I know that between Chinese & Japanese, there’s vocabulary where the placement of each character differs but retains the same or related definition for the most part, like how 士兵 becomes 兵士 in Japanese, you get the drift. Technically something equivalent exists in Latin based languages such as Red Cross (EN) & Cruz Roja (ES).
| 日本語 | 中文 | ENG |
|---|---|---|
| 詐欺 | 欺詐 | Fraud |
| 苦痛 | 痛苦 | Pain |
| 脅威 | 威脅 | Threat |
| 講演 | 演講 | Lecture |
| 制限 | 限制 | Restriction |
Weirdly, french has a loanword for walkie-talkie and it’s talkie-walkie.
Ugh, this one drives me nuts, and I absolutely refuse to say ‘talkie-walkie.’ It’s even more funny because I’ve seen several boxes for 2-way radios in France that had the correct order of words in the description… The French are just so bad at English that it doesn’t matter.
The truth* is that the French are excellent at English, but they find it beneath them to speak it.
Therefore, I suspect that “talkie-walkie” is a deliberate attempt to annoy the English. A trap you have fallen straight into (even if you’re not English).
* for some interpretation of that word
N’importe quoi… the French (outside of Paris and the major touristy bits) are not excellent at English.
Source: I live in France, and my mother tongue is English. I had no choice but to learn French very quickly in order to communicate. The idea that they are merely too proud to speak English is an old wives tale, their education system is just very outdated and la francophonie is large enough that they never need English in order to go about their daily lives, which is not the case for many smaller European countries.
However, I will admit that attempts to poke fun at the English (specifically the UK, or as they like to call them, “les rosbifs,”) are heartily appreciated.
All things considered, “rosbif” is almost endearing as an insult. I’m kind of surprised that it’s still the default.
Agreed. It’s meant to be an insult making fun of the basic nature of British cuisine, but I for one sometimes find the French classics overly rich and complicated. Who doesn’t enjoy a hearty roast, especially on a cold winter evening.
Well, in English, UTC is an acronym for Coordinated Universal Time, and in French its Temps Universel Coordonné.
Now you may have noticed that neither of those actually makes UTC. This comes from a previous naming pattern for universal time (UT1, UT2, …) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time ).
A super simple one, but “el” in Spanish and “le” in French are both forms of the word “the”
Even both singular masculine. In Italian, “le” exists too but that is feminine plural. This is the only real example so far posted here.
If we count romanizations of languages not normally written with the Latin alphabet, I think definite articles give us another one: “la” in French, Spanish, Italian, and Esperanto is a definite article, and if I’m not mistaken, “al” is one in Arabic.
I mean, this happens pretty trivially with noun phrases in Spanish and English because Spanish is postpositive and English is prepositive.
There’s this related thing in linguistics which is quite fun, relating to the terms loanword and calque, which both mean “words originating from foreign languages”: The word calque is a loanword, and the word loanword is a calque.
A calque is a literal translation of the components of a word. One of the most commonly calqued words across all languages is skyscraper (in Chinese, it’s 摩天大楼, “sky-touching large building”). The word loanword is a calque of German Lehnwort (lehnen, to borrow + Wort, word).
A loanword is a word which is taken directly from another language and, with exceptions to fit the receiving language’s grammar and pronunciation, is not translated. An example of an English word which has been calqued into many languages is “okay”. The word calque is a loanword from French, where it means “copy”.
Spanish loves to turn acronyms backwards: NATO-OTAN, UNO-ONU
ONU reverse
This is common when comparing acronyms of Germanic vs. Romance languages because the former tend to put adjectives in front of their noun, the latter after it. But acronyms aren’t really words.
It’s not our fault that your language is inverted.
¡Sí, por cierto! :)
Are we open for rotation? Cucumber in Swedish is “gurka”, while in Norwegian it’s “agurk”.
Bear in Ukrainian is “vedmid”, and in Russian it is “medved”.
NATO - OTAN
( English - French )
There are also a few occasions in Japanese where both inversions are acceptable words, such as 理論 riron ‘theory’ and 論理 ronri ‘logic’, or 便利 benri ‘convenient’ and 利便 riben ‘convenient (but fancy-sounding)’.
先輩 and 輩先 both mean a senior (as in rank relative to you) in Japanese. It was the only example of that which my tired brain could muster at the moment.
It seems like they mean ‘ancestor’ and ‘senior’ in Chinese per Google Translate.
True, but I think that one’s a bit different, because 輩先 (usually written in katakana as パイセン) is a humorous slang term based off 先輩.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen パイセン written at all, come to think of it. It is slang, that much is true.
AI in English = IA in Spanish
Note to any learners: not all words do this in Chinese/Japanese; plenty are the same in both borrowed from the other country. (not that OP suggested it was, but I could see it being read that way)
I can’t think of any real examples. For letters, abbreviations can end up like that as others point out. I think that’s about the extent of anything meaningful. Adjective order differs, but that feels like cheating. There may be some compound words out there that fit this. In Japanese, a conveyor belt is called a belt conveyor (ベルトコンベヤー), but that also feels a bit like cheating.
This is not quite the same, but: May day. (English) M’aide. (French) Help me. (English) La Fête du Travail (French)
