How and where did u learn it too?
What is a word that you learned before starting to learn languages but are only now discovering that it is a word in your TL?
DiscussionI believe several of those came to English from Italian, but are cognates in Spanish. For example, maestro, villa, vista. Same for "arena," which is from Latin. Arena and villa carme from ancient Rome, and maestro and vista were from the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Fun fact! Santa Fe, NM’s full name is actually La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís (the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi).
For Japanese there were a couple. There are loads of Japanese loanwords in English but they're kinda obvious. These two I did not know until I started learning Japanese
Tycoon comes from 大君 (taikun) which at a glance was an honorific for the shogun of Japan
Honcho (as in head honcho) comes from 班長 (hanchou) which means group leader
edit: forgot about this one, Rickshaw is from 人力車 (jinrikisha) lit. human-powered vehicle
There are loads of Japanese loanwords in English
Wait, there are?
English is like the British Museum, its all borrowed stuff.
Well if you compare them to idk french latin or even greek it's not much. It was probably better to say "more than you'd think".
Eh, many of those are used in their literal definition, which I know can be said for many loanwords, but, most importantly, they're not common enough to call them "English words", IMO, I've literally never heard at least half of those words.
They don't need to be common to be considered English words, they just need to be used frequently enough in the circles they are relevant in. Sure, bokeh you'll only hear in photography circles, isekai when discussing anime, kanban in manufacturing and so on. Even if it's jargon it's still English. And if you're in those circles you're almost certainly going to come across those words and know what they mean.
Tsunami
That was one that surprised me. I'd never thought to wonder where that word came from. Made total sense once I realized though.
Until I started learning Japanese I always thought honcho came from Spanish
Yep and karaoke (empty orchestra) and sake (alcohol/rice wine). Both of which us Australians pronounce hideously. Manga is another people use without knowing it's meaning (humourous picture)
A lot of Spanish words that I thought were Arabic, like Salsa (sauce)
Many modern Chinese words are imported from Japanese, and some of those words themselves were transliterated from English words.
For example:
俱乐部 is from the Japanese word 倶楽部 [クラブ], which is the English word "club"
混凝土 [コンクリート] is also from Japanese and was originally transliterated from the English word "concrete"
Wow this is actually so cool. For 俱乐部 (jùlèbù) you can already guess that it is a loan word for club. But for 混凝土 (hùnníngtǔ) it feels pretty unrelated. I wonder how many other words are there like this.
scheiße
What does it mean?
It means “shit” in german, tbh i’m kinda surprised you haven’t heard it, it’s quite a popular word within my British family
I was quite surprised (sometimes embarrased) about how widely understood that is in Britain.
A funny example is Che Guevara's nickname. Che is a common word used in Argentinian Spanish, which is the variety of Spanish I'm currently learning. It means something like "hey!" or "oi!" and is used when you want to get someone's attention. Che Guevara received this nickname because he was an Argentinian who used that word so often that it eventually became his nickname.
I'm a Filipino and my TL is Spanish, so... a lot.
Chuche. My mom always said chuche (in Spanish) instead of candy.
Simba and Hakuna Matata both are Swahili
Jamba is always a funny one, given Jamba juice was a big part of my childhood
Simba means lion and Mufasa means father. I was so disappointed to learn they were given such uncreative names.
My TL is Italian, so A LOT of words were used by me and everyone I know before I started learning the language. The funniest one for me is “capisci” [capish’] with barely audible [i]. It means “[do] you understand?” But we use it in [my native] Russian in the same form, but it’s from our own verb «копить» (save up, put aside). And it means basically the same, “are you saving up/memorizing what I’m saying?” It was a revelation to me that it actually came from Italian “capire” 🤪
I was shocked that I had never realised before that the word "mayın" in Turkish comes from English "mine" as in "underground explosive". It used to sound so Turkish to me.
There are also a lot of loanwords from French, among which some sound obviously French such as "robdöşambr" (robe de chambre), "abajur" (abat-jour), "ordövr" (hors-d'œuvre) and there are others which sound Turkish, but still a loanword from French such as "ten" (teint), "levye" (levier), "desen" (dessin) etc.
Wow I never knew ten came from teint I always thought it was a turkish word.
A lot of words. Many words in Turkish are shared with hindu/urdu because of farsi and Arabic despite the grammar being nothing alike.
Catharsis is a pretty obvious one. καθαρίσω (cathariso) means 'to clean' in Greek. Obviously, in English, catharsis means something like 'having a cleaner soul after having experienced something'.
I thought the guy's name was Zorro and it was just an odd name. No idea it actually meant Fox
“Texas” is a spanish word and the X should be pronounced like “Mexico” (te-has)
I’m a native Russian speaker and most of the country/regions names came to us closer to the original pronunciation, not the westernized versions. So we call it using H (kh actually). I’m glad that it’s closer to the correct pronunciation.
Actually more harsh. It's the word "tejas" (centuries ago, the 'j' was written with an 'x', like the original title of Don Quijote was Don Quixote, etc). And tejas means roof tiles.
Actually, neither Mexico nor Texas come from Spanish words. Both are based on native names. The "x" in both was originally pronounced like "sh" in English. At the time, x and j represented two different sounds in Spanish. They later merged and changed.
Mexica is another name for the Aztec people.
That makes sense 😊
Jungle, shampoo, typhoon, pajamas, cheetah. All derived or directly loaned from Hindi/Urdu. There's others but these are less obvious than most of the rest, at least to me.
Uuh, that's a good one!
I had lots of these! I couldn't even come up with a list.
The most surprising is that such words popped up even in languages like Estonian.
Well, if you're an English speaker studying French, about half of them, give or take modest spelling changes.
The class dynamics of Norman England are pretty obvious when you compare words like cow vs beef, pig vs bacon, etc. The animals are referred to by Germanic words while the food you get from them is in French.
Barbeque. It's a taino word that made its way into Haitian Creole.
Pička
English native- my TL is Dutch (and German on the side because I'm a masochist). Quite a few but they've been said wrong my whole life.
I'm blanking out which is embarrassing but the only word coming to mind is "Gouda" and we only use that in my country upon referring to cheese. German there's loads more I suppose.
A lot Spanish words used in English speaking countries (Plaza, vista, maestro, aficionado, arena, macho, villa, persona...). And obviously many of the southern US states (Colorado (red), Texas (tejas, roof tiles), Los Ángeles (the angels), Santa Fe (Holy Faith), and all of the San ____)