How languages steal words from each other
This is the only pirate reference you're getting from me. •
Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. Gretchen's podcast has an episode all about this: lingthusiasm.com/post/6847274... •
More Language Files: • Tom's Language Files
Gretchen's book BECAUSE INTERNET, all about the evolution of internet language, is available:
🇺🇸 US: amzn.to/30tLpjT
🇨🇦 CA: amzn.to/2JsTYWH
🇬🇧 UK: amzn.to/31K8eRD
(Those are affiliate links that give a commission to me or Gretchen, depending on country!)
Graphics by William Marler: wmad.co.uk
Audio mix by Graham Haerther and Manuel Simon at Standard Studios: haerther.net
REFERENCES:
[etymologies from OED and M-W]
Sanchez, T. (2005). Constraints on structural borrowing in a multilingual contact situation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. ScholarlyCommons.
repository.upenn.edu/cgi/view...
John Hewson. 1993. A computer-generated dictionary of proto-Algonquian. Gatineau - Quebec : National Museums of Canada. protoalgonquian.atlas-ling.ca/
🟥 MORE FROM TOM: www.tomscott.com/
(you can find contact details and social links there too)
📰 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER with good stuff from the rest of the internet: www.tomscott.com/newsletter/
❓ LATERAL, free weekly podcast: lateralcast.com/ / lateralcast
➕ TOM SCOTT PLUS: / tomscottplus
👥 THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: / techdif
The final run of the Language Files! It's been years. Three videos, with my usual co-authors Molly and Gretchen, and animator Will; one every few weeks. It's been a while! Have a look in the description for a link to the full playlist.
It's awesome to finally see Romanian in one of these!
Why final, these are very informative and entertaining!
Tom you've been around the world and visited some very intriguing or unique or just particularly interesting things, you've even given some good information about coding and computers. But I've loved your language files videos the most!
Finel 😢?
At 0:23 , I think the language you were going for with Tamil for mango was "Malayalam" and not Malay. I cannot be sure of this but you might want to fact check. Malay seems to have the same word for mango, but that might be due to trading with historic Tamil empires. Malayalam on the other hand is the most closely related language to Tamil and they both are spoken in neighbouring areas. Just a tiny little nitpick I will miss these videos btw ❤
I missed these old style language videos
Not me 😢
@@SauloBenigno Why not? They're so entertaining, so fun to watch.
same. I love languages
me too :)
@@SauloBenignoOf course they missed you too!
Fun fact... In Vietnamese, the word "club," as in a football club, is abbreviated as "CLB." But this abbreviation didn't come directly from the English word "club" as one would assume. It came from the Vietnamese term for "club", which is "Câu Lạc Bộ." This "Câu Lạc Bộ" is borrowed from the Chinese "俱樂部." This "俱樂部" is borrowed from the Japanese "クラブ." This "クラブ" is the one that came from the English word "club"... A long-convoluted road but ended up at the SAME THING: CLB!
Is this because Chinese and Japanese translate English words into syllables when writing, and then the syllables got translated into words?
@@Jacob-yg7lz I can only answer the second part of this question but yes sort of? In Japanese we use a lot of loanwords and approximate them as best as we can in katakana (the writing system used mainly for loanwords) which is exactly what happened with "クラブ", pronounced 'ku ra bu". Similarly we have computer("コンピューター", "conpyuutaa") or "schedule" ("スケジュール", "sukejyuuru" ). With 'club', we also attached kanji (Chinese characters) to it presumably because it was loaned a while ago (older loanwords have a tendency to have Chinese characters but newer ones usually use katakana) that approximate both the sound of the word AND the meaning. "俱樂部" is "俱" (to line up, group), "樂" (enjoyment, easy)m and "部" (section, bureau, part of) - which more or less comes together to mean the same thing as "club"!
@@rikishimada2258 wow cool
And it can make a good joke/roast too: Without U, a club is still a CLB
@@rikishimada2258 Could "クラブ" also be used to transliterate "crab"?
Calque and Loanword each being an example of the other is so perfect for puns it almost seems calculated.
calque-ulated
@@ChillaxeMake do you mind loaning me that pun?
@@AnimeSunglasses sure, here you go *loans the pun*
See also: parkway and driveway.
Don't be a calque-maniac!
"I'm sorry to the rest of the world. There's a British sentence..." got me 😂
Same here :D
"it's not your fault"
What's so great with Tom Scott videos is that you could watch a video from 6 years ago and think it was posted an hour ago, and vice-versa. Every video is timeless, and it's awesome
Well, he always wears the same clothes, like a cartoon character. Continuity! cOnTinUiTy!1!1!!
...except the Arecibo one.
@@Matt..S Well we usually only see the red shirt from the torso up, for all we know he's going full winnie the pooh under there. Donald ducking it, if you will
Admittedly, this video had more old-school Tom vibes than his usual stuff when he's travelling.
he really just filmed this 8 years ago and decided now was a good time to post it.
"Loanword is a calque and calque is a loanword" That might just be the most Tom Scott sentence that ever Tom Scotted!
In Italian, we don't use Calque, but we use the Italian equivalent, Calco. Is it still a calque, or it counts as a loanword?
