Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

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)

162

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"

46

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.

5

chak100 t1_j16j7yt wrote

Canyon is cañón

22

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.

2

U5urPator t1_j18pozb wrote

Which also derives from the latin "canno".

1

whats_a_cormac t1_j1726eu wrote

Now where the hell did the word "mushroom" come from? That's what I wanna know.

6

utterly_baffledly t1_j1as9ew wrote

As with so many words it has its roots in Latin and entered middle English from old French.

1

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

https://www.xn--caondelriolobos-zqb.com/

6

Firstearth t1_j18pqiv wrote

It was pretty clear by the “um” suffix that platinum was Latin.

2

rettaelin t1_j18sroy wrote

Thought platinum didn't sound Spanish. But I failed Spanish class. No habar Espanol.

0