Best known word in the world

One of the many great things about languages worldwide is the sizeable number of words for which there is no real English translation. Often they tell us about concepts and ideas that we are missing out on in the anglophone world.

As the northern hemisphere heads abroad in the coming holiday season, here are a few to be looking out for:

SPAIN: sobremesa

You may have witnessed the ritual, knowingly or not, while on the hunt for a coffee or a cold beer towards the end of another long Spanish afternoon.

Sitting clumped around tables inside restaurants or spilling out on to their terrazas, are friends, families and colleagues, preserved in the post-prandial moment like replete insects in amber.

Lunch – and it is more usually lunch than dinner – will long since have yielded to the important act of the sobremesa, that languid time when food gives way to hours of talking, drinking and joking. Coffee and digestivos will have been taken, or perhaps the large gin and tonic that follows a meal rather than precedes it here.

The sobremesa is a digestive period that allows for the slow settling of food, gossip, ideas and conversations. It is also a sybaritic time; a recognition that there is more to life than working long hours and that few pleasures are greater than sharing a table and then chatting nonsense for a hefty portion of what remains of the day.

The world may not have been put completely to rights by the end of the sobremesa, but it will seem a calmer, more benign place.

Ask Mariano Rajoy. At the end of May, as it became clear that he was going to be turfed out of office in a no-confidence vote, the then-prime minister did something very Spanish: he and his close circle retreated to a private room in a smart Madrid restaurant. Lunch was followed by a seven-hour sobremesa, and, reportedly, a couple of bottles of whisky.

After all, what does the loss of a premiership matter after a fine meal, a good cigar and some booze-soaked reminiscing? ¡Salud! Sam Jones in Madrid

PORTUGAL: esperto/esperta

It feels almost counterintuitive to have to explain what esperto/esperta means, a Portuguese word without true parallel in the English dictionary.

There are words that come close, that encapsulate something of the spirit of this word – and the word itself is spirited. On the ball, quick-witted, with-it, canny, having common sense, intuitive, someone who gets things done: these all help shade in the space occupied by esperto.

I grew up in Portugal and have always felt an undercurrent of admiration, almost affection, for the espertas.

A Brazilian friend, Tatiana, though, warns of a negative sense. Someone esperto can, she says, use his or her instincts to take advantage of others; to trap or fool them into trouble.

Sometimes it’s easier to understand something by what it is not. Esperta is definitely not slow, dim, unimaginative. If these characteristics were on a spectrum, esperto would be at one end, with “plodding” at the other.

If you understand it, you probably are. Juliette Jowit

ITALY: bella figura

Before celebrating a confirmation in Sicily last year, my aunt breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that her British niece was dressed appropriately enough so as not to make a bad impression in front of the extended family.

I was also relieved, as it meant I had not inflicted the curse of the brutta figura, which literally translates as bad figure, on my family.

In pretty much all areas of life, whether it be in the way people dress, how they behave, how well their homes are kept or how impeccably a cake is presented and a gift wrapped, Italians strive to achieve the bella figura, or beautiful figure.

Such importance is placed on keeping up appearances and the finer detail that for unwitting foreigners there’s a sense of being sized up in everything you do, even going as far as to what you eat and drink and at what time of the day you indulge in such activities.

“What matters is not what you do but how you appear,” said an Italian friend, likening it to posting the perfect photograph on social media. It’s a tactic that enables people to get promoted at work and politicians to win over admirers while giving the impression that they are achieving something.

“I call it ‘selfie and spot’,” the friend said. “For example, the politician takes a selfie against a beautiful backdrop, posts it on Facebook with a promise to do something, but then doesn’t follow it through. With a good selfie and a good spot, you can survive an entire career without doing anything.” Angela Giuffrida in Rome

GERMANY: Feierabend

One of the most misleading, but also most enduring, myths about German culture is that it values hard work over a good siesta. Northern Europeans, the legend goes, have a “Protestant work ethic” that means they get the job done even if it means staying in the office late into the night, while the southern Europeans wave it off with a mañana, mañana.

Anyone who sincerely believes that to be the case has never tried to call a German office at one minute past five. When German workers say Ich mach’ Feierabend (“I am calling it a day”), it rarely carries an apologetic undertone but usually comes with the confidence of someone claiming an ancient right.

Dating back to the 16^th century, the term Feierabend, or “celebration evening”, used to denote the evening before a public holiday, but has come to refer to the free time between leaving the office and bedtime on any working day.

The key to understanding Feierabend is that it isn’t time for going to the cinema or gym, but time for doing nothing. In 1880, the cultural historian Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl described the concept as “an atmosphere of carefree wellbeing, of deep inner reconciliation, of the pure and clear quiet of the evening”.