@@NIDELLANEUMI think that 'calco' would probably also be a loanword
@@NIDELLANEUM It's a calque. It's the translation of the French term with the Italian equivalent. Though it might simply have come about independently from the same source, that is, the fact that a calque is a way to copy a statue. So both languages could've converged on using it as a metaphor for linguistics as well (from a more general metaphoric use of just meaning "to copy"). Or that specific use could've been coined in one language, and speakers of the other language copied the idea (funnily enough). It's possible (but don't quote me on that) that in fact, the word itself comes from the same root as chalk, the material, which was a popular way to... do calques.
@@antonioscendrategattico2302 it could also just be a cognate
Tom is Mr. Scott, and Mr. Scott is Tom 😁
Acorn is pronounced almost identically as the dutch word "eekhoorn" (squirrel). I always imagine that this must have been a misunderstanding where someone was pointing at the animal, but the other person thought they meant the nut.
ekorre/ekorren in Swedish. Indeed a possibility!
Apparently the Old English word for squirrel was, in fact, a cognate of your respective other-Germanic-language words y'all have referenced. Squirrel was borrowed from French, from Latin, from Greek. It would not shock me if people named the animal after what it eats.
After some continued research, I've been able to glean that none of these words for squirrel are related to the word ACORN, and it is merely folk etymology and assimilation caused by said folk etymology that creates the similarity. "Acorn" is ultimately derived from the proto-indo-european word *agro, for "open, unused land". The sense evolution in this case, went from "forest (wild, unoccupied land)", to "nuts of the trees in the forest" to "most-important-to-humans nut of the forest trees (oak nuts/acorns)". The confusion happened because the oak IS relevant, but only in the sense evolution, not in the actual origin of the word, but people thought it did, so they remodeled the spelling of the word to make it more like what they thought the origin was (*ac corn* which would be "oak grain/fruit/crop that comes from whatever modifier we've put before it"). The words for squirrel, on the other hand, DO come from the proto-germanic word for "oak" , *aiks. (Apparently this word for oak only exists in Germanic, and there are no cognates in any other branch of Indo-European. The PIE word for "oak" is the origin for Germanic words for "tree" in general)
And the second element would be from PIE *wer, probably the "to cover" meaning or the *to guard" meaning, essentially making the proto-germanic *aikwerno mean "thing that lives in oak trees"
Well, in Low German it's Katteker.. Katt - cat // eker - from the old germanic word "aig" - fast.. So, in Low German they are technically called: Fast cats.. xD The old german word "aig" (fast) became "Eich" in High German or in dutch's case "Eek". Because.. well, our Eichhörnchen/Eichhorn became your eekhoorn. The Proto-Germanic word for squirrel was ikwernan or aikwur btw.. The second one somehow became ekorre in swedish, as @Grievous_Nix already said.
I love the fact that the word "Kaiser", which is a german loanword from latin is actually closer to the original pronounciation than "Caesar" is, even in german ("Cäsar").
I have this horrible internal monologue when I get pizza at Little Caesars, knowing that's the incorrect pronunciation 😂
And then - arguably disputed, but most likely - the word had Carthaginian Origin and means "elephant". So, the Kaiser, both the Roman, the "Holy Roman", the German, the Austrian and the Russian Tsar were Elephants. Still massive.....
@@tldr7730Really!? Did you either read watch this somewhere? I'd like to know so I could watch it myself, but if you can't remember then that's fine.
Closer than the English pronunciation of Caesar
My favorite example of a loan word is "Canada" which originated from the Huron-Iroquois word "kanata" which just means "village". This means the settlers probably asked what they called this land (meaning everything that wasnt Europe) and the natives assumed they were talking about a specific village that they were currently at.
Also to add on to this, Canada also has a town near Ottawa that is literally called "Kanata" which has the same root!
I like to imagine, following this formula, aliens will one day meet with some random civilian and be informed that the planet we live on is called Ohio
@@coryman125Floridians 💀
As a Canadian, I knew this already.
@@nin2494 Then they'd assume the planet is called "F*** off".
One of my favourite instances of rebracketing relates to the word 'helicopter', split helico-pter from the Greek 'helix' for spiral and 'pteron' for wing (which is where the pterodactyl comes from). A helicopter is literally a spiral wing, because that's how it flies. However, in new words it gets split heli-copter, which is where you get words like 'helipad' and 'roflcopter'.
Languages apply their own phonotactics to decide where the word boundaries are. "Pter" is not possible as a syllable in English (not unless the P is silent, like in pterodactyl), so it would be strange if the word had not been rebracketed.
@@renerpho but pter is pronounced exactly like the start of pterodactyl!
"roflcopter" 💀
@@kaitlyn__L You mean like in /ˌtɛɹəˈdæktɪl/?
@@renerpho gosh I haven’t tried to properly read IPA in a few years. But yep
As a language nerd, especially a fan of loanwords, this video had me smiling the ENTIRE WAY THROUGH.
Same! I've had so many discussions with people who just don't understand what loanwords are and why using a word in one language can have a different meaning or usage than the original language it's from. This video is so refreshing and nice to send to people now!
In French, _casse-tête_ means "puzzle", but its literal meaning is something like _head-breaker._ Portuguese borrowed this word, but took the literal meaning instead: _cassetete_ in Portuguese means "nightstick", that is, something that could literally break your head 🤕
any relation to cassette in english which means... uh... cassette?
In Spanish it's a rompecabezas, which means head-breaker as well
That is not quite true. Casse-tete is also a stick you beat people with in French. So that's quite literally just a loanword
That’s what we call a brass knuckle in Russian - кастет. Meanwhile for puzzle, we use a calque головоломка, which literally translates as “head-breaker”!
