Last word you learned in a foreign language

[Iyionaku]

English: finale /fɨˈnæli/
English stress is so crazy. How are people supposed to know where the stress is? Is that French -é? If so, why not have ultimate stress? Is it English -e? If so, why pronounce them at all? Seems it's from Italian

The history of those words is a little riddiculous. English already has "final" that is a cognate to German "Finale" and both come from Latin fīnālis. English "finale", however, comes from Italian, but ultimately also from fīnālis. How the distinction between "final" and "finale" could survive is inexplicable to me.

[GrandPiano]

How the distinction between "final" and "finale" could survive is inexplicable to me.

The two words are semantically fairly different. “Final” simply means “last”, while “finale” refers to the grand final part of something—originally probably specifically of a musical piece, since lots of musical terms come from Italian. Furthermore, “final” is usually an adjective, while “finale” is a noun, and though “final” does have a few uses as a noun, none of them overlap with finale. They’re phonetically pretty different, too: /ˈfaɪ̯nəl/ vs. /fɪˈnæli/. So, I don’t see any reason why they would get mixed up.

This is hardly a unique phenomenon, anyway; words that ultimately have the same etymology but arrived through different etymological routes are fairly common. They’re called doublets.

[alynnidalar]

The last word I've learned in a foreign language is ano, which evidently means "yes" in Slovak. (although upon further [careful] googling, it appears it should actually be áno)

I assure you it does not mean "no" in Spanish, however...

[Hominid]

The last word I've learned in a foreign language is ano, which evidently means "yes" in Slovak. (although upon further [careful] googling, it appears it should actually be áno)

I assure you it does not mean "no" in Spanish, however...

Context? Why would anyone think it means no in Spanish?

[zyma]

The last word I've learned in a foreign language is ano, which evidently means "yes" in Slovak. (although upon further [careful] googling, it appears it should actually be áno)

I assure you it does not mean "no" in Spanish, however...

Context? Why would anyone think it means no in Spanish?

I assume because it's ano.

It is, however, the Spanish word for anus.

[alynnidalar]

The joke is that a word with a perfectly ordinary meaning in one language has a much less innocuous meaning in another; I find this sort of thing humorous.

[gestaltist]

The joke would go better with colloquial Polish where "no" means yes.

[GrandPiano]

The joke would go better with colloquial Polish where "no" means yes.

Except the joke is that “ano” has a much less innocent meaning than just “yes” or “no” in Spanish.

[GrandPiano]

引擎 yǐnqíng “engine” (loanword from English)

[Iyionaku]

高跟鞋 gāogēnxié - high heels

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

鵜 u - cormorant

I randomly discovered this monosyllabic bird name today and thought it was pretty interesting :)

[Pāṇini]

Mine would be cegante - blinding. I only learnt this because cegador isn't actually a real word in Portuguese, tragically enough.

[Omzinesý]

I checked Swedish word "lä", and dictionary gave Finnish word "lee", which must be a Swedish loan. I've never heard it. They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.

[Aevas]

I checked Swedish word "lä", and dictionary gave Finnish word "lee", which must be a Swedish loan. I've never heard it. They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.

Apparently it's lee in English as well! Its core meaning is 'place where there is no wind, shelter from wind'. In Finnish it appears to be used mostly in nautical contexts, from what I can gather.

[zyma]

They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.

Some kind of "heaven"? What do you mean by that?

Edit: Oh, wait, given what Aszev said, did you mean "haven"?

[Omzinesý]

They seem to mean some kind of 'heaven'.

Some kind of "heaven"? What do you mean by that?

Edit: Oh, wait, given what Aszev said, did you mean "haven"?

Yes, it seems I typed it wrong, which is not uncommon.

[zyma]

Oh, no worries, of course. I was just curious what you meant.

---

Anyway:

منطقة minṭaqa "region, area"

[Aevas]

German
die Badewanne 'bathtub'

[Aevas]

Today I learned the English word belly flop. Is this the general word across varieties or are there synonyms that are more common regionally?

[alynnidalar]

It's the only term I'm familiar with in Michigan, USA, but I can't speak for other regions.

Thesaurus.com suggests "belly buster", "belly flopper", "belly whop", and "belly whopper", but I've never heard any of these and am having a hard time finding any actual usages online--every link seems to just be another dictionary site. If they're regional they must be pretty niche.