Germany’s adherence to the Feierabend rulebook can frustrate when you are trying to make a work call on a Friday afternoon or buy an aspirin from a pharmacy on a Sunday (Sundays being a 24-hour celebration evening).

But as a philosophy, it underpins the proudest achievements of the German labour movement and may just explain why the country has some of the highest productivity levels in Europe: to truly cherish the evening, you make sure you get the job done before five o’clock. Philip Oltermann in Berlin

FINLAND: sisu

Sisu is an untranslatable Finnish term that blends resilience, tenacity, persistence, determination, perseverance and sustained, rather than momentary, courage: the psychological strength to ensure that regardless of the cost or the consequences, what has to be done will be done.

It originates from the word sisus, meaning “intestines” or “guts”; Daniel Juslenius, author of the first Finnish-language dictionary in 1745, defined sisucunda as the place in the body where strong emotions live. In a harsh environment and with powerful neighbours, it was what a young nation needed.

Sisu is what, in 1939-40, allowed an army of 350,000 Finns to twice fight off Soviet forces three times their number, inflicting losses five times heavier than those they sustained.

More prosaically, it has helped Finns get through a lot of long, lonely, dark and freezing winters, building in the process one of the wealthiest, safest, most stable and best-governed countries in the world. It is not all good, of course. Sisu can lead to stubbornness, a refusal to take advice, an inability to admit weakness, a lack of compassion.

It has become a bit of cliché in Finland – a brand name for trucks and strongly-flavoured sweets. Research shows it holds little appeal to the young. But ask a Finn to define the national character, and it’s the word most still reach for. Jon Henley

IRAN: Ta’arof

Ta’arof is a Persian word that has no English equivalent, referring to the art of etiquette ubiquitous in everyday Iranian life.

“You go first,” says Mr A as he meets Mr B at the doorstep, as they try to enter a building. “No, it’s not possible, you go first,” Mr B insists in response. Ta’arof dictates a ritual that may see them both waiting for a couple of unnecessary minutes before one steps forward to enter.

It is an etiquette that is seen almost in all aspects of Iranian life, from hosts insisting on guests taking more food from the table, to the exchanges in the bazaar. “How much is this carpet?” asks Ms A after choosing her favourite in the shop. “It’s worthless, you can just take it,” responds the seller, quite disingenuously.

Although Ms A in reality cannot take the carpet out of the shop without paying for it, the seller might insist up to three times that she should just do that, until the amount of the price is finally mentioned.

The awkward exchanges may have originated out of politeness; ultimately, they may work to the seller’s favour, as the buyer feels a certain obligation to respond to such deference with a purchase, even if the final price is more than she expected.

Another example: you are walking with a friend and you end up doing Ta’arof, asking him to come to yours for lunch, even though you don’t have anything prepared and you don’t really want him to accept.

The friend insists out of Ta’arof that he wouldn’t come because he knows you’re tired and doesn’t want to be a burden, even though deep down he really wants to have lunch at your place.

“Oh, don’t Ta’arof,” you say in a Ta’arof asking your friend not to Ta’arof. He ends up accepting your reluctant Ta’arof. You’re a bit irked, but you’ll have to be all smiles. Not all Taa’rofs are insincere; some are, some aren’t. You’d Ta’arof even if you badly want something, saying you don’t want it; you’d Ta’arof if you really hate something, pretending you want it. Saeed Kamali Dehghan

RUSSIA: тоска (toska)

Leave it to Russia to serve up the melancholy: toska translates as yearning or ennui. Except it doesn’t, because no English word can accurately reflect all the shades of the word, to paraphrase Vladimir Nabokov.

What can toska (pronounced tahs-kah) mean? Spiritual anguish, a deep pining, perhaps the product of nostalgia or love-sickness, toska is depression plus longing, an unbearable feeling that you need to escape but lack the hope or energy to do so.

Visually to me, toska conjures up an endless field of birch on the edge of St Petersburg, in the dead of winter when the clouds never part, and it’s only light for five hours a day anyway.

Toska is the stuff of great literature. Evgeny Onegin, the foundational Russian novel-in-verse about superfluous men, unrequited love and duels? Loads of toska.

Anton Chekhov wrote an entire short story called Toska about a cabman who recently lost his son and searches for someone to talk to about his grief. He ends up talking to his horse. All that broodiness in the great (and not-so-great) Russian novels? You get the picture.

So why choose toska for this list of positivity? Because if the Russian soul s the place where great emotions reside, then toska pays the rent. Without toska there cannot be delirious happiness, endless heartfelt conversations at 4am at the kitchen table, boundless generosity at obvious personal expense.

