"OK is frequently used as a loanword in other languages. It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK
And I suppose there were computers in the 1960s, but I doubt it had anything to do with it. ISTR the "explanation" (conjecture) was US culture, GIs all over the place, and WWII. But I also remember reading that it came from west Africa, though that is not contradictory with the spread-by-US-ubiquity theory.
Weird thing is that it’s only about 200 years old and seemingly American in origin. I would have guessed that a Sanskrit word like khanda aka “candy” or something like “chai“ would have spread faster and longer ago.
Turkey also borrowed the "qahwa" (meaning coffee) from Arabic but since there's no "w" in Turkish, it became "kaveh".
Later the word "coffee" spread to European through Turkey to Dutch, then English and the rest of the world now use the word coffee [1]. The strange thing is that now even in Arab world like Saudi, most of the young people use the word "coffee" rather than original "qahwa". This is one of the rare situations where the original loaner now become the borrower. The only saving grace is that the best coffee type is still Arabica.
It's also very interesting to note that the popular and universal English word "cafe" as in cafeteria also derived from the Arabic word "qahwa", perhaps from the summary of the word for coffee house [2].
[1] From Qahwa to Coffee:
https://arabiconline.eu/arabic-coffee-qahwa/
[2] Coffee and qahwa: How a drink for Arab mystics went global:
"ok" is taken verbatim from english and has not undergone any "modifications" to adopt it to a local language (though, I guess, that is not 100% true? in polish we sometimes spell it "okej", but I would argue that "ok" and "okej" have slightly different connotations.)
Whereas "chocolate" is "localized" into many other languages, "Schokolade" in german, "czekolada" in polish, etc.), and is not the _exact same word_.
Like in an argument I’d type „okej, but you understand why that makes me feel bad”, whereas I _think_ I’d still use „ok” in English in that case?
It’s really weird to explore the subtleties of your own language use to that degree, gotta say :P
There is, for example, a divide between “Excuse me” and “Sorry” in English vs. “Bitte” and “Entshuldigung” in German. Cantonese Chinese has two different versions of “thank you”, one that is heartfelt and one that is for an expected service, and using the wrong one is a major faux pas.
I wonder if that may play in with other languages too. I think I'd be inclined to type out "okay" if I wanted a better shot at conveying that same thing in English in writing, perhaps with some ellipses. Eg. "Okay... But .." rather than "OK... But" or "OK, but". Maybe just because the short, abrupt "OK" feels more like it must mean certainty. This may very well be entirely personal, though, and I have no idea if others would notice the distinction.
That's a bit harsh. We borrow words (or loan them). We certainly don't steal them - you are welcome to take them back at any time.
My favourite borrow word conundrum is "biftek". That is a loan word from French by quite a few languages (not English) - bifteck. Now, bifteck is derived from "beef steak" (English)
English is a bit odd due to having several different words for an animal and its flesh via the Norse invasion in 1066. Here we have a cow and beef for the flesh. Cow is a Saxon word and beef is a French word. We also have sheep (Saxon) and mutton (French) and a few others (eg chicken and pullet, pig and pork).
So we have biftek -> bifteck -> beef steak. However beef is a French word (boeuf).
I gather that during a siege of Paris by British troops back in the day, the Parisians noticed that the rostbifs, roasted their beef over barbies. The locals usually boiled their beef, which was a heinous crime. My mother in law also managed to remove all flavour from beef, despite using a sanctioned method of cooking.
Thankfully the Parisians noted that frying or roasting beef was the best way to do the job and also invented "medium", "rare" and "blue". The Brits basically charcoaled their beef.
Despite being British, I like my steak blue.
Is it that odd? I've never seen vache on a menu in France. Keema in Hindi (and probably other indic languages) is non-descript mince, it wouldn't be beef in India of course, typically lamb or goat. Carne in many romance languages but in particular Spanish chili con carne just means 'meat'. I assume Spaniards have a different word for cows (or whatever they like in their chili), as well as probably an equivalent for beef.
Is that a common way of describing the Norman invasion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_activity_in_the_British...
I very deliberately used the word Norse instead of Norman. 150 years is sod all time for "cultural" change, 1000 odd years ago. Nowadays we have all this jingoistic, nationalistic bollocks going on. The articles on HN reflect this:
"British scientists discover their own arses", "Russian scientists forget humanitarianism", "Chinese scientologists discover Pi three million years ago"
Norman is a modern word and so is norse here, and both are English terms and both mean northman - ie bloke (or bird - let's not be sexist) from the "north"
Bear in mind that travelling by boat is far easier than land, when the Fosse Way hasn't been built, let alone the A38 or M5.
If you want to get to grips with the olden times, you have to lose silly modern notions of well ... everything.
Harold Godwinson was a saxon. He's talking about Harald Hadrada, a viking who invaded the North of England just before William The Bastard invaded from the South.
How odd is this? I noticed something odd in Mandarin:
cow: niu 牛
beef: niu rou 牛肉
sheep: yang 羊
mutton: yang rou 羊肉
pig: zhu 猪
pork: rou 肉 [it's possible to specify 猪肉, but not necessary]
deer: lu 鹿
venison: lu rou 鹿肉
And some where the distinction doesn't exist in English:
chicken (animal): ji 鸡
chicken (food): ji rou 鸡肉 [English pullet refers to the animal, not the meat]
goat (animal): yang 羊
goat (food): yang rou 羊肉
But there's also this one:
jellyfish (animal): shuimu 水母
jellyfish (food): haizhe 海蜇
Yes, I'm aware of that. (It isn't restricted to meat; it will also, much like the English word "flesh", refer to the flesh of fruit.)
> Under no circumstance is the character by itself ever directly denotes pork.
But this is just false. The character by itself directly denotes pork. It's not an unusual use.
The constructions with 肉 are not being given as examples of using a different word for the animal and the food. They all use the same word.
The example was the one at the end of the list, 水母 vs 海蜇.
Exactly: you can't "steal" a word, because when Language B borrows a word from Language A, Language A still has that word.
It's just like copying digital data: if I download a copy of Movie A, the studio hasn't lost a copy of it, so it's not "stolen".
It's not _that_ unusual to have different words for the meat and the animal. The slightly odd thing about English is that the word for the animal comes from Germanic roots and the word for the meat comes from the French root.
Weirdly enough, Japanese sort of has the same situation: the word for "cow": 牛 (pronounced "ushi") and the word for "beef": 牛肉 (pronounced "gyuuniku") being a loan word from Chinese.
In catalan still is -xocolata- close nough