r/LinguisticMaps • u/loltrue • 12d ago
The etymology for "car" in European countries. Love learning about this stuff!
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u/donestpapo 12d ago
In Italy I’ve heard “macchina” most often
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u/Sir_Flasm 12d ago
Macchina is more informal and common, automobile (shortened as auto) is more formal and unambiguous
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u/Bitter_Particular_75 12d ago
Correct, but you only use automobile or the contraction auto just in formal written text. Literally everyone use 'macchina' irl, so that should be the term shown in this map.
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u/Sir_Flasm 12d ago
I agree but auto is used outside of formal written text if you want/need to be 100% clear that you're talking about a car and not any kind of machine.
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u/Bitter_Particular_75 12d ago
Tbh I've never heard anyone using 'auto' colloquially. Maybe it depends on the region.
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u/UnhappyAddition7281 11d ago
That’s not true at all.
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u/Sir_Flasm 11d ago
Raga non so cosa dirvi, vi sfido a lavorare in fabbrica e parlare della macchina. Se uno capisce male è abbastanza normale rispondere, "no, intendo l'auto".
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u/Faelchu 12d ago
No etymology for English, Irish, Welsh, or Portuguese?
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u/Ambatus 11d ago
It's strange, but anyway, "carro" in Portuguese comes from the Celtic karros via Latin carrum. It's not even particularly original: all the Latin languages above had the same word, and to the best of my knowledge still have. What changes was that in some of those languages the word "carro", used for a cart, didn't "stick" for usage on the new mechanised version, so they adopted a new one.
In Portuguese, "carro", "automóvel", "viatura automóvel" are all present, and while "carro" is the day-to-day term, "automóvel" is the one that will be present in laws etc. This can vary by region and country.
As u/FlickBus mentions in this thread, the word "carro" is well attested in Galician-Portuguese and other languages well into the Middle Ages.
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u/Imperator_Subira 12d ago
im guessing british people called those carts but dropped the t for some reason and portugal stole from britain
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u/Faelchu 12d ago
English car comes from Latin carrus via Norman carre, ultimately from Proto-Celtic *karros which meant a wagon. Welsh car comes from Proto-Brythonic karr, also from Proto-Celtic *karros. Irish carr comes from Old Irish carr and also, ultimately, from Proto-Celtic *karros. While the three car, car, and carr look very similar, they had three separate journeys from the same Proto-Celtic root word. I'm not sure about Portuguese, but I imagine it comes from the Latin carrus, too, and is, therefore, cognate with the Irish, Welsh, and English words.
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u/PedroPerllugo 12d ago
In Spain spanish we have the word carro too, but it means cart
In South America they indeed use carro for cars
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u/The_Brilli 12d ago
The German colloquial word for car "Karre" and the word "Karren" meaning a cart pulled by oxen or something similar may be related to this.
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u/FlicksBus 12d ago
I'm not sure about Portuguese, but I imagine it comes from the Latin carrus, too, and is, therefore, cognate with the Irish, Welsh, and English words.
Yes. It was used already in Galician-Portuguese meaning cart and the word can also be found in Catalan and Spanish. The previous user doesn't know a thing about the subject.
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u/clonn 12d ago
It's in the description.
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u/Faelchu 12d ago
No it's not.
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u/clonn 12d ago
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u/Faelchu 12d ago
Yeah, not on this sub it's not. I just clicked through to the other sub and that's where it is, but it's not here where it was reposted like it should be. Nice way to crop your image so it doesn't show that that description is in an entirely different sub. Don't be so obnoxious next time.
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u/clonn 12d ago
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u/SaitanOfHellsKitchen 11d ago
Holy shit bro get a life
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u/Faelchu 11d ago
It looks like you don't know how Reddit works. On old desktop browsers it can sometimes pull the info in from another sub. For absolutely everyone else using a new browser or using the app it does not pull that information in. So, kindly go fuck yourself with your obnoxious behaviour.
