What I think is interesting about the word flea market is that it’s a calque in pretty much all languages.
The Swedish word is “loppis”, which is a cutesy colloquial term for “loppmarknad.” Loppa, meaning flea, and marknad meaning market.
Flohmarkt in German also means lit. “flea market.”
Marche aux puces is French, where “puce” means flea, I think this might be the origin of the term.
Japanese has the casual term フリマ (fleama), short for フリーマーケット, which is just the English term “flea market”, there’s also the term 蚤の市, just meaning “market of fleas.”
I believe Portuguese calls it a “thieves’ market”, but Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Dutch, and Mandarin all use their own native words for “flea market”; mercado de pulgas, mercato delle pulci, Блошиный рынок, Bit Pazarı, Vlooienmarkt, 跳蚤市场.
For all of the concepts and such that are identical across cultures, few things have universal names. Typically they enter the language as loanwords as well (e.g. karaoke, from Japanese ‘空オケ’, hollow orchestra), so the term “flea market” stands out to me. I’m sure there are lots of other similar things I’m not aware of though.
Edit: It’s worth mentioning that other than Swedish (native), English, and Japanese, I don’t speak any of the other languages. I’ve asked a Russian-American friend about the Russian term, and a friend in Taiwan about the Mandarin term. Otherwise I’ve checked dictionaries and the like. Don’t take my word as fact, I’m not a linguist. It was just a pattern I found interesting, because the term itself is so particular. Any and all corrections are more than welcome.
I’m also delighted by the discussion this has sparked! 💖
That reminds me of the word ‘Frank,’ which was used by the Byzantines to essentially mean ‘all those non-Roman barbarians to the west of us’ and which, after the Crusades, spread as a word across Asia meaning ‘Europeans.’
Thank you for sharing! I had not heard of this before. I particularly enjoyed this bit
Farang khi nok (Thai: ฝรั่งขี้นก, lit. ‘bird-droppings Farang’), also used in Lao, is slang commonly used as an insult to a person of white race, equivalent to white trash, as khi means feces and nok means bird, referring to the white color of bird-droppings
That’s so colourful. I love it.
It also made me think of the fictional race in Star Trek, the Ferengi. At least according to Wikipedia that is precisely the origin of their name!
I started talking to a dude from Brazil a couple of months ago, and was blown away just by how different Brazilian Portuguese is from Portuguese, even just phonetically. I should’ve probably mentioned that I really only speak English, Swedish, and Japanese, so any other examples are ones that I’ve dug up in lexicons and the like, so there may be terms that are direct translations but not actually used colloquially.
I can totally see different words being used between Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal-Portuguese.
This is true, I don’t know which word came first. I’d wager a guess that 蚤の市 predates フリーマーケット, but it’s really just a stab in the dark on the basis that English loanwords feel more modern, and it feels unlikely that a calque would be created after a loanword has been widely adopted.
Is tori ever used like plaza, like the Swedish word “torg?” The way I read tori in my head makes it sound almost homophonous with torg, hence why I ask.
A number of Slavic, Baltic, Norse, (and also Finnic languages like Finnish and Estonian) use some form of this word for market. It originated in Proto-slavic and passed through Old Norse into descendant languages.
The most interesting thing is that the root appears to have borrowed into Finnish twice, once probably from Slavic (as turku) and once from Old Norse (as tori).
Unimportant extra: it’s not a calque in British English, because we don’t use it (to the best of my knowledge). Like a potluck, we have the concept but not a word for it, and we don’t use the American phrases either
It’s almost like most of those languages you mentioned, had their speakers go everywhere around the world, approximately 500 years ago, and they colonized most of the world, causing many places around the world to use similar idioms…
“Hippopotamus” is another one. It derives from the Greek words hippos (horse) and potamos (river) and this concept of river horse is present in many different languages:
German: Flusspferd (lit. river horse)
Dutch: Rivierpaard (lit. river horse)
Finnish: Virtahepo (lit. stream horse)
Danish: Flodhest (lit. flood horse)
Chinese: 河马 (lit. river horse)
Arabic: فرس النهر (lit. river horse)
French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese use variations of hippopotamus.
Actually, the Dutch translation is “Nijlpaard”, not “rivierpaard”.
But, it uses the Dutch name for the Nile river, “Nijl”. So it’s lit. “Nilehorse” - which is technically the same as “river horse”, just more geographically specific.
It would be awesome if he picked it up again after. Imagine Putin’s shame. Empire crumbling, your own state turning on you, the world laughing. And this guy who beat you doesn’t take your kingdom, doesn’t rule with an iron fist to match your own. They just fuck off and tell jokes about your failure until retirement.
Straight up just listening to Behind the Bastards/It Could Happen Here, the Dollop, or Knowledge Fight will make you sound like a crazy person if you talk about them to someone who has no interest in history or current events
Domino’s does 2+ medium 2 topping for $6-7 each. Or you can get chicken or other random things like tots and bread. Not the best in any category but not awful so if you just need to feed some people it’s good by volume . My local pizza places are significantly better quality and price.
I used to work with a guy that moved from Mexico city after his favourite cafe got gunned down by the cartel, his neighbor’s family got beheaded, and a family friend’s daughter got kidnapped.
I just tried to say something sarcastic but, yeah; In truth, I do agree with your assessment of Amazon OneHealth. As it’s a hybrid of a low end concierge medicine program with a tiny amount of insurance-like benefits.
Started? Oh sweet summers child, Sony has been making more in the life insurance raquet than anything else Sony makes for decades... and they are one of the few megacorps I still buy from.
I was never aware of that fact, as I never expected that Sony would be in on that kind of scheme! There’s too much going on and I simply can’t take it all in. However, this doesn’t surprise me as megacorps will do whatever it takes to make as much money as possible! Since buying power makes right (up until they get a firm slap on the wrist). 🥴
Sony… and they are one of the few megacorps I still buy from.
Dear God, why? Between the continuous pushing of proprietary formats and the fucking rootkit they inflicted on people via music CDs almost two decades ago, they were one of the first megacorps I started boycotting!
I looked into using this type of service to pay for a modest purchase. A luxury of sorts. Something I had the cash for, but felt weird about paying all $600 or so for. I thought, maybe an interest free loan would be cool?
So i start to pay for the thing with klarna or whatever. And I see it’s only a six week loan. Wait, my credit card is a free six week loan (give or take). Wtf. I’d have to pay the thing off faster than just using a credit card.
I’ve used similar services to this in the past; not because I couldn’t afford something up front - but because I wanted to amortise the purchase across a pretty short (8 week) period.
Why not just use a credit card? I did. As a semi-regular user of the service, it was set up in such a way that it would bill the first 25% of my purchase after 2 weeks, and again every 2 weeks after that.
So not only was I getting an additional interest-free time stacking the 2 week period with my CC’s billing cycle; but I was earning loyalty/rewards points with both programs simultaneously.
The holy mod allows you to summon the pope and numerous mods add a way to convert rotten flesh into leather, which is dropped by a mob really similar to the playet(i couldnt find a better mod for that)
The heyday of the Eve Online subreddit was great for this shit, and it was always good for a laugh when something that made complete sense in-game hit r/all and started freaking people out. Some bangers were:
How do I sell a hanger full of corpses?
I just killed someone for the first time! I’m so excited!
Does anyone know if drug production is a good source of income?
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