@@a.d.t.mapping8792 I don't think so; that does come from french though. looks like the '-tte' ending means small, so it's a 'small case'
My favourite English loanword is tungsten. It is comprised of the Swedish words ‘tung’ meaning ‘heavy’ and ‘sten’ which means ‘rock’. This makes perfect sense as tungsten is a very heavy element. In Swedish, we call it ‘wolfram’.
It's "Wolfram" in German, too.
So Wolfram Alpha could be rewritten as Tungsten A?
I think it's wolfram in Polish too but I am not 100% sure
In turn, "wolfram" is derived from the English words "wolf," meaning a furry predator, and "ram," meaning-wait, this was supposed to be a bit, but I just looked it up and apparently the "wolf" in "wolfram" _does_ actually mean "wolf". (The "ram" means "soot" instead of "male sheep," though.)
Isn’t the periodic symbol W, for wolfram?
I always liked the Finnish word for skyscraper, pilvenpiirtäjä. It literally means cloud drawer. Like a big pencil drawing clouds.
Meanwhile German has Hochhaus which is literally just highhouse and probably a good contender for stupidest word for that.
@@cameron7374Hmm we still have Wolkenkratzer (cloud scratcher) which I kinda like
@@cameron7374I mean, English also has highrise, which is also kind of weird if you think about it.
As a large language model I'm really happy Tom makes these kinds of videos.
😂
As a not so large language model, I agree.
I am neither large nor a model, but I too am really happy that Tom makes this sort of video.
Isn't plus-size language model more PC?
@@krashd💀💀💀
The word “checkmate” was originally in iran pronouced as “shah mat” which means “the shah is dead” which got changed over the centuries into checkmate Edit : turns out shah is the word from persian and mat is a word in arabic which means died
kind of made sense since king is the "strongest" in chess (right??)
@@PrograError no, it's because checkmate is the word for when the king can't make any moves and will, inevitably, "die"
@Mate_Anal_Zoltan yes 👍
Actually it translates to "The shah is helpless", since each game of chess already ends once the capture of the king in the next move would be inevitable rather than with the actual capture of the king itself.
It actually translates more directly to "the king/shah is amazed"
That twist at the end was a showstopper, what an ending. Never saw it coming.
I knew he was gonna do it as soon as he started grinning
A well calquelated set up and payoff.
I knew it was coming as soon as he said "calque" because I speak French
I saw the fact on Facebook and as soon as I immediately saw the video I immediately knew it was going to be on it 😂😂😂
@@krallja Yep, that's one of those things that you can't help but share.
"Skyscraper" in Vietnamese is "Nhà chọc trời", "Nhà" means a house, "chọc" means poking and "trời" means sky. So literally a house that poke the sky. Also, a common Vietnamese expression is "trời ơi!", which means "oh sky!", but they usually got translated to "oh my god" or "oh dear"
Or like “oh heavens”!
that’s because it’s a sino-vietnamese expression that comes from 天啊 and can mean either the literal sky or the heavenly realm or even the people who live there (gods) themselves
One funny thing about the noun meaning the whole thing is when picking languages "Bahasa Indonesia" Literal translation is "Indonesia Language". Always hear people saying they can speak the "bahasa" language. Its like saying you can speak the "language language"
That reminds me, "Inuit" just means "people" in Inuktitut.
"Bahasa" refers to Malay, right? not Indonesian specifically?
And Bahasa is a derived (loan-word?) from Sanskrit word भाषा, meaning language. 🙂
@@WilliamAndrea Usually used to refer to Bahasa Indonesia, and since it is too long it is shorten to 'bahasa'. It's sister language on the other hand is usually just referred as 'Malay'. The same also is that 'Orang Utan' is often just shortened to 'Orang', but that means man/people while 'utan' come from 'hutan' which means forest.
@@bambanglactually, ‘bahasa’ is commonly used to refer to malay as well. source: i studied at an international school in malaysia and was constantly told by white people that they ‘spoke a little bahasa’ 😒
Wieheister is used in western parts of Poalnd to describe weird systems and machines you don't know the purpose of. This is what Germans called things they did not knew when they invaded. A simple question "Wie heißt er" ("What is it called") has been baked into the language as the locals have mostly not understood German
So Wieheister is any machine for which you don't know what it does ?
@@TheAnonymmynonawihajster is any kind of contraption, doohickey, thingamabob, whatever.
Like English "wossname", except more material?
French "vasistas", a type of window above a door or another window, comes from German "was ist das?" ("what is that?"), for the same reason.
@@vaclav_fejt Don't know about that, but it seems so
My girlfriend is from India and it's quite interesting to hear people speaking Kannada or Tamil and just dropping in English phrases randomly throughout the sentence. Not even just single words, and it's not from what I understand technically English, it's just literally adopted and understood.
wait till you heard Singlish/ Manglish... we lump rando malay, hokkien, teochew into one giant word salad, and, vocal intonations like "lah", "lor", etc. some say it's the language of the "devil" (well not really, it's just dissuaded from use)
The Philippines does the same thing! I watched a tv show in Filipine once, and it's suuper weird for someone who speaks English and Spanish already. They use a lot of Spanish words and drop in English sentences wholesale inbetween the local words.