Toska is a sign that your emotions go beyond logic and that you are really, truly living your emotions. Perhaps you’ve felt toska and you didn’t realise it, but it’s a good thing: it means you’ve got a little bit of the Russian soul in you. Andrew Roth in Moscow

JAPAN: shoganai

As inhabitants of an archipelago that is regularly struck by earthquakes and tsunamis, and – as recent events have tragically demonstrated – floods and landslides, it is little wonder that the Japanese have a well-developed sense of fatalism. Any verbal reflection on humans’ powerlessness to control nature’s most destructive forces often elicit the phrase shoganai.

The expression, meaning, “it can’t be helped,” is Japan’s catchall response to any situation, large or small, over which people believe they have no influence. A more voguish translation might be “it is what it is”. A French person would immediately recognise it as a version of “c’est la vie”.

It could be heard, delivered with deep reflection, amid the rubble of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami and, in resigned tones, after Japan’s agonising exit from the World Cup in Russia.

Shoganai, and its synonym shikata ga nai, are verbal coping mechanisms that apply equally to unwelcome developments in everyday life, from getting struck in a traffic jam to having to spend Friday evening at the office.

With its roots in the Zen Buddhist belief that suffering is a natural part of life, it could perhaps be described as Japan’s version of the serenity prayer – a personal and communal recognition that, on occasion, passive acceptance of an unfortunate truth is far easier than trying to deny it.

But resigning oneself to one’s fate with a muttered “shoganai” has its drawbacks. Some observers of Japanese culture note that it is too often applied in situations in which humans have more influence than they think.

For much of the seven decades since the end of the second world war, there has been a general acceptance of the dominance of the conservative Liberal Democratic party, even among liberal voters. Some have pointed to its role in allowing the rise of Japanese militarism in the first half of the 20th century.

Shikata ga nai is, then, partly to blame for weaknesses at the heart of Japan’s democracy, allowing one party to dominate even, as is the case today, when it is mired in scandal.

In a country with few energy resources of its own, nuclear power was for decades the beneficiary of the shoganai mindset, one that accepted the construction of dozens of nuclear reactors along the coastline as a necessary evil.

It took Fukushima to prove that Japan’s lauded sense of fatalism can sometimes be downright dangerous. Justin McCurry in Tokyo

NETHERLANDS: polderen

Het poldermodel and its associated verb, polderen, derive from the Dutch habit of working together to reclaim parts of their country from the sea. Since the Middle Ages, everyone on the same polder, regardless of religion, politics, class and local rivalries, has had to cooperate in maintaining the complex but vital system of windmills and dykes that kept their land dry.

The term, which has been defined as “pragmatic cooperation despite differences”, has been used since the mid-1970s to describe the kind of consensus political decision-making common in the Netherlands, which has been governed by coalitions for over a century, since no single party has ever held a majority.

In policymaking, the concept is exemplified by a Dutch institution known as the Social-Economic Council, a tripartite forum in which government, employers’ federations and unions air their differences, generally reaching consensus on issues such as wage restraint, working hours, job creation and productivity.

In politics, Dutch governments – the latest, a coalition between four parties with widely different views, took a record 208 days to hammer out – are the embodiment of the poldermodel, which has come in for increasing criticism, particularly from the radical right, since the financial crisis of 2008.

Politicians such as Thierry Baudet of the nativist, right-wing Forum for Democracy argue the poldermodel has led to a “political cartel” in which endless compromise has robbed the major parties of all distinguishing features and left them incapable of taking essential decisions. Jon Henley

CHINA: tiáo 条

How do we categorise or classify things, thereby imagining them as one thing and not another? Unlike French or German, gender does not provide categories in Chinese, which groups things by something else entirely: shape.

Tiáo is one of at least 140 classifiers and measure words in the Chinese language. It’s a measure word for long-narrow-shape things. For example, bed sheets, fish, ships, bars of soap, cartons of cigarettes, avenues, trousers, dragons, rivers.

These measure words embrace the ways in which shape imprints itself upon us, while playfully noticing the relationships between all things. The measure word kē 颗 (kernel) is used for small, roundish things, or objects that appear small: pearls, teeth, bullets and seeds, as well as distant stars and satellites.

Gēn 根, for thin-slender objects, will appear before needles, bananas, fried chicken legs, lollipops, chopsticks, guitar strings and matches, among a thousand other things. “Flower-like” objects gather under the word duo 朵: bunches of flowers, clouds, mushrooms and ears.

It’s endlessly fascinating to me how we attempt to group anything or anyone together, and how formations change. Philosopher Wang Lianqing charts how tiáo was first applied to objects we can pick up by hand (belts, branches, string) and then expanded outward (streets, rivers, mountain ranges).

