I’m doing my Spanish homework and “Salen con” means “leaving with”, which can be used to say someone is dating someone (going out with someone). Since there’s nothing that intones dating within those words, how do English speakers and Spanish speakers use the same terminology when the words are used as a kind of euphemism?
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There are two main ways this can happen. First is through shared language ancestry—some languages evolved from the same base language, so they share the same basic structure and root words, like how siblings might look alike, even though they’re clearly different people. For example, the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc) all evolved from Latin, and are considered quite similar. English is a sort of half-sibling—it was originally Germanic but was heavily influenced by French, leading it to be a mix of the two, with some very Germanic features and terms, and some very Romantic ones.
The other way sayings can cross language barriers is by people who learn both bringing over sayings or phrasings from their own language. For example, “Long time no see” is now considered a pretty normal (if colloquial) English greeting, but it’s actually a word-for-word translation of a Chinese greeting (or Native American; the etymology is a bit disputed). While a more natural translation would be “I haven’t seen you in a long time,” someone who’s just learning the language might not be able to word it so naturally, but can still make their meaning clear. Over time, some of these phrases, sayings, and patterns might make their way into the language as a whole.
Finally, some words are simply borrowed from others. Japanese is a master of this—they’ll take words from other languages and transliterate them into their phonetic scheme. They even have a specific alphabet used for such (katakana). Some fun examples of that are *pan* (“bread”, from Portuguese “pan”), *baito* (“part-time job”, from German *arbeit*, “work”), *anketo*, (“quiz”, from French *enquete*), and of course *konpyuutaa* (“computer”, from English). I’m sure you can think of plenty of English loanwords, but some might surprise you: concierge, anonymous, and zombie, to name a few.
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