Which word from another language do you need in your language?

[Samson]

The house rule of my parents for us as kids was:
"Eat your plate empty or else you may not leave the table"
I had never issues with that, more with the cooking pan (straight on the table) being too fast empty. But my little sissy was always struggling with some of the vegetables. My sissy sitting sometimes until bedtime on the table... my parents had no mercy there... the war hunger winter of '44-'45 was their argument.

My parents were the same. That war imposed hunger is not something that is easily forgotten, even if in the UK it was never like it was in Holland or other areas. These days they say it gives kids eating disorders.

 

[warpus]

What I do not understand about the use of bon appeti, buon appetito, etc is why would you wish that people get a better appetite for the food ???
I find it much more natural to wish other people at the table to enjoy the food !

I don't speak French, but I bet those who are native French speakers don't think of "bon appetit" like that, the same way English speakers don't think about religion when they say "God damn it"

In Polish the word for this (smacznego) means something like "enjoy your meal".. more like "I hope your meal is tasty" or something like that. It's just one word, with no English equivalent, so it's not easy to translate literally. It actually seems quite similar to Dutch. Quoting again:

In Dutch the normal expression is "eet smakelijk" or "smakelijk eten" meaning "eat tasty" or "tasty eating" (the subjunctive).

 

[red_elk]

My parents were the same. That war imposed hunger is not something that is easily forgotten, even if in the UK it was never like it was in Holland or other areas. These days they say it gives kids eating disorders.

We were taught that survivors of Leningrad blockade don't throw away breadcrumbs.
I still don't buy more bread than I can eat. It feels like I'm doing a crime if it gets spoiled and I have to throw it away.

 

[r16]

Mandarin has four words for aunt: father's sister (gugu), mother's sister (yíma), father's brother's wife (shenshen), and mother's brother's wife (jiùma). I find the fact that there aren't goto terms in English to distinguish between an aunt (or uncle) by marriage or by blood relation to be annoying.

Apparently Turkish does something similar, although I don't know the words right now.
That's indeed more useful than simply uncle and aunt.

hala, teyze , yenge , possibly yenge again . Learned people as a kid with names and definitions together , never spent much effort to learn the rules ... Probably differs due to being immigrants and whatnot as well .

 

[warpus]

In English we have mother-in-law. Is there an aunt-in-law?

In Polish we also only have 1 word for aunt (ciocia). This word is also often used for close family friends who are not related by blood. Same with uncle (wujek).. and in some cases also with grandmother (babcia). So any random Polish child likely has a bunch of aunts (ciocias) who might or might not be related to them.

In order to distinguish between different aunts (father's side, mother's side, etc.) we call them "ciocia {insert first name}, etc. In the case of my sister's kids, they call polish relatives by their polish callsigns (i.e. Wujek warpus) and non-Polish relatives by their Canadian callsign (i.e. aunt Marcy). Makes it easier to distinguish between the 2 grandmothers as well, since they will call the Polish grandmother "babcia" and their Canadian grandmother "grandma". My mom's (their grandmother's) mom is also known (to them) as "the other babcia"

 

[red_elk]

In Polish we also only have 1 word for aunt (ciocia). This word is also often used for close family friends who are not related by blood.

Similar to Russian "тётя" (tyotia). Also used for relatives and family friends, but in our case little kids can call "тётя" any adult woman who is not babushka.
Including complete strangers.

 

[red_elk]

Few people mentioned "siblings", in Russian we don't have this word too, as well as "grandparents".
Also, there is no word "toddler", but we have special words for male/female teenagers and young adults (approx. 15-25 years old)
Another one is "thirsty". We can say "I'm hungry" and "I want to drink", but there is no equivalent for thirsty.

 

[warpus]

That's interesting. In Polish we have a word for "thirsty" (spragniony), but.. and I haven't lived in Poland for a while now, so I could be out of the loop.. it's a lot more common to say "I need something to drink". I have not heard anyone use this word (spragniony) in this context. It almost sounds like it's a pompous way of saying that, if that makes sense. It could just be that my family doesn't use this word, or the region of Poland where I grew up.. or whatever. I have heard of this word before, but mainly in the context of some pop singer singing about how she's horny or longing for love.

Apparently we have words for grandparents and toddler, but these are words I have NEVER seen before in my life. They look like they come from some archaic version of Polish that is no longer used.

"Siblings" we apparently have too (rodzeństwo) , but the word for that is a word I assumed meant something else. It almost literally translates to: "People you are related to". I've heard this word used before though, so it seems more common that our words for grandparents and toddler.

I could really be out of the loop here, like I said. I left Poland after grade 3, and while I use Polish all the time my vocabulary is lacking compared to somebody who has lived there their whole life.

I do find it interesting that the words that don't exist in Russian seem to not really be used in Polish much either.

 

[red_elk]

it's a lot more common to say "I need something to drink". I have not heard anyone use this word (spragniony) in this context. It almost sounds like it's a pompous way of saying that, if that makes sense.

I think I understand what you are talking about. In Russian there is a word "жаждать" (to crave), which can be used in that context.
It can be seen in old books, sometimes may be in songs or poems, but in real life nobody uses it.

 

[warpus]

I think I understand what you are talking about. In Russian there is a word "жаждать" (to crave), which can be used in that context.
It can be seen in old books, sometimes may be in songs or poems, but in real life nobody uses it.