I saw some algerian films, and same thing happens with french, text almost fully in arabic with a lot of french sprinkled here and there
This is known as a heterogeneous language. ''Heterogeneous means something with more than one kind. In this case, the language that we use in texts with heterogeneous language combines two languages. From my experience, these are the texts that include the local language and the English language. For example, some combinations are Filipino and English, Korean and English, Japanese and English, and many more.''
@@Theaisa a lot (especially conyo celebrities) even speak in Filipino to English every other sentences.
I love how giddy Tom gets when the video reaches its nerd climax. It’s like they built a whole video around that one super nerdy moment. 😁
I had the same reaction watching it, though. He draws out the punchline just long enough that I could figure it out moments before he said it (and feel immensely clever because of it)
My favourite language story "Lizard" is from the Latin "Lacertes". It entered the Spanish language as "Lagarto" When the Spanish came to the New World, they saw really big lizards When the English asked what these lizards were called, the Spanish responded "El Lagarto" ALLIGATOR
My favorite is the old french expression "Conter fleurette" which would literally translate to something close to "talking about flowers", meaning trying to seduce using sweet words. This gave the english word "flirt", which would then come back to french as an anglicism, under the the form of "flirter".
I'm not sure this is true, it seems the origin is uncertain and seems to have relatives in other Germanic languages. However, it is entirely possible that French influenced the meaning of the word in the direction it currently is.
my personal favourite is the word loanword. As Tom mentioned in the video it comes from the german Lehnwort. Today however, a lot of people here in germany will use the english word instead of the german one
The English word "challenge" comes from French, who would pronounce it \ʃa.lɑ̃ʒ\. The word was borrowed back into French with the English pronunciation \tʃa.lɛndʒ\ becoming the most common one, to the point that nowadays if you speak French and don't say this word the English way, you'll be mocked.
i like how translating the french from "pinecone" makes it "pineapple"
Speaking of flirting, Frenchnd loanwords : An accurate French translation for the English "a rendez-vous" could be... "un date" (pronounced the English way). English uses (sometimes) a French word while French uses the English word.
Two more examples of nouns that actually mean the whole category: The hula dance = The dance dance A sombrero = (Simply) a hat
I had one of those Spanish "picture dictionaries" as a kid, and I was a little confused at the clothing page; they had a knitted winter hat listed as "sombrero" and I thought "no it's not".
I feel like it also happens a lot of with food Salsa: Spanish for sauce Gelato: Italian for ice cream
@@LimeGreenTeknii Carne Asada Steak - Meat Grilled Meat
@@LimeGreenTeknii _Pizza_ is not the Italian word for "pie." It's the Italian word for "pizza." The Italian word for "pie" is _torta_ or _pasticcio._ Italians often don't understand why anyone would consider a pizza to be a pie, because in Italian, there is no resemblance between _pizze_ and _torte._
Kinda? Sombrero means shadowy, not hat
I've never been particularly interested in English as a subject but these types of video from Tom never fail to scratch a very particular itch in my brain. They're just so interesting. It's like syntax for real life, but with history baked into it.
This is why I love Tom Scott to death. It'll be sad when he takes his break next year *BUT* he deserves it!
Interestingly, "anime" is used in Japan to mean animated film and TV media in general, regardless of country of origin or even 2D versus 3D. What we define as "anime" in English, a Japanese person would say "nihon anime" - literally "Japanese anime." It's the same with "sake," which in Japanese refers to all alcoholic beverages collectively, but in English refers specifically to what Japanese people call "Nihonshu," quite literally "Japanese sake" ("sake" changes to "shu" but is written with the same character)
Sombrero is Spanish for hat. Any hat. In English it's a big Mexican hat.
English likes to do that. There’s a rant in Across the Spiderverse about naan bread and chai tea being redundant, but outside of India (who also speak English of course) they mean the Indian styles of them.
Sort of the same case with manga. English speakers differentiate "manga" and "comics" even though Japan likes to use the word "comics" to refer to its manga
Sake is alcohol, but osake (honored alcohol) is the drink called sake in English. I think it's like pickle. By itself, it means cucumber pickles even though most food can be pickled. Same with Kimchi, actually. Kimchi is fernented vegetables, but there is a default, which is fermented Chinese cabbage with spicy sauce.
and hentai, even though it's a Japanese word, isn't the term for erotic anime in Japan.
The Japanese word for buffet is "baikingu", which means viking. Viking-style dinner is called that because of the association of Sweden with vikings, since the buffet came to Japan via a chef who travelled to Sweden after World War II and came into contact with the serving style "smörgåsbord" (literally "sandwich table"). Smörgåsbord is also used in a metaphorical sense to mean a wide range of choices, and was loaned into English in that sense in the form of the word "smorgasbord". Of course, "baikingu" must itself be a loanword, probably from the English word "viking" which in turn is a loanword from the Old Norse word for someone who frequents or belongs to a bay (vik). The suffik -vik is present in a lot of places where Norse people settled, including Iceland (Reykjavik, or "bay of smoke"). The Old English word "wic" is a cognate to "vik", but usually means village or settlement, and only sometimes means bay. York used to be called Jórvík despite not being close to a bay, for example, so that's based on the Old English use of the word.
So Norwich would be from Old English for North Village?
That's interesting! In Czech, the (slightly old-fashioned) term for buffet is "švédský stůl", which literally means swedish table.
