Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Fun with Turkish Loan Words

While I don't actually know any Turkish, sometimes it's fun to see what words in the Turkish language are borrowed from languages that I do know. English, for instance. It's always a little funny to see a string of unintelligible words, but with one slightly familiar-looking word mixed in. Yes, loan-words they're called, or "cognates" for linguistics nerds. Can you guess the meanings of these Turkish loan-words?

Fotokopi

Taksi

Panço

Süpermarketi

Faks

Seramik

Tost

Otopark

Polis

Allianz

Lojistik

Finans

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That really was fun! It's still amazing to think you guys are there where Paul stood. And Professor Matt, thank you for the language lesson. It goes to show how we're all more similar than we are different.

Ma

Eva Sylwester said...

Photocopy, taxi, ???, supermarket, fax, ceramic, toast, autopart, police, alliance, logistic, finance, right?

More obvious than Japanese loan words, but less obvious than German loan words. Interesting midway point.

Eva Sylwester said...

autopark, i mean.

Amelia said...

Yes, I did have fun with the nerdy cognates. I remember hearing in Denmark things like:

"SLhfoahewkrn ndfah moxilla firefox oijrakjh;kffkjs fuck you knd hkjanwjn fisf left brain right brain wnofij."

Do you ever hear the cognates or internationalisms? I always had to laugh.

Jessica said...

Coca Cola?