Submitted by OfficialWireGrind t3_zs48my in dataisbeautiful
fogindex t1_j167cjo wrote
Reply to comment by Realistic_Turn2374 in [OC] English Words of Spanish Origin and the Number of Mentions in Wikipedia by OfficialWireGrind
True origins for those interested:
canoe, potato, savannah, tobacco, hurricane = Arawakan (Hayti/Haiti)
cocoa, chocolate = Nahuatl (Aztecan)
adobe, crimson = Arabic
jade, crusade, tornado, plaza = Vulgar Latin
sidenotes:
"platinum" is Latin, not Spanish (known as "platino") lol
"canyon" is only used in formerly-Mexican-held parts of USA (i.e., not in Spain, Mexico, Latin America or elsewhere)
johnnymetoo t1_j177v11 wrote
Also barbecue: "The English word barbecue and its cognates in other languages come from the Indigenous Taino word barbacoa. Etymologists believe this to be derived from barabicu found in the language of the Arawak people of the Caribbean and the Timucua people of Florida"
carlitospig t1_j18icfp wrote
Thank you, I’ve actually been curious of it’s origin too (love language history!), and for some reason assumed it was French/Latin.
Vindepomarus t1_j17mg5a wrote
Barbecue isn't on the list.
johnnymetoo t1_j17mlp7 wrote
I know, I just wanted to mention it.
chak100 t1_j16j7yt wrote
Canyon is cañón
Firstearth t1_j18q1sr wrote
But that’s the same word though right? I mean the word is said the same in both languages it’s just the spelling that changes. Contrast that for example with chocolate which is spelt the same but has a considerable difference in pronunciation.
U5urPator t1_j18pozb wrote
Which also derives from the latin "canno".
KnotiaPickles t1_j18emnu wrote
Thanks, confirms my initial feeling that this has a lot of wrong info
carlitospig t1_j18iecn wrote
Misinfo for everyone! 🥳
whats_a_cormac t1_j1726eu wrote
Now where the hell did the word "mushroom" come from? That's what I wanna know.
utterly_baffledly t1_j1as9ew wrote
As with so many words it has its roots in Latin and entered middle English from old French.
Zoloch t1_j18l3js wrote
By your standards no word is of any origin. There is always a prior language from where a words comes. So by this, English doesn’t have words of French origin, because most of them come from Latin (some from Germanic , or Gaulish) which come from Italic, which come from Ítalo-Celtic, which come from Indo-European which come from whatever prior language etc. the same for Arabic words, or any other language’s words, which come from previous or adjacent languages from where they took them. So, “beauty”, according to your reasoning, is not a word of French origin (beauté) but of pre-pre-pre Indo European origin, isn’t it? And French didn’t have anything to do with it.
Those words come from Spanish as it is the language that took them and transformed them and made them evolve with its own idiosyncrasy, its own sounds and its own ways, and from which English took them. As examples of the words in the post, Potato comes from Spanish “patata” (a mixture of two words, one from Quechua “papa” and other from Taino “batata”), Adobe is from Arab Al-tub which come from Egyptian “dbt”. And this from where? Chocolate from Nahuatl “Xocoalt”. Similar, but not the same, and if English had taken them directly from those languages they would be very different as they are now in English. And at the same time, those words undoubtedly come from other languages prior to them or in contact with them. And so on.
So, the words in the post come from Spanish, that’s how it works in philological terms.
And by the way: Platinum comes directly from Spanish “Platino”, not the other way around. Romans didn’t know the metal as it was identified and described in 1735, and given the name for its similarity to Silver…”plata” in Spanish (Latin: “argentum”). Platinum is a latinization of Platino, not the opposite
And Canyon is veeeeery used in Spain. Its geography is full of “cañones” (“cañón” is phonetically pronounced “canyon”). Not as big as the Grand Canyon, that’s why the Spaniard that saw it for the first time as a European called it Gran Cañón, as he had seen many (smaller) in his homeland
https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%B1%C3%B3n_de_A%C3%B1isclo
fufo1298 t1_j1aeqr8 wrote
Great explanation. Thx
para_sight t1_j17f97o wrote
I think Hurricane is from Mayan
cubanshadow t1_j182r8y wrote
No, Taino or Arawak
para_sight t1_j18wgxt wrote
Ah, thank you. Either way not Spanish!
Firstearth t1_j18pqiv wrote
It was pretty clear by the “um” suffix that platinum was Latin.
BishopxF4_check t1_j17a2ie wrote
Nahuat actually derives from the Maya
scotch1701 t1_j1948yr wrote
one is Uto-Aztecan, one is of the Mayan family.
rettaelin t1_j18sroy wrote
Thought platinum didn't sound Spanish. But I failed Spanish class. No habar Espanol.
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