@@kralevic3297 “Swedish table” in Russian as well!
Amazing
Oh so that's why my country has a prominent buffet-style restaurant named "Vikings" despite the cuisine not specifically Scandinavian.
One of my preferred is budget. It came from the old French word "bougette", the pouch containing money that was tied to the belt and swing when walking. The word bougette then migrated to the English language, shift its shape a bit and became "budget". The evolution of the word followed the evolution of the concept. Then the word and its new upgraded meaning migrated back in French as "budget". Words are alive!
And the word bourse (various spellings in various languages) which means the stock exchange, originally meant purse.
Since this is the final Language Files vid (😢) I have to thank you for introducing me to Gretchen McCulloch's work. I read her book and have listened to some of her podcast, and I've loved it!
Something quite interesting: The Danish translation of "skyscraper" is … just "skyskraber". You can probably see the similarity. BUT … the Danish word "sky" doesn’t have the same meaning as English "sky". Instead, it translates to "cloud". So a literal translation of Danish "skyskraber" is actually "cloud-scraper". 😊
Dropping the „sky“ with the German translation, „Wolkenkratzer“ also would literally translate back to cloud scraper
Interestingly, it is Wolkenkratzer (cloud-scraper) in German, so I wonder what happened there.
Romanian as well, Cloud scraper
Hungarian as well, "felhőkarcoló" means Cloudscraper
That's neat! Thank you for that tidbit!
Boulevard is, in Dutch, a double loanword. It's used in Dutch now, but it also came from Dutch. The Dutch bolwerk (or Bolwerc) was loaned to the french, became boulevard, then was loaned back to us with a completely different meaning!
So... What does bolwerk mean?
@@unutilisateur4729 the English bulwark is my best guess, which is a defensive structure/fortification
@@cloudkittthat's exactly what it means
The word "mannequin" is also a double loanword from Dutch via French. The word was originally "manneken", a diminutive for "man" in southern (mostly Belgian) dialects of Dutch, meaning something like "little guy". Apparently people used this word to describe the dolls you put clothes on (like "put another little guy in the shop window"), which was borrowed into French as "mannequin", and then reborrowed into Dutch with the new meaning and a new French-like pronunciation. In French, "mannequin" is also used for fashion models, because they fulfill the same purpose of showing what clothes look like when you wear them before you buy them. It's a little funny that they use a term that originally meant "little man", when most people who work as "mannequins" are women.
@@raizin4908 manneken was also a Dutch word in certain dialects, and might still be, afaik it's definitely still in use in Flanders.
I'm about four days away from starting my Linguistics degree and this feels so nostalgic. Tom is a good part of the reason I ever thought to study languages to begin with. Thank you!
The skyscraper was in Danish called "skyskraber", which actually means cloudscraper. So the meaning literally changed, but the similarity made the word stay.
Another interesting one is "katsu" from Japanese for meats fried in breadcrumbs, which comes from the full Japanese word "katsuretu" which itself is just "cutlet" altered to suit Japanese pronunciation. Interesting how words can get shuffled between two languages.
Russian has borrowed "screenshot" from English, but the word is decently long. Shortening it to "screen" in English isn't really an option since screen is already a word, but people can (and do) do that in Russian since it's missing
Japan really knows how to localize to the point that nobody would guess things came from somewhere else easily.
Japanese borrowed the German "Arbeit", meaning work in general, but also occupation. The japanese "arubeito" specifically refers to an odd job, or a side hussle. German then went on to borrow "job" from English, to mean - you guessed it - odd job.
@@gerdforster883 Same for Korean: 아르바이트 (or 알바) comes form Arbeit but the German translation would be Job/jobben.
Randoseru from Dutch Ransel, or Konbini from English Convenience Store.
it's really amazing how Tom uses the same video format as 10 years ago and it still feels fresh
it reminds me of a higher quality math antica
As an Australian, I have a deep appreciation for this kind of word association. Heck, loanwords are the reason "kangaroo" is a universally used noun for said animal.
Only YOU, Tom Scott, can make such an amazing finale like that
Animation becoming Anime is a funny one, not because of the word itself but because people in english countries only ever hear it when referring to Japanese/Asian animated films, so they get confused since in Japanese it applies to every form of animation, since it's effectively just an abbreviated loanword. (To clarify a little, Anime is still a word, but the English meaning differs from the Japanese one)
Well, it's only sort of confused. Anime (in the sense of 'Japanese style cartoons in particular) is in many ways a distinct genre from western cartoons... which is actually even more amusing given that many of the distinct traits were, in turn, fairly directly copied from what was normal in Disney's animation at the time. Though many years have passed since then and the traditions have diverged significantly. Still, that's only the art style, the story telling traditions are Very different.
They didn't get confused, there's just no reason to reborrow the word unless you're using it to describe something specific (in this case Japanese animation). Otherwise you'd just use animation. Though anime also probably comes from French, not English, but that's a whole separate discussion.
I find it funny when weebs get upset saying “that’s not anime, it’s not from Japan!” because they obviously have no idea what the word actually means despite them loving the genre so much.
@@rachelcookie321 It's literally true, though? If it's not from Japan, it's not specifically "anime".
@@joshs7160 Only in the west. Anime means, for any japanese person, animated cartoon. Any kind of. It's the abbreviation of "Animeshon".
