When you learn a new language, you acquire its vocabulary. The etymology of the vocabulary is often irrelevant and can sometimes be beneficial. For example, when I started learning Spanish, I discovered that most French words ending in -al and -tion (a language I already know) are the same in Spanish. This means that I have instantly acquired hundreds of new words in my target language.
That’s a really interesting case of autological and heterological words
Lots of !badlinguistics in this thread (but some goodlinguistics too though!).
English is actually quite easy. Yes, there is a lot of vocabulary, but almost no conjugations or declinations make it easy compared to some others. My native has 19 different cases with 2-3 variants each for tonal coherence, and 2 modes of full verb conjugation (with additional exceptions of course).
What i found very difficult in english is the fact that there’s no rule on how to pronounce words; you have to learn how to pronounce each word individually. which means that you might know how a word is written and what it means while not being able to recognize it when listening to someone speaking in english.
But come on 12 different grammatical tenses.
What I think is interesting about the word flea market is that it’s a calque in pretty much all languages.
The Swedish word is “loppis”, which is a cutesy colloquial term for “loppmarknad.” Loppa, meaning flea, and marknad meaning market.
Flohmarkt in German also means lit. “flea market.”
Marche aux puces is French, where “puce” means flea, I think this might be the origin of the term.
Japanese has the casual term フリマ (fleama), short for フリーマーケット, which is just the English term “flea market”, there’s also the term 蚤の市, just meaning “market of fleas.”I believe Portuguese calls it a “thieves’ market”, but Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Dutch, and Mandarin all use their own native words for “flea market”; mercado de pulgas, mercato delle pulci, Блошиный рынок, Bit Pazarı, Vlooienmarkt, 跳蚤市场.
For all of the concepts and such that are identical across cultures, few things have universal names. Typically they enter the language as loanwords as well (e.g. karaoke, from Japanese ‘空オケ’, hollow orchestra), so the term “flea market” stands out to me. I’m sure there are lots of other similar things I’m not aware of though.
Edit: It’s worth mentioning that other than Swedish (native), English, and Japanese, I don’t speak any of the other languages. I’ve asked a Russian-American friend about the Russian term, and a friend in Taiwan about the Mandarin term. Otherwise I’ve checked dictionaries and the like. Don’t take my word as fact, I’m not a linguist. It was just a pattern I found interesting, because the term itself is so particular. Any and all corrections are more than welcome.
I’m also delighted by the discussion this has sparked! 💖
That reminds me of the word ‘Frank,’ which was used by the Byzantines to essentially mean ‘all those non-Roman barbarians to the west of us’ and which, after the Crusades, spread as a word across Asia meaning ‘Europeans.’
Thank you for sharing! I had not heard of this before. I particularly enjoyed this bit
Farang khi nok (Thai: ฝรั่งขี้นก, lit. ‘bird-droppings Farang’), also used in Lao, is slang commonly used as an insult to a person of white race, equivalent to white trash, as khi means feces and nok means bird, referring to the white color of bird-droppings
That’s so colourful. I love it.
It also made me think of the fictional race in Star Trek, the Ferengi. At least according to Wikipedia that is precisely the origin of their name!
Frankly frankly reminds me of those folks from the north of Gaul
Pretty much anything in katakana in Japan is loanwords.
Very interesting about flew markets though, Norway is the same as Sweden here.
Japanese fleama though appears to be a loan word and not a calque like the rest.
Now this guy is paying attention!
Wouldn’t it be both? Assuming 蚤の市 and フリーマーケット have the same meaning.
I assume that 蚤の市 is a loan word and フリーマーケット a calque. But I don’t speak any Japanese.
蚤の市
Yep! nomi no ichi. Nomi (蚤) means flea, and ichi (市) means market, no (の) is a possessive particle making it “flea’s market” or “market of flea”
Vlooienmarkt in Dutch, also literally flea market.Edit: Nvm, I’m blind, I see you already mentioned it.
Add Finnish to the list, “kirpputori” = flea market.
Is tori ever used like plaza, like the Swedish word “torg?” The way I read tori in my head makes it sound almost homophonous with torg, hence why I ask.
thieves market
I’ve definitely been to a few flea markets where I thought all this stuff was stolen.
Urgh, I resent the english language so much. It’s so inconsistent and weird and unintuitive, which my dumb-dumb rules-focused brain just does not gel with. We should all just use Esperanto or something instead.
You must resent every single natural human language then, since all of them show the exact same kinds of irregularities, for the most part.
And, if we all did decide to use Esperanto because it’s regular (and therefore artificial), irregularities would inevitably be introduced within a single generation, because the nature of human language is to change, and that change will always result in irregularity.
You know what, YEAH, I DO
FUCK language, when’s true 1-to-1 perfect transmission of information and meaning coming out? Get on it, linguists/wizards!
Go speak Lojban with people numbering “beyond what can be counted on the fingers of one hand”.
Minor nitpick, you have causality inverted. Esperanto is artificial and therefore regular.
Also has millions of people ready to correct your pronunciation of a word that is written completely randomly compared to how it’s spoken.
You’re correct, but try to see it as permission to speak English your own way rather than getting frustrated attempting to speak “correct” English, a fiction which has never existed despite the efforts of generations of stuffy English teachers. There’s been “English as spoken by the privileged class” but it’s no more correct than any other version and breaks as many of its own rules as any other patois or dialect.
𝕯𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝕶𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖐𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖓𝖚𝖓 𝕰𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖒 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝕭𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖗𝖊𝖕𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖐 𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖉
Your language is weird and fucked up in its own ways, but something like 1.5 billion people know English and most of them as a second language.
Basically every language is weird and fucked up in its own ways.
I’m a native Arabic speaker, and I have to tell you this: the number system is pretty confusing, everything is gendered, and there’s like 100 different words just to describe lions. Also, Arabic poetry always rhymes.
Und?
He’s just racist, ignore him.
My man, it’s a meme. For some reason you can easily summon a horde of Germans whenever there’s a reference to the German language or Germany. I don’t know what causes this internet phenomenon, maybe our lacking national pride, but it is what it is. And that he’s writing in German is part of a different Reddit meme.
But he has point, our language is weird and fucked up.
Und ich musste Google Translate verwenden, um Ihnen das auf Deutsch zu sagen, aber Sie müssen es wahrscheinlich nicht tun, um auf Englisch zu antworten.
If mean original comment should be english: no, text in german part of the meme.
I answer in german because that also part of the meme, comment section part of germany mean national language now german.
So what?
So that’s why it’s more confusing that English is weird but also very widely spoken?
bro typing in calligraphy 💀
*Typografer Gotisch
Bearbeitungsnotiz: Falsch, ist nur Fraktur
This is one of those things where formally, sure, there’s a difference, but I’ve never heard anyone use that first term. Everything’s a loanword. And these kinds of things are in many, if not all, languages, from my attempts at learning other languages.
Well yes, but you could say that about basically every science, not just linguistics. I can think of at least three such cases in German and more specifically German law.
English is made by English speakers, and English speakers like to do a bit of trolling. Especially when it comes to speaking, reading and writing English.
this reminds of that one conversation i had with a user trying to one up me on the semantic stupidity of the english language.
Like it’s great that you’re multi-lingual, please never try to argue something for the english language, even if you only speak english. It makes you look stupid.
English is not a language.
English is 6 drunk raccoons driving an M1 Abrams through a Wendy’s drivethru.
There’s no perhaps about it.
English is a germanic language. Is loanword an actual calque, and not an “evolved” version of a root word?
No, it was imported from German. Frisian and Dutch have “lienwurd” and “leenwoord” too (also calqued from German)