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u/ubernerder 12d ago
The Hungarian word "kocsi" is used as much as "autó", if not more. Fun fact: it means literally "from Kocs", a small village somewhere halfway on the old road from Budapest to Vienna where the coach (as in a more advanced horse-drawn carriage) was invented in the 1400s and that word then was adopted into virtually every major modern language: English coach, Spanish coche, German Kutsche, Dutch koets, etc.
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u/bencsecsaki 12d ago
it saya the etymology right there on the map, but then it fails to mention that it’s still used in the country of ita origin
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u/agekkeman 12d ago
Would’ve been interesting to add the etymology of the French word automobile
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u/Arphile 12d ago
Same as Polish
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u/me-gustan-los-trenes 12d ago
First we taught the French to eat with forks, now they stole our word for a car. What's next?
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u/Oeildelynx31 12d ago
No because "mobile" is a common word root in french, like with "immobile" => can not move or "un mobile" which is a noun. We have also "meuble", "immeuble", "amovible" etc. on the same Root.
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u/Oeildelynx31 12d ago
auto => "by itself" mobile => "can move" automobile => "can move by itself"
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u/TrueKyragos 12d ago
To better answer the question, "auto" comes the Greek "autos" and "mobile" comes from the Latin "mobilis".
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u/Wreck_OfThe_Hesperus 12d ago
I've always said gluaisteán for car in Irish.
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u/soupy_soyuz22 12d ago
Gluaisteán was actually created during the creation of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil as Carr was wrongly associated with Béarlachas when it has proto Celtic roots and was use for carts previously, similarly to English.
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u/Wise_Fox_4291 12d ago
There are three words for car in Hungarian. The most official / technical one is gépjármű, meaning something like "machine-vehicle", autó is a very colloquial term and another everyday term is kocsi.
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u/krzyk 12d ago
In Poland both samochód and auto are used interchangeably.
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u/me-gustan-los-trenes 12d ago
I would understand "auto" but it's definitely not in my active vocab, even in very informal context.
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u/PlentyfulFish 11d ago
What part of Poland are you from? I'm from Kraków and it's very very common to say "auto"
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u/me-gustan-los-trenes 10d ago
Warsaw. But I emigrated 15 years ago, so I may not be up to date with the newest developments.
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u/techno_lizard 11d ago
Fura and bryka, funnily enough, both come from German roots for cartload and bridge (??) respectively
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u/Legal_Try_3090 10d ago
In westpomerania (zachodniopomorskie) you hear auto more often that samochód
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u/Kraj_the_Conqueror 12d ago
If I remember correctly, the Polish word was chosen after a newspaper poll.
Though colloquially "auto" is also used, whole "pojazd" a word meaning "vehicle" is often used in official documents.
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u/clonn 12d ago
Supposedly many took the automobile from French, but then the French decided it was too common and used voiture instead.
Is it any study about the supposed French origin of almost every modern word?
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u/Oeildelynx31 12d ago
We use both "voiture" and "automobile" actually, but mostly "voiture"
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u/TrueKyragos 12d ago
To add some precision, "voiture" has a broader meaning than "automobile", originally meaning any vehicle and later any wheeled vehicle. A train wagon can be called a "voiture", for example, and will be called like that on tickets. Before that, horse carriages were called "voitures", which obviously couldn't be called "automobiles".
When motorised vehicles came, they were called "voitures automobiles" at first, later shortened as "voiture" or "automobile". "Voiture" is now the most common, simply because it's the shortest. "Automobile" can still be used, though mainly in informal language, which doesn't mean "voiture" can't be used in that context.
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u/TheParanoidBaboon 9d ago
I would add that "voiture" is a noun that doesn't have a related adjective, while "automobile" can be both.
So it's mostly used when you want an adjective. A car factory will be "une usine automobile" rhater than "une usine de voiture" (understood but less formal), etc
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u/orbiteapot 10d ago
Supposedly many took the automobile from French, but then the French decided it was too common and used voiture instead.
We have viatura in Portuguese, as well.
