
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciations.
I will teach you my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Pronunciation – think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace and gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough –
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give Up!!!
Danish doesn’t have different words for snails and slugs (although if you want to specify that you are taking about the homeless kind, we do call them forrest-snails). Do you really need different words for that?
We do however have seperat words for camels with two humps (kamel) and camels with only one hump (dromedar), because that distinction is apparently very important to make.