Vocabulary

 

 
 
 
 

Video

 

 
 
 
 

Transcript

 
Elysa, FR: In French, we say ‘pom’.
Miguel, PT: I mean, French is the odd one.
Laura, SP: I also like that in France, ‘pomme de terre’ means a potato. Okay, but again, in Catalan, we say ‘pom’.
Elysa, FR: I love Catalan people. We are very dramatic.
 

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HELLO!!!!

Julia, BR: Well, yeah, we have a lot of differences.
Miguel, PT: Very distinct pronunciations like Spain, France.
Laura, SP: I mean, the words can be similar, but what differentiates us is the pronunciation.
Alessia, IT: We have really strong accent from our countries, I guess.
Julia, BR: Out of here, like, we are the ones that are going to sound closest.
Miguel, PT: Yeah, probably, or maybe Portugal and Spain.
Julia, BR: Yeah, true, true, true, true.

Laura, SP: I think French is going to be the odd one.
Julia, BR: I also think Portuguese and Italian will have a lot of similar words, because, like, that’s happened before, like, everything is different, and like Italian and Portuguese, like, yay.
Alessia, IT: But more with you than him.
Julia, BR: I’m excited.
 

Beautiful

Julia, BR: We have a lot of words for that.

Sophia, US: In the US, we say beautiful.
Miguel, PT: In Portugal, we say lindo.
Julia, BR: Well, in Brazil, we can say lindo, bonito, belo.
Laura, SP: I think it’s the same in Spanish: We can say bonito, we can say lindo. We can say bello.
Miguel: PT: Same words.
Laura, SP: Yeah, they’re the same.
Alessia, IT: We would say bello or bella if it’s a woman.

Elysa, FR: In French, we would say beau, or belle if it’s a woman. B-E-A-U, same as the beginning of beautiful.
Sophia, US: And in the US, that’s a name, yeah, the same spelling, B-E-A-U. Beau is a phrase, but Beau is a name.
Elysa, FR: A beauty is called belle, so literally called B-E-A-U.
Julia, BR: I’m surprised by beau.
Miguel, PT: I mean, French is the odd one.
Elysa, FR: But it’s same writing as in English. And beau, the feminine way belle. Alessia, IT: Yeah, very similar. I’m not the odd one out. Yeah, we have the same words, they just don’t know about it.
 

Thank You

In the US, we say thank you.
In Portugal, we say obrigado.
In Brazil, we say obrigado.
In Spain, we say gracias.
In Italy, we say grazie.

Elysa, FR: We have many ways to say it, and if I say all the ways, we have similarities.
Miguel, PT: Oh, really?
Elysa, FR: The basic one would be merci, but I can also say ‘Je suis votre oblige’. And with obrigado, it’s similar. I don’t find the other ones, but I swear we have others.
Laura, SP: So Spanish and Italian are the similar ones . . . but in Catalan, we say merci. Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah.
Elysa, FR: Then the odd one is actually America.
Julia, BR: Yeah, I mean, it is an Anglo-Saxon language; we are all Romanance languages.
 

Apple

In English, we say apple.
In Portugal, we say maçã.
In Brazil, we say maçã.
In Spain, we say manzana.
In Italy, we say mela.
In French, we say pomme.

Laura, SP: Okay, but again, in Catalan, we say poma.
Elysa, FR: I love Catalan people.
Julia, BR: Catalan and French are siblings.
Elysa, FR: How did you say that?
Alessia, IT: Mela.
Julia, BR: I also don’t think that Italian is that close to us. If I heard mela, I would either think of, like, caramel something or, like, melon, not apple.
Laura, SP: But I also like that in French, pomme de terre.
Elysa: FR: It means “ground apple”.
Julia, BR: A potato!!! It makes sense, though.
 

Window

In English, we say window.
In Portugal, we say janela.
In Brazil, we say janela.
In Spain, we say ventana.
In Italy, we say finestra.
In French, we say fenêtre.

Laura, SP: Oh, wait, wait. In Catalan, we say finestra.
Alessia, IT: Oh, really?
Elysa, FR: Window is so different.
Julia, BR: In Brazil, we also have ventana, like those old windows that had, like, a little space, and they were made by wood. So these are the ones we call ventana ’cause it’s, like, for the wind to come inside. But just like the window, we call it janela.
Laura, SP: Ventana, I guess, means “from wind”, viento.
 

Street

In English, we say street.
In Portugal, we say rua.
In Brazil, we say rua.
In Spain, we say calle.
In Italy, we say strada.
In French, we say rue.