I think by far the weirdest single step one is "fighting" which has been borrowed into both Korean and Japanese as a cheer or encouragement along the lines of "good luck" / "go team" / "you can do it". Both populations appear to have picked up the word from American soldiers and misunderstood it in the same way.
According to Wiktionary, fighting was also transferred from Korean to Chinese to mean "go for it (to put maximum effort into achieving something)"
Oh damn, is that why the Japanese video game Fighting Baseball is called that? I thought it was a little odd, but the characters in that game have such wonderfully weird names as Mike Truk, Bobson Dugnutt and Sleeve McDichael, so I just kind of let it slide.
And then you have Chinese speakers using a phrase that literally refers to putting fuel in your car
@@hughcaldwell1034 damn they really nailed America-sounding gibberish names
@@ejynk I know, right?
With lots of loanwords in New Zealand English from te reo Māori, I find it fascinating when grammar rules also come with, like pluralising. Māori typically changes the article, not the noun, to mark plurals, so "te tūī" is "the tui" while ngā tūī" is "the tuis". Except it's commonly "the tui" in English, in deference to the fact that the noun isn't changed when pluralised. So while both languages would normally mark the plural in some way, the loan phrase as a whole does not.
"loanword is a calque, and calque is a loanword." I screamed in joy, that's the best fun fact I've ever heard.
My favorite loanwords in English are the nouns that come from Old Norse. Because Old English and Old Norse are both Germanic, they shared a lot of similar words. However, words starting with sc-/sk- in English eventually morphed into sh- words. Meanwhile Norse held onto the sk- for those same words. English would then later adopt the Norse variation of the word with similar but slightly different meaning (e.g. shirt and skirt). So in a way some of English's loanwords are just words we 'forgot' and then borrowed again later.
Then you have bag, which was originally Old Norse baggi and then imported back to Norwegian as bag after baggi had fallen out of use centuries ago.
Tom's Language Files are genuinely the best series on youtube. I hope to see more linguistics edutainment out there, as there already is with science.
One hundred percent, I could not agree with you more. I always hope that my watching an excellent video like this will join more via the algorithm. I remain hopeful.
I quite like "Rob Words" for that. :-)
I recommend Dr. Geoff Lindsey, who has a focus on phonetics
I find that languagejones hits the spot in much the same way
You're probably already familiar with the Lingthusiasm podcast (since Gretchen McCullough cowrites these videos and she's, like, the number one celebrity linguist for extremely online people), but it's worth reiterating that it's worth a listen.
So great to have stuff written by you, Molly, and Gretchen! Their podcast is one of the only ones I've ever really enjoyed. They do such a great job, shoutouts to Lingthusiasm!
Incidentally, Gretchen McCulloch's book 'Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language' is one of the most brilliantly insightful and easily relatable books on linguistics I've ever read! 👍
I think my favorite example of the grammatical ending bits getting brought into English is that the word bus is entirely derived from a Latin noun ending, since omnis (the noun) got dropped when omnibus what’s shortened to bus
In Portuguese we still call it onibus.
Latin has all sorts of loan words/phrases. Etcetera is probably one of my favorites. AM and PM are classics. Quid pro quo, the names Amanda and Carmen...
What does the man on the Clapham Omnibus have to say about that?
"automobile" is another example. Called "Auto" in German and "bil" in Swedish ;)
@@daniduc And in the other, more european portuguese we use a completely different word, we call them "autocarros" instead, fun stuff, idk how both got their respective versions
In reference to the thumbnail, I’d like to mention a loanword that turned a “pirate” into “a barbecue”. The Japanese word for buffet is “viking”, apparently due to a Japanese restaurant owner who visited Sweden and loved the concept of a smorgasbord, but found it difficult to pronounce it in Japanese. An employee suggested “viking” and it stuck.
sumorugasuborudo
In Croatian it's called swedish table.
@@equilakos1601 same in Polish
"Smorgasbord" is a word best pronounced with a smorgasbord of food in one's mouth.
so that's why the brand's called that...
This is so good. I learned almost everything in the video at university but the examples were so engaging I couldn't stop watching!
Tea and Chai are the same chinese word but pronounced differently due to dialectic differences. Which word a culture ends up with depends on how the chinese Tea got to them via trade. Look up etymology of tea in wikipedia for full story.
Tea by sea, chai by land.
"Im sorry to the rest of the world... that was a British sentence." LMAO Never have truer words been said
Except, the British have never formally and publically apologized for anything.
More of a Canadian sentence, really.
*Never have truer words needed to be said* lmao
@@One_In_Training Why should we apologise for all the good things we gave the world ?
@@hb1338 Obiously you should be apologizing for the bad things, not the good things.
I do love the classic example of there being so many rivers in the UK called the Avon because when the Romans came over they asked what the river was called, and the Celtic work for river was just Avon.
"What is this?" "That's... that's a river."
It's back! Language Files!! Thank you Tom... I always appreciated these. I hope you enjoy making them as much as we do watching them.
Thank you so much for bringing this series back Tom!!! One of my favorite series on KZhead, and it actually inspired me to go into linguistics
An example of keeping the original language’s grammar is the word galore which came from Irish go leor, it’s the only English adjective to come after the noun just like in Irish.
