Are Any Words the Same in All Languages?

Re:Are Any Words the Same in All Languages? by hef19898 on Friday September 08, 2023 @05:00AM (#37431247)

Or simi for telephone. Another near universal word would be police, wouldn't it? Iceland of course is one of the exceptions!

I found those fun facts about Icelandic very fascinating when I first visited decades ago as a teenager.

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Re:Are Any Words the Same in All Languages? by gilleain on Friday September 08, 2023 @05:26AM (#37431445)

Is 'police' that universal? I know Irish have the Gardaí - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_S%C3%ADoch%C3%A1na.

Yes, Icelandic has 'Lögreglu' and Greece has Αστυνομία (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Police) but indeed most places use some variant of 'police'.

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Re:Are Any Words the Same in All Languages? by swiftcoder on Friday September 08, 2023 @06:22AM (#37431804)

`Gardaí` is more of a formal name for a specific insitution. The Irish language still has the more generic word `póilín`, which appears to be at least phonetically related to the english `police`.

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Re:Are Any Words the Same in All Languages? by WesolyKubeczek on Friday September 08, 2023 @06:24AM (#37431816)

Police is Rendőrség in Hungarian, translating to something like “order guard establishment” (-ség corresponds to -ness or -ery suffix in English, more or less, like “pékség” is bakery)

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