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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> 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?
There’s a couple reasons this can happen. One, similar semantic extensions – ‘go off to some place with’ => ‘go on a date with’ seems pretty intuitive. Two, sometimes people can simply directly translate expressions, and then the translation becomes the way that’s said in the new language – see e.g. how many languages have something like ‘thing that touches the sky’ for English *skyscraper*. The first of these has no specific term; the second is called *calquing*.
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