And finally tiáo extended metaphorically. News and events are also classified with tiáo, perhaps because news was written in long vertical lines, and events, as the 7th-century scholar Yan Shigu wrote, arrive in lists “one by one, as (arranging) long-shaped twigs”.

Onwards the idea broadened, so that an idea or opinion is also “long-shaped news,” and in the 14th century, tiáo was used for spirit, which was imagined as straight, high and lofty. In language, another geometry is at work, gathering recurrences through time and space. Madeleine Thien

What is your favourite word, concept or idea in the country you live in? Let us know in the comments, or at theupside@theguardian.com

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Studies that estimate and rank the most common words in English examine texts written in English. Perhaps the most comprehensive such analysis is one that was conducted against the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a massive text corpus that is written in the English language.

In total, the texts in the Oxford English Corpus contain more than 2 billion words.^[1] The OEC includes a wide variety of writing samples, such as literary works, novels, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, blogs, chat logs, and emails.^[2]

Another English corpus that has been used to study word frequency is the Brown Corpus, which was compiled by researchers at Brown University in the 1960s. The researchers published their analysis of the Brown Corpus in 1967. Their findings were similar, but not identical, to the findings of the OEC analysis.

According to The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists, the first 25 words in the OEC make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and the first 100 words make up about half of all written English.^[3] According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English, all of the first hundred of the most common words in English are of Old English origin,^[4] except for «people», ultimately from Latin «populus», and «because», in part from Latin «causa».

Some lists of common words distinguish between word forms, while others rank all forms of a word as a single lexeme (the form of the word as it would appear in a dictionary). For example, the lexeme be (as in to be) comprises all its conjugations (is, was, am, are, were, etc.), and contractions of those conjugations.^[5] These top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.^[1]

100 most common words

A list of 100 words that occur most frequently in written English is given below, based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (a collection of texts in the English language, comprising over 2 billion words).^[1] A part of speech is provided for most of the words, but part-of-speech categories vary between analyses, and not all possibilities are listed. For example, «I» may be a pronoun or a Roman numeral; «to» may be a preposition or an infinitive marker; «time» may be a noun or a verb. Also, a single spelling can represent more than one root word. For example, «singer» may be a form of either «sing» or «singe». Different corpora may treat such difference differently.

The number of distinct senses that are listed in Wiktionary is shown in the polysemy column. For example, «out» can refer to an escape, a removal from play in baseball, or any of 36 other concepts. On average, each word in the list has 15.38 senses. The sense count does not include the use of terms in phrasal verbs such as «put out» (as in «inconvenienced») and other multiword expressions such as the interjection «get out!», where the word «out» does not have an individual meaning.^[6] As an example, «out» occurs in at least 560 phrasal verbs^[7] and appears in nearly 1700 multiword expressions.^[8]

The table also includes frequencies from other corpora. Note that as well as usage differences, lemmatisation may differ from corpus to corpus – for example splitting the prepositional use of «to» from the use as a particle. Also the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) list includes dispersion as well as frequency to calculate rank.