Miguel, PT: Calle is very different. How do you say it in Catalan?
Laura, SP: Carrer. I didn’t say it because it was pretty similar.
Alessia, IT: I guess maybe strada is more similar to English street.
Julia, BR: I mean, we have estrada, but it would be, like, road, so, like, the larger one.
Sophia, US: I guess it’s just a word I also heard a lot before, because sometimes street names will be ending with strada in America; we have a lot of European influence.

Also even about windows and ventanas, we call in the building vent, for air to come through. So it’s not that different. And also, street and road, to me, are not that different. Street is not smaller in my mind.
 

Friend

In English, we say friend.
In Portugal, we say amigo.
In Brazil, we say amigo.
In Spain, we say amigo.
In Italy, we say amico.
In French, we say ami.

Julia, BR: Wow! That’s Romance languages. There you go, finally.
Alysa, FR: But friend, I don’t know where it comes from. But in German, it sounds like the German word freund.
Laura, US: We sometimes have more similar words with Germany, like apfel for apple.
Alysa, FR: I think even street is like, stasse.
Julia, BR: I think both German and English are Anglo-Saxon languages, right? It makes sense.
 

Friendship

In English, we say friendship.
In Portugal, we say amizade.
In Brazil, we say amizade.
In Spain, we say amistad.
In Italy, we say amicizia.
In French, we say amitié.

Julia, BR: Oh, we’re all similar. Okay, okay, yeah, same. There you go. I think it broke the ending over here.
Laura, SP: Yeah, I think it’s more like the pronunciation.
Alessia, IT: Pronounce the Z.
Elysa, FR: We don’t have a Z.
Julia, BR: The same.
Miguel, PT: Same.
Julia, BR: So the spelling is pretty much the same in most words in Portuguese for Brazil and for Portugal, but the pronunciation goes different. You say amitié, and I say amizade. So, I read the E in the end of the word, and he doesn’t really; it cuts really shortly.
 

Teacher

In English, we say teacher.
In Portugal, we say professor.
In Brazil, we say professor.
In Spain, we say profesor.
In Italy, we say professore or insegnante.
In French, we say professeur or enseignant.

Julia, BR: That seems like the verb for us: the verb to teach is enseñar. That makes sense.
Laura, SP: But we don’t differentiate between, professor and teacher.
Julia, BR: We also do the same. Only teach, professor. Professor is the same.
Elysa, FR: I’m trying to think. I wonder if it’s not about the level they teach. We will use different words, but essentially, it’s the same thing. They are teaching.

Alessia, IT: Yeah, but in elementary school, I would never call a teacher, professor. So, in high school, university, professor. Elementary school, middle school,insegnante.
Sophia, US: Same. For English, though, we have professor, but it’s only for college and university.
Julia, BR: It’s all professor for us.
 

House

In English, we say house.
In Portugal, we say casa.
In Brazil, we say casa.
In Spain, we say casa.
In Italy, we say casa.
In French, we say maison.

Julia, BR: I get it. If it’s a big house, mansion.
Elysa, FR: For a big house, we have manoir. A mansion is a manoir, but the house is a maison.
Laura, SP: In Spain, mesón is a traditional restaurant.
Elysa, FR: I guess maison can just be the name of the place where you reunite. So if you do the same work for maison, they’re all working for the fashion brands, then I guess that’s why they will keep maison.
Laura, SP: I mean, between us, yours actually sounds more like Spanish from Latin America, because my S is very strong, like casa. But in Latin America, they don’t use that. It’s more like casa.

Alessia, IT: My S in casa, it’s more in between, between S and Z. It’s, like, casa. It’s not a Z, but not even an S. It’s something in between.
Miguel, PT: Really? It sounds like Portuguese.
Julia, BR: Yeah, because we say casa, casa, casa.
Laura, SP: In Catalan, it’s casa.
Miguel, SP: Oh, really?
Laura, SP: Yeah, it’s casa.
Alessia, IT: Do you also write it with S?
Laura, SP: Yes, with S.
Julia, BR: So the four of us, like, when you consider Catalan, Portugal, Brazil, and Italy, we all write the same way and speak the same way. The same letter for all four of us. That’s really cool. I think that’s the first time that I see a word that’s the same. Exactly the same.
 

Goodbye

In English, we say goodbye.
In Portugal, we say adeus or Tchau.
In Brazil, we say adeus or Tchau.
In Spain, we say Adios. But we can also say chau.
In Italy we say arrivederci or ciao.