Yeah! "To crave" also makes sense as a translation for that word. I think usually it has romantic or sexual connotations, but I could be wrong. I am going to have to call my Mom to get her insights on all of this lol. I'm actually heading over there for dinner tomorrow, so I'll come back with fresh intel

 

[The_J]

While we're at "hungry" and "thirsty", for which we do have version in German, we have a German word for "not hungry", "satt", which isn't well reflected in "full", and "sated" somehow feels... also not right. (although being a quite obvious translation, I've not heard of it before looking it up right now)
We don't have a word for "not thirsty" though ("sitt" was made up for this, but it's not used by anyone).

 

[Hrothbern]

While we're at "hungry" and "thirsty", for which we do have version in German, we have a German word for "not hungry", "satt", which isn't well reflected in "full", and "sated" somehow feels... also not right. (although being a quite obvious translation, I've not heard of it before looking it up right now)
We don't have a word for "not thirsty" though ("sitt" was made up for this, but it's not used by anyone).

We have in Dutch "zat".
The German s is often in Dutch a z. Like Zon and Sonne etc (Sun in English).
We used "zat" for being full with food from eating, but that changed more and more to: "ik ben het zat" meaning I am fed up with something.
The other usual expresion is with ladderzat, meaning fully drunk.

 

[Birdjaguar]

So we need more words? More language precision? I say "No"! Ambiguity is part of the reason English can be so fun and interesting. In science one does want precision but in literature and poetry, not so much.

Dictionaries are never complete so their word counts are always low. Covid and cofefe are two new words and I'm sure the urban dictionary has many more. "Exit the plane" has been replaced with "deplane". Not an improvement. Globalization is adding lots of new words to every language. When do we get to count vamonos as an English word? Isn't "schlep" a word in every language now? My spell checker didn't underline it.

Here is how the number of words in the Oxford Dictionary—171,476 in current use—compares to the number of words in those five other languages. The figures here are taken from the Lingholic website, which base their numbers on the largest dictionary for each language. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. But, the number of words in the Oxford and Webster Dictionaries are not the same as the number of words in English.

• Spanish has about 100,000 words in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española.
• German has about 135,000 words in the Der Duden dictionary.
• 200,000 Russian words exist in the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian.
• Italian has 270,000 in the Grande dizionario Italiano dell’uso.
• French has 100,000 words but 350,000 definitions in the Le Grand Robert de la langue Française.

It’s impossible to determine how many words there are in the English language from the dictionary alone. First, it takes a while for dictionary publishers like Oxford University and Merriam-Webster to include new words in their dictionaries. Slang and jargon also exist. There are different slang terms. Some exist depending on where you live, and others are common in many places. One example of a common slang term is “frenemy,” a portmanteau of “friend” and “enemy.”

Jargon, words used by people in a specific profession, also add to the volume of words used in the English language. For example, medical doctors will use their profession's own terms when discussing patients. Computer programmers and IT specialists use computer jargon in their everyday work.

But, how many words does the average person know? Robert Charles Lee, a published writer, answers this question on Quora. He writes that “3,000 words will cover 95% of everyday writing — common texts and speech like newspapers, blogs, most books, movies, etc.” Out of those 3000 words, only “the first 1,000 words are used in 89% of everyday writing.” R.L.G at The Economist states that based on test results at TestYourVocab.com, “most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words.”

 

[Lexicus]

"Exit the plane" has been replaced with "deplane". Not an improvement

1000% an improvement, but I'm not sure what you mean - "deplane" has been in use since the early 20th century (eyeballing the graph, since the 1920s or 30s) if Google is any indication.

 

[Birdjaguar]

1000% an improvement, but I'm not sure what you mean - "deplane" has been in use since the early 20th century (eyeballing the graph, since the 1920s or 30s) if Google is any indication.

Thanks. But if the word had an old history dating back to the 30s, it disappeared from use in the 50s through the 80s until its reappearance.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I can remember reading military histories of the first world war with terminology such
as entrain and detrain (regarding trains) which I assume paralleled embark and disembark
(regarding ships); and I suspect that the military also used enplane and deplane as well.

 

[H4run]

hala, teyze , yenge , possibly yenge again . Learned people as a kid with names and definitions together , never spent much effort to learn the rules ... Probably differs due to being immigrants and whatnot as well .

Amca (uncle father's side) and Dayi (uncle mother's side).

another battery for r16:

 

[Birdjaguar]

I can remember reading military histories of the first world war with terminology such
as entrain and detrain (regarding trains) which I assume paralleled embark and disembark
(regarding ships); and I suspect that the military also used enplane and deplane as well.

Trains and boats were in regular use for military and civilian passengers during WW1. Air travel for passengers didn't happen until the late 20s and 30s and didn't really become common (even for the rich) until after WW2.

 

[Lexicus]

Thanks. But if the word had an old history dating back to the 30s, it disappeared from use in the 50s through the 80s until its reappearance.

Maybe. I always sort of thought of it as mainly a British-ism but I can find no evidence of that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Maybe. I always sort of thought of it as mainly a British-ism but I can find no evidence of that.

My first recollection of hearing "deplane" was this in 1977:


Link to video.