Word	Parts of speech	OEC rank	COCA rank[9]	Dolch level	Polysemy
the	Article	1	1	Pre-primer	12
be	Verb	2	2	Primer	21
to	Preposition	3	7, 9	Pre-primer	17
of	Preposition	4	4	Grade 1	12
and	Conjunction	5	3	Pre-primer	16
a	Article	6	5	Pre-primer	20
in	Preposition	7	6, 128, 3038	Pre-primer	23
that	Conjunction et al.	8	12, 27, 903	Primer	17
have	Verb	9	8	Primer	25
I	Pronoun	10	11	Pre-primer	7
it	Pronoun	11	10	Pre-primer	18
for	Preposition	12	13, 2339	Pre-primer	19
not	Adverb et al.	13	28, 2929	Pre-primer	5
on	Preposition	14	17, 155	Primer	43
with	Preposition	15	16	Primer	11
he	Pronoun	16	15	Primer	7
as	Adverb, conjunction, et al.	17	33, 49, 129	Grade 1	17
you	Pronoun	18	14	Pre-primer	9
do	Verb, noun	19	18	Primer	38
at	Preposition	20	22	Primer	14
this	Determiner, adverb, noun	21	20, 4665	Primer	9
but	Preposition, adverb, conjunction	22	23, 1715	Primer	17
his	Possessive pronoun	23	25, 1887	Grade 1	6
by	Preposition	24	30, 1190	Grade 1	19
from	Preposition	25	26	Grade 1	4
they	Pronoun	26	21	Primer	6
we	Pronoun	27	24	Pre-primer	6
say	Verb et al.	28	19	Primer	17
her	Possessive pronoun	29, 106	42	Grade 1	3
she	Pronoun	30	31	Primer	7
or	Conjunction	31	32	Grade 2	11
an	Article	32	(a)	Grade 1	6
will	Verb, noun	33	48, 1506	Primer	16
my	Possessive pronoun	34	44	Pre-primer	5
one	Noun, adjective, et al.	35	51, 104, 839	Pre-primer	24
all	Adjective	36	43, 222	Primer	15
would	Verb	37	41	Grade 2	13
there	Adverb, pronoun, et al.	38	53, 116	Primer	14
their	Possessive pronoun	39	36	Grade 2	2
what	Pronoun, adverb, et al.	40	34	Primer	19
so	Conjunction, adverb, et al.	41	55, 196	Primer	18
up	Adverb, preposition, et al.	42	50, 456	Pre-primer	50
out	Preposition	43	64, 149	Primer	38
if	Conjunction	44	40	Grade 3	9
about	Preposition, adverb, et al.	45	46, 179	Grade 3	18
who	Pronoun, noun	46	38	Primer	5
get	Verb	47	39	Primer	37
which	Pronoun	48	58	Grade 2	7
go	Verb, noun	49	35	Pre-primer	54
me	Pronoun	50	61	Pre-primer	10
when	Adverb	51	57, 136	Grade 1	11
make	Verb, noun	52	45	Grade 2 [as «made»]	48
can	Verb, noun	53	37, 2973	Pre-primer	18
like	Preposition, verb	54	74, 208, 1123, 1684, 2702	Primer	26
time	Noun	55	52	Dolch list of 95 nouns	14
no	Determiner, adverb	56	93, 699, 916, 1111, 4555	Primer	10
just	Adjective	57	66, 1823		14
him	Pronoun	58	68		5
know	Verb, noun	59	47		13
take	Verb, noun	60	63		66
people	Noun	61	62		9
into	Preposition	62	65		10
year	Noun	63	54		7
your	Possessive pronoun	64	69		4
good	Adjective	65	110, 2280		32
some	Determiner, pronoun	66	60		10
could	Verb	67	71		6
them	Pronoun	68	59		3
see	Verb	69	67		25
other	Adjective, pronoun	70	75, 715, 2355		12
than	Conjunction, preposition	71	73, 712		4
then	Adverb	72	77		10
now	Preposition	73	72, 1906		13
look	Verb	74	85, 604		17
only	Adverb	75	101, 329		11
come	Verb	76	70		20
its	Possessive pronoun	77	78		2
over	Preposition	78	124, 182		19
think	Verb	79	56		10
also	Adverb	80	87		2
back	Noun, adverb	81	108, 323, 1877		36
after	Preposition	82	120, 260		14
use	Verb, noun	83	92, 429		17
two	Noun	84	80		6
how	Adverb	85	76		11
our	Possessive pronoun	86	79		3
work	Verb, noun	87	117, 199		28
first	Adjective	88	86, 2064		10
well	Adverb	89	100, 644		30
way	Noun, adverb	90	84, 4090		16
even	Adjective	91	107, 484		23
new	Adjective et al.	92	88		18
want	Verb	93	83		10
because	Conjunction	94	89, 509		7
any	Pronoun	95	109, 4720		4
these	Pronoun	96	82		2
give	Verb	97	98		19
day	Noun	98	90		9
most	Adverb	99	144, 187		12
us	Pronoun	100	113		6

Parts of speech

The following is a very similar list, subdivided by part of speech.^[1] The list labeled «Others» includes pronouns, possessives, articles, modal verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions.

Rank	Nouns	Verbs	Adjectives	Prepositions	Others
1	time	be	good	to	the
2	person	have	new	of	and
3	year	do	first	in	a
4	way	say	last	for	that
5	day	get	long	on	I
6	thing	make	great	with	it
7	man	go	little	at	not
8	world	know	own	by	he
9	life	take	other	from	as
10	hand	see	old	up	you
11	part	come	right	about	this
12	child	think	big	into	but
13	eye	look	high	over	his
14	woman	want	different	after	they
15	place	give	small		her
16	work	use	large		she
17	week	find	next		or
18	case	tell	early		an
19	point	ask	young		will
20	government	work	important		my
21	company	seem	few		one
22	number	feel	public		all
23	group	try	bad		would
24	problem	leave	same		there
25	fact	call	able		their

See also

• Basic English
• Frequency analysis, the study of the frequency of letters or groups of letters
• Letter frequencies
• Oxford English Corpus
• Swadesh list, a compilation of basic concepts for the purpose of historical-comparative linguistics
• Zipf’s law, a theory stating that the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in a frequency table

Word lists

• Dolch Word List, a list of frequently used English words
• General Service List
• Word lists by frequency

References

External links

You can find books dedicated to words that are “untranslatable” from language to language, but what about the words that hardly need translation? The world’s various languages have evolved to be beautifully diverse, and their words often seem to bear little resemblance to each other. However, there are a handful of words which sound strangely similar around the globe.