In French, we say au revoir or you can say salut. But the different thing is adeau
for us ad that sounds like is like a forever goodbye.
Julia, BR: Same for us.
Elysa, FR: We’ll meet again in front of God that’s kind of the meaning.
Alessia, IT: Same, it’s so dramatic.
Miguel, PT: In Portugal we say adeus, which means to God, like sending it to God— but it’s like very common.
Julia, BR: That’s not the same in Brazil because when we say adeus, we mean forever goodbye; we’re not seeing you again.
Laura, SP: Maybe it’s a influence in Spain.
Miguel, SP: Do you also say that casually?
Laura, SP: Adios is the standard everyone says. L
Elysa, FR: ‘A’ is to and is dios is God.
Julia, BR: So that’s why like it sounds like a forever goodbye for us.

Elysa, FR: Now that I think about it, when we say goodbye, we want to mean until we see each other again, and au revoir literally means “until we see each other again”. So that’s our friendly goodbye.
Alessia, IT: Exactly, same with arrivederci.
Julia, BR: I’m not sure, but I think our informal goodbye came from Italy because we say ciao.
Alessia, IT: Yeah, ciao. We say ciao when we meet but also when we part, but with friends; you wouldn’t say ciao to your boss when you leave.
Laura, SP: In Spain, you use ciao as an informal way too. We just say adiós for goodbye.
Julia, BR: We have another word for goodbye.
Miguel, PT: Yeah, same. We use ciao.
Sophia, US: I mean, if you talk about slang, there’s really a lot of ways to say goodbye. See you later, catch you later, smell you later . . . many things you can say.
 

Beach

In English, we say beach.
In Portugal, we say praia.
In Brazil, we say praia.
In Spain, we say playa.
In Italy, we say spiaggia.
In French, we say plage.
In Catalan, we say platja. Yeah, it’s between.

Julia, BR: Yeah, French and Catalan are the same. What is that?
Miguel, PT: Wait, how do you say it in Italian again?
Alessia, IT: Spiaggia. With an S at the beginning.
Julia, BR: Yeah, I think you’re the most different one right now.
Laura, SP: P-L-A-J-A.
Elysa, FR: Then, first is P-L-A-G-E. Ah, plage. Plage. That’s similar.
Miguel, PT: Yeah, all very similar except for Italian.
Julia, BR: Yeah, this time.
Laura, SP: It’s the same but with an S.
Alessia, IT: I mean, the Catalan is the closest I’ve heard until now. Say it again, please. Yeah, at least we have that part. I don’t know why we have this S.
Laura, SP: You have the extra S.
Alessia, IT: Yeah, we have double G. Like when we make this short stop, it’s like a double consonant.
Julia, BR: It’s like the tsu in Japanese.
 

Hungry

In English, we say hungry.
In Portugal, we say faminto.
In Brazil, you can say faminto.
In Spain, we say hambriento.
In Italy, we say affamato.

In French, we say affamé. But we have different ways of saying it. We say I have hunger. You can say eu tenho fome, but then you can also say I am feeling hungry, and then it will be eu estou com fome.

Julia, BR: In Brazil too, we don’t really use hungry. We say I have hunger. So we have the word for hunger. Hunger is fome. So the same thing, and like one person who is starving, then we would call them faminto — they are hungry, but we don’t really use that word. We don’t say faminto like ever. We say eu estou com fome: I am hungry. Faminto, F-A-M-I-N-T-O.

Laura, SP: In Catalan, we say faim, same as French.

Sophia, US: So when you guys all say your word, it’s reminding me of the English word famine, which means like you’re starving, or lots of people are starving. Julia, BR: Kind of the same, because for us faminto is also like starving.
Sophia, US: No one says like I have hunger, I have famine. We just say I’m hungry.
Elysa, FR: We are dramatic.
Sophia, US: I have hunger sounds more dramatic to me. Famine is like really serious. That’s like something that happens to a community?
 

Landscape

In English, we say landscape.
In Portugal, we say paisagem.
In Brazil, we say paisagem.
In Spain, we say paisaje.
In Italy, we say paesaggio.
In French, we say paysage.

Miguel, PT: Very similar.

Julia, BR: P-A-I-S-A-G-E-M.
Elysan: We write it P-A-Y-S-A-G-E because pay means land. Yeah.
Julia, BR: Oh, now I found out why we say paisagem because I didn’t know the meaning of it. Paisagem came from that.
 

Fertilizer

In English, we say fertilizer.
In Portugal, we say fertilizante.
In Brazil, we say fertilizante.
In Spain, we say fertilizante.
In Italy, we say fertilizzante.

I think there is another word, but in French, we say engrais and fertilisant. Fertilisant sounds weird for me. I will usually use engrais. Engrais is literally the name of how we name fertilizer, and fertilisant comes more from the verb fertilizar. It’s still correct, but I don’t hear it a lot, it sounds unnatural; it’s too long, the same as fridge, fridge and refrigerator.

Alessia, IT: I always hear people saying that French don’t like long words, so you always shorten them.
 

