floor 'ground'

W Brewer brewerwa at GMAIL.COM
Fri Sep 26 19:00:54 UTC 2014


Just for fun, ran the following two sentences in Google translator for
several of its languages:
(1) The apple fell from the tree down to the **ground**.
(2) The apple fell off the table down to the **floor**.

Only the ruddy Dutch do it just like us:
(1) De appel viel van de boom tot aan de **grond**.
(2) De appel viel van de tafel naar beneden naar de **vloer**.

Languages where Google says _ground_ & _floor_ are the same word:
German Boden, Mandarin di-4, French le sol, Spanish suelo, Japanese,
Korean, Portuguese cha~o, (Vietnamese, Thai, I think).

Different words for  _ground_ & _floor_:
Other Germanic, Yiddish, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, Esperanto.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list