Well, actually came from Irish's sister-language, Scottish Gaelic "gu leor" (plenty, enough) via Compton MacKenzie's novel "Whisky Galore". But, since Scottish Gaelic comes from Irish, fair enough. Another pointless quibble: we see adjectives follow the noun in phrases derived from French, e.g. Court Martial, Chapel Royal, Situations Vacant, and in heraldic terms e.g. bend sinister, lion rampant etc. Sorry, I'll stop now😁
It's hardly the only postpositive adjective in English. There are several, for example 'incarnate' or 'extraordinaire'.
@@londongael414 oh does it come from Scottish? It could do, I might’ve been wrong but they’re similar enough I feel Nah I looked it up and the etymology says nothing about SG
@@KDBA alright I see your point 😬 my bad
@@cygnusmir1627 Indeed, similar enough. Dictionaries often overlook SG, in my experience.
In Sweden having a drink after work is called "After work", in English. Pubs have signs advertising their "After work" prices. It was adapted from "After ski". The funny thing is, "After work" is not a generally used phrase in the actual English language (where it is instead usually called "happy hour") but is used in Sweden by Swedes speaking Swedish.
Reminds me of the German for mobile phone: 'handy' (also Korean: handphone or more likely handpone)
Japanese say "My pace-マイペース to mean someone who does something at their own speed, more laidback
Afterwork is also used a lot in French to describe this activity, though I'm not sure where we borrowed it from - maybe Swedish
And After ski is itself rarely used in English. The original French word is what is mostly used by English speakers! Après-ski.
That’s similar to how outtakes can be called “making of” in French
I love this series so so so much. I'll be sad to see it go, but totally get your reasons for not continuing it. Thank you so much for the last few additions!
Can’t believe Tom traveled all the way to the Milky Way just to get one shot for this video! Such a dedicated creator
we are all inside the milky way ...
I know that you have said how much work these are, and it shows. I find them really fascinating, thank you to everyone who worked on this.
I'm close friends with one of the writers, Molly Ruhl; I know this script was a lot of work for them, and I also know that it means a lot to them that people enjoy this video. So, on their behalf, thanks for the thanks! (They also want the world to know that they had a really fun bit about Sindarin etymology and Mount Doom being a calque in the initial script that unfortunately had to be cut.)
I've been studying Japanese for 3 years now and it always surprised me how many loanwords there are in that language. Then I learned more about Japan's history and realized it was a closed country for a very, very long time. It's so interesting seeing how a language evolved into what it is due to complete isolation, then had to quickly catch up to the rest of the world once it opened it's borders (forcefully by the US). So now instead of their own words for things like coffee, bread, television, and such, they have mainly English loan words. Although the word for bread in Japanese is パン (pan) which was derived from the Portuguese word. You can almost trace when a word came into Japan based on what language it was borrowed from. X-Ray in Japanese is レントゲン (Rentogen) which comes from the German word for X-Ray.
Roentgen was the guy who discovered X-Rays.
And humorously, their word for the UK ("igirisu") actually came from portuguese too ("inglês")
It's called "rentgen" in many languages
@@ExeloMinish I seem to recall that the English word for Japan was derived from the Portugese word for it too. (actually, English has a surprisingly large number of words for things from random places in the world that came by way of portugese... you can usually identify them by way of being some of the most mangled borrowings, due (to my understanding) to the English not caring overly much about how well they represented the Portugese pronunciation, while the Portugese in turn didn't care all that much about how well the represented the native language of wherever the word came from)
@@KonyadJapanese phonemes (syllables) require an ending vowel sound. A lot of words change to meet that standard when incorporated into Japanese.
Such a timeless series that feels so nostalgic. Glad to see a return to the Language Files!
My favorite loanword example is the Appalachian mountains. When the Spanish arrived they asked the locals in Florida what was north of them to put on the map. They said "Appalachee" as the people to the north (southern Georgia/Alabama) were the Appalachee people. When somebody else found the mountains, they thought they were already named "Appalachee" due to the old map, and as such labeled them as the Appalachian mountains 🤣
Speaking of American mountains, as a Frenchman I find it absolutely hilarious someone simply named the Teton, meaning "nipple", because obviously that's what a mountain looks like, and that didn't bother anybody.
@@falinestixiaolong9691 you'd be surprised how often geographical formations are named after bodyparts, especially the rude ones
Sad to see this is the final run of Language Files. Still, it was a great 10 years! All that has a beginning, must have an end.
I'm confused, where does he say this is the final run?
Love this! As someone who has a degree in French and also speaks a little Italian I kind of knew most of this but it's nice to have it described in a concise and enjoyable video. I will be all over that podcast too!
Learning French, every other word is like, "hey this is familiar" and every fourth word is like "I already know this"
These videos are the real gems!
Language files is back baby🎉🎉🎉🎉
don’t bite me please
My favourite are the yellow scented candles.
don't go blowjov on me
@@mftmss7086 boy you know whats coming for you😏😏😏
Tom's smile when he describes the fun journey to get "anime" is great
The root of the word as far as I can see is in the latin 'animus' meaning spirit or soul.
@@jannikheidemann3805 Technically it''s derived from "anima" (which means spirit or soul, "animus" means mind or heart) but from what I can tell the 2 words are used as like a yin/yang thing in Latin, so they are very much connected and to each other to the point they can probably be treated as the same root word From WIkipedia: The word "animation" stems from the Latin "animātiōn", stem of "animātiō", meaning "a bestowing of life".[2] The earlier meaning of the English word is "liveliness" and has been in use much longer than the meaning of "moving image medium"
@@jannikheidemann3805 The root word of animation is indeed "animus," but Japan didn't borrow it for that. They specifically borrowed the word animation in description of the art form. They just shortened it that way because it makes sense to do so in their phoenetics
My favorite series of yours as an aspiring linguist, thank you sir
Thank you Tom for the Language FIles over the years. Series like this really helped get me into linguistics!
