Common Words

May 16, 2006 10:06 AM

Do you know any words which are common to many languages?

I’m interested in compiling a list of words which are commonly used in a range of different languages – the wider the range the better.

An example would be the Latin word veto, which according to Babel Fish is the same in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch.

The words don’t necessarily have to mean the same thing and may be proper nouns – but in order to keep things simple I would prefer to avoid technical words, such as chemical names.

Any ideas?

posted by booksprite to writing & language (52 comments total)

First thing that came to mind is the word "mom" and variations of same: mater, mother, mommy, ma, etc.
posted by davidmsc at 10:11 AM on May 16, 2006

et cetera
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:12 AM on May 16, 2006

ciao
posted by blue_beetle at 10:14 AM on May 16, 2006

also: Big Mac
posted by blue_beetle at 10:15 AM on May 16, 2006

ok
posted by dydecker at 10:16 AM on May 16, 2006

Me.
posted by Zozo at 10:17 AM on May 16, 2006

Schwarzenegger
posted by box at 10:18 AM on May 16, 2006

taxi
posted by adamrice at 10:18 AM on May 16, 2006

"Tea" is very similar in very many languages. So is "coffee".

"Hello" and "OK" seem to have invaded everywhere.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:21 AM on May 16, 2006

You'll have your best luck in coming up with such words by looking at inventions created in the 19th and 20th century: telephone, transistor, computer, laser, nylon, etc.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:24 AM on May 16, 2006

"No"
posted by NortonDC at 10:27 AM on May 16, 2006

Suri and Maya have come up before...
posted by kittyprecious at 10:28 AM on May 16, 2006

I believe that "internet" is rather widely used.
posted by charmston at 10:31 AM on May 16, 2006

How about most of the -ion words. Revolution, diversion, division, etc. Wasn't there an SNL skit based on this?
posted by JJ86 at 10:33 AM on May 16, 2006

Tobacco. I know it's the same in English, Japanese, and some European languages. Probably more.
posted by driveler at 10:39 AM on May 16, 2006

wine (en), vin (fr), vino (it), vino (sp), wein (de), wijn (ned), viner (sw), vinho (pt), etc.
posted by mikel at 10:46 AM on May 16, 2006

"ok" - shows up in even asian languages.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:59 AM on May 16, 2006

I find this to be sort of an odd question. There are three issues that I think need to be teased apart, because they bear heavily on what it means (to you, booksprite) for languages to share a word. A word that is shared between two languages can be either:

1. a borrowing. That is, the word is coined in one language and borrowed, with minimal change, into others. As Steven C. Den Beste notes, these are trivially easy to find in modern technical terminology.

2. a cognate. Cognates are words that are similar because the languages are related. For example, Spanish, French, and Italian are going to share lots of words because they're all descended from Latin.

3. a coincidence. Like the business about "Suri" meaning "pickpocket" in Japanese. Whatever the real or imagined etymology of the name, it clearly doesn't have anything to do with the Japanese language.

Coincidences are the most fun, because it lets you say things like "My name means penis in language X!!". In cognates, as noted with mother and wine, there is a lot of variability in the spellings and pronunciations because of natural phonological change that happens over time.

When you say you want to avoid technical words, I guess that sort of speaks to modern borrowings, like "internet", "telephone" and so on.
posted by miagaille at 11:00 AM on May 16, 2006

I’m interested in compiling a list of words which are commonly used in a range of different languages – the wider the range the better.
The words don’t necessarily have to mean the same thing...

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question at all. If they don't mean the same thing, they're not the same word. What exactly are you looking for?

1) Words that are the same in form and (approximately) meaning: English and French revolution

2) Words that are vaguely similar in form and (approximately) the same in meaning (these will often be etymologically related): see mikel's 'wine' list above

3) Words that are the same in form but have different meanings: pot is Russian for 'sweat,' for example
posted by languagehat at 11:03 AM on May 16, 2006

On non-preview: what miagaille said.
posted by languagehat at 11:03 AM on May 16, 2006

You have to also remember that the words taxi and telephone sound the same when spoken in russian but look entirely different visually than their english counterparts.
posted by JJ86 at 11:20 AM on May 16, 2006

Apparently, ok is the most universally recognized word, and Coke is 2nd.
posted by kimota at 11:22 AM on May 16, 2006

Thanks for the suggestions and comments so far. Although mikel's "wine" list is interesting, my preference would be for words that are in the same form (cf. miagaille and languagehat 3 > 1 >>2).
posted by booksprite at 11:23 AM on May 16, 2006

Here's a thought: how about onomatopoeic words? They're "coincidentally" similar in some sense, because there is usually no borrowing or common descent, but they derive from sounds that are absolutes, regardless of language.

