Last word you learned in a foreign language

A forum dedicated to the studying of natural languages and for discussions in languages other than English.
Iyionaku
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Iyionaku »

Creyeditor wrote: 10 Feb 2018 18:46 English: finale /fɨˈnæli/
English stress is so crazy. How are people supposed to know where the stress is? Is that French -é? If so, why not have ultimate stress? Is it English -e? If so, why pronounce them at all? Seems it's from Italian [¬.¬]
The history of those words is a little riddiculous. English already has "final" that is a cognate to German "Finale" and both come from Latin fīnālis. English "finale", however, comes from Italian, but ultimately also from fīnālis. How the distinction between "final" and "finale" could survive is inexplicable to me.
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GrandPiano
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by GrandPiano »

Iyionaku wrote: 12 Feb 2018 08:41How the distinction between "final" and "finale" could survive is inexplicable to me.
The two words are semantically fairly different. “Final” simply means “last”, while “finale” refers to the grand final part of something—originally probably specifically of a musical piece, since lots of musical terms come from Italian. Furthermore, “final” is usually an adjective, while “finale” is a noun, and though “final” does have a few uses as a noun, none of them overlap with finale. They’re phonetically pretty different, too: /ˈfaɪ̯nəl/ vs. /fɪˈnæli/. So, I don’t see any reason why they would get mixed up.

This is hardly a unique phenomenon, anyway; words that ultimately have the same etymology but arrived through different etymological routes are fairly common. They’re called doublets.
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alynnidalar
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by alynnidalar »

The last word I've learned in a foreign language is ano, which evidently means "yes" in Slovak. (although upon further [careful] googling, it appears it should actually be áno)

I assure you it does not mean "no" in Spanish, however...
Hominid
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Hominid »

alynnidalar wrote: 14 Feb 2018 17:23 The last word I've learned in a foreign language is ano, which evidently means "yes" in Slovak. (although upon further [careful] googling, it appears it should actually be áno)

I assure you it does not mean "no" in Spanish, however...
Context? Why would anyone think it means no in Spanish?
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by shimobaatar »

Hominid wrote: 15 Feb 2018 22:51
alynnidalar wrote: 14 Feb 2018 17:23 The last word I've learned in a foreign language is ano, which evidently means "yes" in Slovak. (although upon further [careful] googling, it appears it should actually be áno)

I assure you it does not mean "no" in Spanish, however...
Context? Why would anyone think it means no in Spanish?
I assume because it's ano.

It is, however, the Spanish word for anus.
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alynnidalar
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by alynnidalar »

The joke is that a word with a perfectly ordinary meaning in one language has a much less innocuous meaning in another; I find this sort of thing humorous.
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gestaltist
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by gestaltist »

The joke would go better with colloquial Polish where "no" means yes.
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by GrandPiano »

gestaltist wrote: 16 Feb 2018 15:36 The joke would go better with colloquial Polish where "no" means yes.
Except the joke is that “ano” has a much less innocent meaning than just “yes” or “no” in Spanish.
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by GrandPiano »

:chn: 引擎 yǐnqíng “engine” (loanword from English)
Iyionaku
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Iyionaku »

:chn: 高跟鞋 gāogēnxié - high heels
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KaiTheHomoSapien
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

:jpn:u - cormorant

I randomly discovered this monosyllabic bird name today and thought it was pretty interesting :)
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Pāṇini
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Pāṇini »

Mine would be :bra: :por: cegante - blinding. I only learnt this because cegador isn't actually a real word in Portuguese, tragically enough.
天含青海道。城頭月千里。
/tʰiæn ɣɑm tsʰieŋ.hɑ́i dʱɑ́u ‖ ʑʱeŋ dʱəu ᵑgyæɾ tsʰiæn lí/
The sky swallows the road to Kokonor. On the Great Wall, a thousand miles of moonlight.
—/lí ɣɑ̀/ (李賀), tr. A. C. Graham
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Omzinesý
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Omzinesý »

I checked Swedish word "lä", and dictionary gave Finnish word "lee", which must be a Swedish loan. I've never heard it. They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Aevas
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Aevas »

Omzinesý wrote: 19 Oct 2018 16:39 I checked Swedish word "lä", and dictionary gave Finnish word "lee", which must be a Swedish loan. I've never heard it. They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.
Apparently it's lee in English as well! Its core meaning is 'place where there is no wind, shelter from wind'. In Finnish it appears to be used mostly in nautical contexts, from what I can gather.
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by shimobaatar »

Omzinesý wrote: 19 Oct 2018 16:39 They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.
Some kind of "heaven"? What do you mean by that?
Edit: Oh, wait, given what Aszev said, did you mean "haven"?
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Omzinesý
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Omzinesý »

shimobaatar wrote: 20 Oct 2018 02:32
Omzinesý wrote: 19 Oct 2018 16:39 They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.
Some kind of "heaven"? What do you mean by that?
Edit: Oh, wait, given what Aszev said, did you mean "haven"?
Yes, it seems I typed it wrong, which is not uncommon.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by shimobaatar »

Oh, no worries, of course. I was just curious what you meant.

Anyway:

:arab: منطقة minṭaqa "region, area"
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Aevas
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Aevas »

German
die Badewanne 'bathtub'
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Aevas
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by Aevas »

Today I learned the English word belly flop. Is this the general word across varieties or are there synonyms that are more common regionally?
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alynnidalar
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Re: Last word you learned in a foreign language

Post by alynnidalar »

It's the only term I'm familiar with in Michigan, USA, but I can't speak for other regions.

Thesaurus.com suggests "belly buster", "belly flopper", "belly whop", and "belly whopper", but I've never heard any of these and am having a hard time finding any actual usages online--every link seems to just be another dictionary site. If they're regional they must be pretty niche.
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