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[-] dojan@lemmy.world 60 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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! 💖

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

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.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farang

[-] dojan@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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!

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[-] manucode@infosec.pub 13 points 3 months ago

Japanese fleama though appears to be a loan word and not a calque like the rest.

[-] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 4 points 3 months ago

Now this guy is paying attention!

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[-] BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev 8 points 3 months ago

Pretty much anything in katakana in Japan is loanwords.

Very interesting about flew markets though, Norway is the same as Sweden here.

[-] cor315@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

thieves market

I've definitely been to a few flea markets where I thought all this stuff was stolen.

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[-] 211@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 months ago

Add Finnish to the list, "kirpputori" = flea market.

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[-] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 months ago

"Hippopotamus" is another one. It derives from the Greek words hippos (horse) and potamos (river) and this concept of river horse is present in many different languages:

  • German: Flusspferd (lit. river horse)
  • Dutch: Rivierpaard (lit. river horse)
  • Finnish: Virtahepo (lit. stream horse)
  • Danish: Flodhest (lit. flood horse)
  • Chinese: 河马 (lit. river horse)
  • Arabic: فرس النهر (lit. river horse)
  • French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese use variations of hippopotamus.

Tiny variations exist as well:

  • Hungarian: Víziló (lit. water horse)
  • Afrikaans: Seekoei (lit. sea cow)
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[-] Theme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 months ago

Unimportant extra: it's not a calque in British English, because we don't use it (to the best of my knowledge). Like a potluck, we have the concept but not a word for it, and we don't use the American phrases either

We have a car boot sale, but that's literal

There's probably regional exceptions

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[-] MewtwoLikesMemes@lemmy.world 47 points 3 months ago

English is not a language.

English is 6 drunk raccoons driving an M1 Abrams through a Wendy's drivethru.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 16 points 3 months ago
[-] squidspinachfootball@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Hey that's the raccoon whisperer but Soldier from TF2. I've never seen that, that's great.

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[-] far_university1990@feddit.de 35 points 3 months ago

𝕯𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝕶𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖐𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖓𝖚𝖓 𝕰𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖒 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝕭𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖗𝖊𝖕𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖐 𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖉

[-] tourist@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

bro typing in calligraphy 💀

[-] far_university1990@feddit.de 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

*Typografer Gotisch

Bearbeitungsnotiz: Falsch, ist nur Fraktur

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[-] Siegfried@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

English is a germanic language. Is loanword an actual calque, and not an "evolved" version of a root word?

[-] sparkle@lemm.ee 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

No, it was imported from German. Frisian and Dutch have "lienwurd" and "leenwoord" too (also calqued from German)

[-] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 3 months ago

English is a Germanic language, with a lot of it's vocabulary imported from a Romance language (French). Hilarity ensues.

[-] bitwaba@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Loanword came into the language around 1860 so it is a claque. If it had been in the vocabulary since old-english then it would just be an evolved version of the German root.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 19 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[-] maynarkh@feddit.nl 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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).

[-] g1ya777@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago
[-] justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 months ago

Where is the cave at?

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[-] readthemessage@lemmy.eco.br 10 points 3 months ago

That's a really interesting case of autological and heterological words

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

Every language has these. Chinese prefers calques to loanwords, but even it has 浪漫 lang4man4 romantic

[-] ConfusedPossum@kbin.social 8 points 3 months ago

No amount of exceptions and quirks will prevent you from learning any language as long as you have lots and lots of exposure. After your reach a certain base level you just keep improving as you use the language, and even the exceptions start to feel natural.

English is the only language other than my mother tongue I have achieved this level with. I'd like to think at least in writing it's indistinguishable from a native speaker. Theoretically tho German should be easier for me as I'm Dutch. But my German never reached the same level because of the difference in exposure

[-] Holzkohlen@feddit.de 4 points 3 months ago

For me personally, German is really easy as I have been born German. Have you tried that as well?

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[-] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 months ago

I live 30km from the French border, I had 10 years worth of French classes at school. I always hated it, but I did an extra-curriculum to acquire a diploma because a classmate and friend of mine didn't want to do it alone. My French is in a weird spot: I cannot form a proper sentence, but I understand listening exercises and written text well. I recently started to go through some French lessons on Duolingo and I'm already struggling with the sentences it expects me to form in unit 8...

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[-] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 6 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] hakase@lemm.ee 13 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 3 points 3 months ago

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!

[-] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 months ago

Go speak Lojban with people numbering "beyond what can be counted on the fingers of one hand".

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[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] lorty@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago

Also has millions of people ready to correct your pronunciation of a word that is written completely randomly compared to how it's spoken.

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[-] feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

There's no perhaps about it.

[-] Dexx1s@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

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.

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this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
1168 points (98.9% liked)

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