Tom (or someone on his team) definitely noticed that funny little "calque/loanword" coincidence and worked back from there to get it in a video. Ended up as excellent as always, though!
It's one of my favourite trivia. I was pleased when I realised that that was where he was heading.
I always feel so fulfilled and satisfied after these kinds of videos, and I can’t explain why.
Hmmhmm, maybe because the world suddenly DOES make sense, no?
Always love to see more Language Files. These are some of your most interesting videos.
Great to see these types of videos, always appreciate the work that must go into them.
Language files! These are what got me into linguistics and now im a polyglot writing a book on it. Thank you tom, molly and Gretchen. for all of it.
This is one of the interesting things about learning Japanese, as many of their loanwords are highlighted by the use of katakana. So, as a native English speaker, I am often learning how to say words I already know, but in Japanese with different pronunciations and emphasis. Sometimes I can't even recognize the original English word since it is so different, which I'm sure is a common experience for many languages.
Great video as always. I love these little videos that have enough information to tech provoke thought while being reasonably short so as to avoid losing people's attention. I'm always impressed by the amount of work that has been put into such a short video.
Thank you Tom for this amazing series 😊
I feel like this entire video was just a setup because Tom REALLY wanted to make that last joke and have everyone understand why he was giggling.
There is a river in South London called The River Ravensbourne. "Bourne" is cognate with "burn" meaning river or stream. The "aven" is from "avon" meaning river. The "r" is an elided "the". So when we say "The River Ravensbourne" we are saying "The river the river river". Such is the historical conglomeration we call English.
Love, love, love this video. Excellent work Tom!
I love this style of videos as well!
So refreshing to see this series come back to life again 😌
Only to die again- this is expected to be the three final Language Files.
Tom, I'm going to miss these the most, I think. I've always been fascenated by etymology! Love and appreciate all the reaearch you and your team and associates have done for us! Thank you!
I recently learned that inch and ounce are a doublet, both stemming from the Latin “uncia” - or one twelfth. Thanks for all the other examples!
Amazing to see the language files back!
Sweden started importing Digestive biscuits back when most Swedes were unfamiliar with English, so even though most of us know how to pronounce the word "digestive" these days, the biscuits/cookies are still pronounced as "diggy-Steve".
Haha også i Danmark 😂😂
Czech word for skyscraper is "mrakodrap", "mrako" refering to the word "mrak", whitch is "cloud" in czech, and "drap" refering to "dráp"(tallon, claw), or rather to "drápat (se)", meaning "to claw, to scrape at"
It's almost the same for the German equivalent "Wolkenkratzer". As in "Wolke" = cloud and "Kratzer" = Scraper or someone who scrapes.
Same in Portuguese: arranha-céu Arranha : scrapes Céu : sky
In Arabic its “ناطحات سحاب" (Natihat Sahab), “Sahab” means clouds and “Natihat” is to ram or hit something with your head.
In Finnish: pilvenpiirtäjä pilvi = cloud (genetive, aka possessive -> pilven) piirtäjä = a drawer, a person who draws (from the word "piirtää" meaning "to draw")
I'm gonna start calling them "Cloudclawers" now and see if I can get that to take off.
These language videos are always interesting to watch. I never want them to end.
Thank you Scott! You are a true gem
This feels like a several year old video, glad language files has one more episode.
These language file videos are just incredible, super descriptive, insanely interesting, and the quality is purely timeless. You can never tell if it was posted 10 years ago, or 3 hours ago like this one because of how good and consistent the quality is.
Yes, he keeps those incredible consistent... aside from him ageing I would guess. 😄
@@soundscape26 Even then, "Why Jonathan Ross can't roll his Rs" is 10 years old and Tom looks exactly the same lmaoo
Really love these videos and your enthusiasm for it. I regularly binge-watch the playlist.
consistently one of the most fascinating and entertaining channels on the site. thank you tom :)
SO glad to see Language Files back! I've missed this!
Strictly, "ward" is the Germanic form. Gu- was a compromise solution in Old French, the closest they could get to a w (which, over time, became pronounced as if it were simply g). Ward is thus most likely native to English, while guard is the French borrowing the Germanic word, only for the Germanic languages to borrow it right back.
A bit also interesting “ward” would devoice at the end producing something like “wart” in German, which is like to “warten” (to wait), though the word for a guard in German is “Wache”. Though the Dutch version of “warten” is “wachten” which looks a lot like German “Wache”. Tying it all together the Dutch word for guard? “wacht”. Turns out they’re all related: waiting, watching, guarding, and even waking! :)
I am fluent in four languages, and I was always amazed by the similarity of many words in those different languages but never knew why there are so many similarities. Your video has changed that. Thanks :)
my favorite example of this is the word "potato" i had fun asking more than 30 locals what it was in their language and it is very interesting to see that some countries had a big impact of nearby ones in their language
I immediately assumed for a few seconds this was an old episode I didn't manage to watch. So glad this series is back. Even if for a short while. These classic quick language vids are so cool. 🥳