Maybe there’s just something intrinsically human about the sound of these words. In other cases, certain foodstuffs just managed to retain their tags as they moved from culture to culture. Whatever the reason, here are just a few words in different languages that have managed to stay connected.

10 ‘Pajamas’

A Hindi and Urdu word, pajama, referred to loose pants tied around the waist, a popular fashion in India. After colonization, the British took the clothing home, and over time, the style and word grew far beyond the subcontinent.^[1]

What is particularly notable is how far it has gotten (and in such a short time). In almost any language you could name, you can find a derivative of pajama. Whether it is bijama in Arabic or pizsama in Hungarian. The word “pajama” even appears in languages like Basque and Irish.

Add to that the fact that many of these languages must have previously had some term for sleepwear. It was by no means a new concept. Even though previous terms may have been simple compound words (such as “nightgown” in English), they were still doing a pretty sufficient job.

For so many languages to incorporate this new term and use it widely is incredibly unusual. Imagine if kilts suddenly became highly fashionable, and within less than a century, every language was using “kilt” as a word for skirts. You would accept it because that would be awesome, and you would be dead, but it would be strange nonetheless. Similarly, “pajamas” is a great word, and fun to say, but the takeover is pretty hard to explain.

9 ‘OK’

Often cited as one of the most well-known words in the world, “OK” is doing pretty okay for itself. A common story behind the creation of “OK” was that 1830s newspapers in the US went mad for abbreviations. “OK” came about as a joke. The abbreviation “OK” was used to mean “orl korrekt,” an intentional misspelling of “all correct”^[2] which was presumably hysterical in the 1830s.

Okay, well, there are other theories. Some claim it is a corruption of aux Cayes, French for “from Cayes,” referring to a Haitian port with good rum. Or maybe it’s from the Greek ola kala, meaning “it is good” or “all good,” or even derived from the Scots phrase “och aye.” Whatever its origin, the word has quickly spread to be used and understood in almost every country to mean that everything is alright.

8 ‘Taxi’

“Taxi” is another relatively recent word that has been incorporated into many languages. From the term “taximeter cab” (“tax” from the Medieval Latin taxa for “tax” or “charge”), the shortened word “taxi” has become commonplace all over the world. Though it changes language to language, the sound is almost always “tak-see” or very close.^[3]

It may simply be that it is a short and easy word that describes a more complicated idea. In Japan, taxis were bureaucratically referred to as ippan jokyaku ryokaku jidosha (“motor vehicle for general passengers and travelers”). Saving much ink, the word takushii became commonplace from the start.

It may have been a word simply popularized elsewhere by tourism. However, with the US, Europe, and Japan all essentially using the word “taxi,” most countries were importing their vehicles from a country that used the word. British cars were sent to India, and brands like Toyota and Ford became commonly used as taxis around the world, making traveling one word easier for tourists everywhere.

7 ‘Mama’

The word “mama” is the same in a startlingly high number of languages, or at least very similar, such as eomma in Korean or mami in Czech. (Equivalent words for fathers are also similar but vary more widely.) This consistent term for “mother” may lure you into thinking that this word was so strong, so integral, that it survived from early humanity and spread throughout the world.

The real story is even stranger. It independently arose in many different languages. How could this happen? Research suggests it has everything to do with early speech development. A baby’s babbling is not a series of random noises and follows a pattern. In vocal experimentation, babies often arrive at the “ah” sound first. It is the easiest sound to make, as you do not have to do anything with your mouth to make it. Closing our lips to create an “mmm” also comes quite naturally. Think of how often you still do. Mm-hmm?

6 ‘Haha’

“Haha” is our go-to sound for describing laughter. It has been that way since we first started writing it down—all the way back to Chaucer. Other onomatopoeic variations, such as “hehe,” “hee-hee,” or “ho-ho,” just cannot compete. And, looking at the way that other cultures write out laughter at a keyboard, it appears that this is mirrored across much of the world.^[5]

Each language, of course, has different ways of expressing and typing this “haha” sound. For instance, Spanish will be “jaja.” In Thailand, the number 5 is pronounced “ha,” so they will often express laughter on the keyboard by typing “55555!”

This common “haha” makes for an easy concept to translate in case you want to be dryly sarcastic in other languages. If you would like to express genuine mirth, then you can, of course, just laugh.

