As an Italian-American who rarely gets to speak Italian, my visits to my family in Italy are full of these kinds of things, but in the other direction, naturally.

I end up using less common, typically larger words mostly because they have direct equivalents in English, including a whole bunch that end in -ation, which in Italian typically end in -azione.

My relatives joke with me that I'm a weird, overeducated dummy who "knows" these big words but doesn't know basic idioms.

No worries, Feynman used such a word in Portuguese when he did not know the short, common one and it was a great success.

I do not remember the word anymore, it was in You Must Be Jocking, Mr Feynman. - in the party where he was teaching in Brazil

I read that book when I was an English-monolingual kid, living in Portugal, and /consequentemente/ that story really stuck in my head when I was struggling for Portuguese words: https://southerncrossreview.org/81/feynman-brazil.html

As an Italian in the US, I initially had trouble in stores asking for "sodium bicarbonate" (baking soda) or "talc" (baby powder). I would have never thought of those names since I didn't need them for either baking or babies.

But maybe it was just my accent.

In Spanish we call them "antenas parábolicas".

I knew what a parabólica was as a child, but learnt the root of the word until high school math class.

I had a moment in math class when I thought... "So that's why it's called parabolica".

Other Latins might not have been so impressed. This is exactly what we call it in Portuguese: a parabolic antenna (antena parabólica).

I find that particularly amusing because Parabola is exactly how we call satellite dishes here in Italy. It’s technically called Antenna Parabolica but plenty of people simply call it Parabola (at least here up north)

Technically in English you'd only use "satellite dish" to describe a parabolic antenna that's being used for satellite communications.

In practice, though, I don't think I've ever seen that happen outside of a technical context.

What else does anyone use the term satellite dish to refer to?

Any antenna that's parabolic in shape that isn't designed/used to communicate with a satellite is just called a satellite dish is common usage, but technically really shouldn't be.

It's funny, I can't recall every hearing anybody say "satellite dish" for a terrestrial antenna in my years in metro and suburban California. I've heard "reflector dish", "dish antenna", "microwave dish", or "directional antenna" (which could also apply to YAGI and other non-dish structures).

I wonder if it is regional or has other socioeconomic factors? Actual satellite dishes weren't common structures when I was growing up, outside either a sports bar with satellite TV feeds or more commonly large dishes on industrial, military, or scientific facilities. Other, smaller directional antenna were more commonly seen on radio towers etc.

Probably? One of the subtexts of this article and the ensuing conversation is that English has an absolutely mind-smashing amount of variability in usage.

In my general area, just a few hundred kilometers separates two groups of people who are frequently confused by each others' usage of the word "party store." Expanding a hyponym's meaning to encompass that of its hypernym is so common that I'm not even sure it requires special explanation. I've got some family members whose favorite kind of coke is Pepsi.

Parabolic antennas that are used for terrestrial communication.

Meanwhile in America, you will often hear a satellite dish be shortened (incorrectly) to just being called a "satellite."

You'll even hear the word "satellite" mis-applied to parabolic antennas that are not directed at an actual satellite!

We say "parabólica" in Spain.

That too (like "periferia") comes to Latinate languages through Latin from Greek.

Seems all you nice folk think of Greeks as... posh? Must be all the philosophers :P

Exactly the same in French, for what it's worth.

I asked my teen children what "parabole" means to them and they had no idea that such antennas exist (or rather existed... at least for the generak population) :) They know about disquettes, though.