See, for example, a list of the words for animal sounds in multiple languages
posted by miagaille at 11:36 AM on May 16, 2006

I forgot where but I read it but "milk" is very similar in many languages, I guess.
posted by StarForce5 at 11:45 AM on May 16, 2006

'Que'/'ke'.

'What' in French, Spanish, Nepali, and numerous other Indo-European languages.
posted by plep at 11:50 AM on May 16, 2006

"Stop" is quite common on road signs around the world IME, even if the local word for "stop" isn't "stop". Airport, too.
posted by wackybrit at 11:50 AM on May 16, 2006

Hello.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 12:02 PM on May 16, 2006

Meow.
posted by beth at 12:05 PM on May 16, 2006

The English word "super" is used to mean the same thing in a lot of languages. I don't know that it's necessarily an official word in other languages' dictionaries, but it's used a lot nonetheless.
posted by elquien at 12:10 PM on May 16, 2006

You can find lots of words that are similar across many, many Western languages if you learn a little about reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary and grammar.

As a specific example, the word "apple" is a cognate in tens or hundreds of languages.
posted by killdevil at 12:12 PM on May 16, 2006

Right, beth, but following the link in miagaille's last response, meow is only used in English and Thai!
posted by booksprite at 12:19 PM on May 16, 2006

I've always heard that "taxi", mentioned above, is extremely universal.
posted by zsazsa at 12:38 PM on May 16, 2006

Like zsazsa and those before zsazsa, I have heard that 'taxi' is common to almost all European languages.
posted by PuGZ at 1:29 PM on May 16, 2006

If you want just words that look alike but sound and mean something else, then how about this one: "нор". In english it means a "little jump" but in russian it is pronounced "nor" and means according to babelfish, "the burrows". The cyrillic letters only look like latin letters but are much different.

In this exercise are you looking for phonetic similarities or written similarities? Obviously languages like Russian, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, etc have no written similarities but many phonetic similarities.
posted by JJ86 at 1:48 PM on May 16, 2006

'Café' is fairly standard for coffee.
posted by jimmythefish at 3:00 PM on May 16, 2006

Chocolate, czekolad, шоколад, call it what you will. Various pronunciations and spellings, but none more different from one another than the modern English word is from the original Nahuatl xocolatl. (Apologies if I misspelled that; IANAMesoamericanist.)
posted by eritain at 3:11 PM on May 16, 2006

normal and problem
posted by k8t at 3:41 PM on May 16, 2006

'Book' is another good one. The latin root 'liber' or 'libri' is quite common, as is 'kitab' (arabic).
posted by Alison at 3:43 PM on May 16, 2006

Also, 'pan' for bread. It is from Portuguese and Spanish, but the same word is used in Thai and Japanese
posted by Alison at 3:47 PM on May 16, 2006

sofa.
posted by footnote at 4:50 PM on May 16, 2006

Fuck
posted by TimeFactor at 5:05 PM on May 16, 2006

knyga, meaning "book", is the same in Russian and Lithuanian.
posted by WaterSprite at 5:43 PM on May 16, 2006

Salad / salat / salata etc. Pretty common in western European languages, also Slavic languages and Middle Eastern as well IIRC. I've seen "salad" cognates on menus in Asia, but I don't know whether this is a recent borrowing or harks back to Sanskrit roots.
posted by Quietgal at 6:08 PM on May 16, 2006

television (and close variations) is the same in most languages except German; ditto for football, except in Italian and, of course, the American sub-dialect of English.
posted by TheRaven at 7:47 PM on May 16, 2006

An example would be the Latin word veto, which according to Babel Fish is the same in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch.

Babel Fish, while generally a good resource, is not reliable for this. If it cannot translate a word, it simply returns the spelling it was fed. I can't say whether or not "veto" is spelled v-e-t-o in all the languages you listed, but be aware that the Fish can't tell you for sure, either.
posted by attercoppe at 8:18 PM on May 16, 2006

wii.
posted by speedo at 8:21 PM on May 16, 2006

Pepsi Blue!


(somebody had to)
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 PM on May 16, 2006

Post. Which I read was the reason Bjork chose it for her album title.

Post in Japanese is "posuto" and the "u" is mostly silent.
posted by user92371 at 10:16 PM on May 16, 2006

For those who've said Taxi - in Welsh it's Tacsi

Have I missed Goal?
posted by lloyder at 4:55 AM on May 17, 2006

I've never been anywhere where a shawarma isn't a shawarma.
posted by jimmythefish at 10:40 AM on May 17, 2006

I think Banana and Sugar are very similar sounding in most languages (not to each other, of course)
posted by shokod at 10:15 PM on May 17, 2006