5 ‘Guitar’

The word “guitar” is complicated to trace, as it has applied to different stringed instruments throughout history. It wasn’t until the 19th century that a six-stringed instrument closely resembling the versatile and commonplace guitar we know today was developed.

This modern guitar was derived from Spain and a medieval instrument known as a guitarra latina. Much of Europe takes the word from this. However, going back further, the Spanish word has roots in Greek word kithara and Arabic gitara.

However, both the word and instrument go much further back than this. Tar is a Hindi word for “string,” derived from more ancient Persian and Sanskrit. Tar is seen in many other instrument names, such as the tar and sitar.

This long evolution crisscrossing continents created a common word for the instrument across many cultures, and eventually, it integrated into a vast array of languages. Incredibly, at the end of the process, we (almost) all still describe a Fender with the same “gee-ta” sound.^[6]

4 Cha

China exported tea, both the product and the word, around the world. Actually, they exported two different words. “Tea” was pronounced cha in most dialects across China, and this pronunciation was spread via the Silk Road into Persian and then Urdu, Arabic, Russian, and eventually as far as East African languages such as Swahili.

However, a particular dialect pronouncing cha as “te” just so happened to be spoken at two major ports for Dutch trade: the coastal province of Fujian and the island of Taiwan. From Dutch, the word spread into Europe as well as the west coast of Africa and influenced a large number of languages from that point.^[7]

There are languages that use neither word. Unsurprisingly, they tend to be countries where tea grows naturally. However, you’ll find the Chinese terms in almost 200 different languages. Cha derivatives are more common, however, and often a name for a type of tea in languages that don’t use one. Chai tea, for instance, is an Indian tea now popular across much of the world. Armed with both words, you can ask for a cup of tea almost anywhere in the world.

3 Kahve

“Kof-ee,” “kahve,” “kava” . . . Make these three sounds, and you’ve come pretty close to saying “coffee” in most of the languages in the world. That is because most languages borrowed the Turkish word kahve (not to be confused with “Java,” which is a slang term from referring to Javanese coffee), which, in turn, was based on the older Arabic word qahua.

And none have drifted too far from that point. In fact, English uses one of the least recognizable forms. Much of Europe changed “v” to “f” (such as the French cafe), but the Dutch also changed the “a” to an “o,” leaving languages such as English, German, and Afrikaans with the sound “kofi.”^[8] All, however, are still very recognizably tied to the Turkish word. The popularity of the drink spread quickly, and the word came with it.

2 ‘Huh’

A 2013 study lauded “huh” as the most universal word in the world. Despite this, the word is not the same across languages.

. . . Huh?

The thing is that while it doesn’t sound exactly the same, there are an incredibly narrow set of parameters that it adheres to. The equivalent words are always monosyllabic, have a questioning intonation, and all have similar vowel and consonant sounds and formation. This may not sound incredible, but a word with these rules is an exceptional discovery. Imagine finding that “dog” or “chair” had an innate form replicated independently across the majority of languages.

And though many might not think of “huh” as a word, it is, with a place in the dictionaries and everything. Specifically, it is a sound that needs to be learned and not one we naturally produce. (Bizarrely, so is most of the noise we make when we sneeze. So, if you have an explosive sneeze, you are the only one to blame.) This is an important point, as otherwise, “huh” would simply be another naturally occurring sound, such as a grunt or cry.

The study suggested that these similarities exist since “huh” has such a unique function. It has to be easily slid into a conversation without disrupting the initial speaker too greatly. As each language evolved, they all independently found that this type of sound best suited the job.^[9] With this level of similarity, it is a word that can transcend language barriers. It’s helpful, too, as talking to someone who doesn’t speak your language is going to lead to a whole lot of “huh?”

1 Chocolate

Chocolate is another addiction that became unbelievably popular around the world while the name remained largely unchanged.^[10] The word originates in the Nahuatl word xocolatl. In Aztec culture, these cacao beans were widely consumed as a beverage called cacahuatl, a probable origin for the word “cacao.” The Spaniards coined the term “chocolate,” and the word passed from Spanish into many other European languages, including English.

As with coffee, it is perhaps the speed at which new cultures picked up chocolate that kept the name from changing, with dedicated “chocolate houses” springing up in Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries around a product that had become immediately culturally significant. Today, “chocoholic” is an actual word in actual dictionaries, so not a whole lot has changed.

Reggie is a small being moving around the planet, learning new things, and writing some of them down.

Russian actively borrows words from other languages, mainly English. But there are also Russian words that travel in the opposite direction and enter other languages.

Vodka

Russia’s traditional alcoholic drink first came into being in the 15th century, when Slavs learned how to make the so-called bread wine. The science and technology behind the process were developed in the late19th century with participation of the great Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, who is believed to have come up with its ideal ratio of water and alcohol, at 40 percent.