Rain

In English, we say rain.
In Portugal, we say chuva.
In Brazil, we say chuva.
In Spain, we say lluvia.
In Italy, we say pioggia.
In French, we say pluie.
In Catalan, we say pluja.

Julia, BR: You’re like two languages in one.
Miguel, PT: I think everything is spelled differently.
Julia, BR: She writes it with double L. We write it with C-H in the beginning.
 

Raincoat

In English, we say raincoat.
In Portugal, we say impermeável.
In Brazil, we say capa.
In Spain, we say impermeable.
In Italy, we say impermeabile.

Elysa, FR: In French, we say impermeable. But my mom will probably say anorak.
Miguel, PT: We also say anorak.
Laura, SP: Anorak in Spain is more like a very big jacket, like a winter jacket is anorak.
Elysa, FR: What I would wear if there is rain, I say I’ll take your anorak.
Miguel, PT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We use it in Portugal as well.
Julia, BR: We call it capa de chuva because it’s like a coat for the rain. So it’s capa for the chuva, the rain.
Sophia, US: Same in English, it’s impermeable, nothing can come through.
Miguel, PT: We use anorak.
Elysa, FR: Then that must be maybe a brand. Was it a brand?
Miguel, PT: Yeah, I’m thinking about it.
 

Computer

In English, we say computer.
In Portugal, we say computador.
In Brazil, we say computador.
In Spain, we say ordenador.
In Italy, we say computer.
In French, we say ordinateur.

Laura, SP: What surprised me is computer.
Alessia, IT: Yeah, we just use the English word, just pronouncing it in Italian.
Laura, SP: But there’s not an Italian word for computer?
Alessia, IT: No.
Laura, SP: French and Spanish was the same, ordenador (ordinateur).
Elysa, FR: How do you write it?
Laura, SP: Ordenador.
Julia, BR: O-R-D-E-N-A-D-O-R.
Elysa, FR: First, I think ordinateur, mostly the end is different because T-E-U-R.
Laura, SP: I think it’s a pronunciation of the ound.
Elysa, FR: Yeah, it’s more like the usual end of words when it’s doing something. Laura, SP: Yours is like this, and mine is like here, the sound, right?
Julia, BR: Oooh, I learned that Catalan and French are the same.
Alessia, IT: That was the most interesting discovery.
 

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Miguel, PT: I was surprised by raincoats because it’s the same language, but the Europeans use one word and then the Portuguese from Brazil use a different word.

Miguel, PT: Overall, I think we were all expecting French to be a little different.
Elysan, FR: English was the most different. At the end. It’s the international language, so I would expect it to be a little bit a mix of everything.

But at the end, it’s the one that is most different.

Julia, BR: I think English is going to be sounding similar when we’re talking about words that kind of came after a certain period of time, like when we’re talking about fridge or like computer or like mouse. So these type of things because we already were globalized by that time. But like basic conversation from the countries I think it’s more related to like where the language started.

Because that’s basic conversation like hi, bye, thank you.

Miguel, PT: It’s also cool to see that if we wanted we could probably learn each other’s language quite easily.
Alysa, FR: That’s good to know.
Julia, BR: I need to learn your language.

Sophia, US: So today we talked about word differences between all of our countries.

Laura, SP: If you liked the video, like, subscribe, and comment down below.

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Questions

 

Pronunciation, Lexicology. In this video, people from all over Europe compared words from their languages. True or false?

Beautiful, Pretty, Attractive. Is the French word for “beautiful” the same as the Portuguese word?

Thanks, Much Obliged, I’m Grateful. The word for “thank you” is similar among Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan. Is this right or wrong?

Apple, Orange, Banana. What is a pomme de terre? What does pomme de terre mean? Do all the Romance languages have similar words for “apple”?

Friend, Pal, Buddy. Do all the Romance languages have similar words for “street” and “friend”? Is English a Romance-based language?

Hello, Goodbye, See you later. What is the origin of the formal way of saying “goodbye” in Romance languages?

Mansion, Walls, Roof. What are the main differences between Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French words?

Jacket, Coat, Raincoat. All Romance languages say a variation of the words “teacher” and “computer”. Is this right or wrong?
 
 
 
Device, Laptop, Smartphone. Could you understand or recognize some, many, or all the words that the participants mentioned?

Manor, Door, Window. Has your language borrowed words from other languages? If yes, give examples.

Floor, Ceiling, Basement. What words from your country is part of the English language or commonly used elsewhere?

Street, Avenue, Boulevard, Alley. What might happen in the future?

Presenter, Instructor, Lecturer. Should nations adopt words directly from other languages, make transliterations, or create completely new, random words?