In 1982 the Soviet Union was granted priority in making vodka and the exclusive right to advertise it on the international market under the slogan «Only vodka from Russia is genuine Russian vodka.» Vodka bottles now carry a health warning: «Excessive alcohol consumption is detrimental to health.» To which popular wisdom replies: «Vodka in small amounts is good for you in any amount.»

Troika

A vehicle driven by three horses was first used in the mid-18th century, when the postal service was in need of light, horse-driven carriages for long trips on usually very poor roads. In fact, there is a popular Russian saying, which says «Russia has two problems: fools and roads.»

Until the early 20th century, troika was one of the most widely used means of travel and a popular pastime, especially in winter, when sleighs were used. Troika is associated with vast open spaces and freedom; there are many poems and songs devoted to it.

Perhaps the most expressive is the image created by Nikolai Gogol in his novel «Dead Souls,» in which he compared the whole of Russia to a troika: «Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? … Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer.»

Matryoshka

Matryoshka is a hollow wooden doll, inside which a similar doll of a smaller size is nested, inside which another smaller doll is nested, and so on. Its name is a diminutive of a lower-class girls’ name Matryona.

Interestingly, the Russian matryoshka was inspired by a Japanese nesting doll that was first brought into Russia in the late 19th century. Usually a matryoshka is a set of from three to 24 dolls.

A popular Russian souvenir of recent years is a matryoshka made of Russian political leaders: inside Putin there is Yeltsin, followed by Gorbachev, then Brezhnev, then Khrushchev, then Stalin and finally, a tiny Lenin.

Dacha

A dacha is a house in the country where people who live in the city spend their summer holidays. The name comes from the verb to give (dat’, thus «dacha,» means something that has been given).

Historically, the authorities in Russia and then the Soviet Union «gave» houses like these to members of the privileged classes, state officials, culturefigures and scientists.

Starting from the 1950s to 1960s, dachas became available for ordinary people too, who formed so-called gardeners’ partnerships or dacha construction cooperatives.

These days, dachas are no longer «given» to anyone — they are either built or bought — but the word has remained.

Pogrom

The word pogrom is derived from the verb “gromit’”, meaning «to destroy, demolish,» and is used to denote organized violence against a group of people, usually including physical assault, demolition of houses, industrial facilities and religious buildings.

The most notorious pogroms were organized against Jews in Russia in the 19th and early 20th century, after which the word became known and used in most European languages.  

Kolkhoz

The word is a contraction of the expression “kollektivnoyekhozyaystvo,” meaning a form of collective labor whereby peasants worked together sharing tools and machinery. The first kolkhozes were set up in 1918, and by 1932 all people working the land were forced to join a kolkhoz.

For most of them the move had very poor consequences, since kolzhoz as a form of collective economy has proven inefficient in the extreme. These days, the word is used as a derogatory term to describe a poorly managed (despite a large number of managers) organization.

Kalashnikov

The assault rifle that is considered to be the world’s best type of firearm and is officially called the AK-47 is known under the name of its designer Mikhail Kalashnikov. He first developed it at the start of World War II, when he was just slightly over 20.

The first model of the AK assault rifle was created in 1947. As soon as 1949 it came into service with the Soviet Army and later with armies in many countries of the world. Mikhail Kalashnikov died in December 2013, at the age of 94.

Sputnik

Until the middle of the 20th century, the word “sputnik” was widely used in the sense of «a companion», «somebody travelling with another person.» However when on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into space, its primary meaning changed to «a space object circling around a planet» and this is what it became known as in many other languages.

The launch of the Sputnik marked the start of a space era and, from the political point of view, prompted many to take a fresh look of Russia, which until then had been perceived as a technologically backward country.  

Perestroika

Perestroika denotes a period of reforms and transformation that began in the Soviet Union, after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, and ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prior to 1985, the word did not have any political connotation and meant «refurbishment, changes done to a building or a structure.»

Domestically, perestroika meant an expansion of freedoms, more civil activism, and introduction of market economy. In term of foreign policy, it marked a rejection of confrontation and a shift towards cooperation with the West. Perestroika put an end to the Cold War, which had lasted for nearly 50 years, and has therefore entered the vocabularies of many languages as having a very positive connotation.

Glasnost

Glasnost is a term signifying a policy of openness and transparency in the work of state structures and freedom of information. It was a key component of perestroika, which consisted in a considerable easing of censorship and a removal of numerous information barriers that existed in Soviet society.

The word derived from “glas,” an Old Russian form of the word “golos” (voice). Literally, it meant being able to speak openly and out loud.

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