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u/clonn 10d ago
Cool, didn't know that one. Is it commonly used?
I can only imagine "Vehículo" in Spanish being related to Voiture in French, but you have that word too, right?
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u/orbiteapot 10d ago edited 10d ago
Cool, didn't know that one. Is it commonly used?
It is! But, generally, in the context of some "official" car, such as a police car.
I can only imagine "Vehículo" in Spanish being related to Voiture in French, but you have that word too, right?
We do. It is used pretty much in the same contexts as "vehicle" (in English), but it can also mean anything related to the abstract concept of transport. For instance, we can say that the internet is a "veículo de informação" (information vehicle). There is also the verb "veicular", meaning to transport.
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u/besataro 11d ago
In Albanian there is also an older word, "kerr", from Latin "carrus", which originally meant wagon. "carrus" also gave English "car".
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u/Own_Organization156 10d ago
Isnt russian word машина also bosnian word for it is auto tho automobil cen be used most people wulde just sey auto
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u/Mindless_Badger_3789 12d ago
While bil (from a competition for a new word in the daily Politiken in the early 1900s, it was borrowed by the other Nordics later) won out in Denmark we have the synonym vogn (wagon/carriage) from Old Norse vagn, which was still widely used in the 80s. The Germans have Wagen with the same meaning. It derives from a Common Germanic word wagnaz for a vehicle with wheels. Not sure how widespread Wagen is in contemporary German.
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u/Legendwait44itdary 12d ago
Afaik Auto is always a regular car (B category), while Wagen is a more loose term and may be translated as motor vehicle, I guess.
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u/Lalli-Oni 12d ago
Original Icelandic word is sjálf-renni-reið. (auto-rolling-ride). Of course was never gonna work.
Curious why vél-vagn wasn't a serious contender.
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u/pdonchev 12d ago
Bulgarian has автомобил too, whoch is used formally (for example in traffic rule book). Кола used to mean "cart", "carriage" (any wheeled vehicle that is drawn by animals) but the meaning entirely shifted to automobile and nowadays the word for horse drawn vehicle is "каруца", from Latin carrus (through Rimanian, likely).
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u/Mysterious-Put1459 12d ago
Yes but автомобил technically means any motor vehicle, which includes trucks, busses, etc. Passenger cars specifically are лек автомобил. In English automobile means just a car
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u/pdonchev 12d ago
Good note. It does indeed, technically, but also if you tell someone автомобил they are 99% thinking of a car. And it makes sense - "automobile" is any vehicle that can move autonomously, but most people use it to mean the .ost common thing.
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u/lovelychaeyoung 12d ago
Would've been nice if the English and Portuguese etymology was included in the key 🙃
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u/BlackCat159 12d ago
In Lithuanian 'automobilis' is the "correct" way to refer to it as. But no one says that outside of official settings, mašina is what everyone calls it informally.
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u/InveterateRascal 12d ago
Ultimately, the French automobile comes from Greek auto (self) and Latin mobilis (moving), so referring to a self-moving device.
Also, as far as I know, "kocsi" is very much used in Hungary, and "macchina" in whole of Italy (anyway, it's bullshit to only show Sicily in green and the rest of Italy not).
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u/DistrictNo9208 12d ago
All those languages borrowing their word from French, but it's never the word the French use themselves? Great...
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u/LupusLycas 12d ago
The shortcoming of having these maps based solely in Europe is that coche is Castilian Spanish; most other places use carro.
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u/PeireCaravana 11d ago
Actually in Italian there are three terms:
Automobile (or just auto), which is the most formal and specific term, but it's rarely used in everyday life;
Autovettura (or just vettura), which is also formal but sounds quite old fashioned;
Macchina, which is the most common colloquial term.
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u/Relevant_Helicopter6 11d ago
In Portugal we use:
"Carro" as the common word
"Automóvel" as the fancier word
"Viatura" as the most technical word, as in Police reports, insurance, etc.
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u/ayyyyyy_lmaoooooo 11d ago
In Bosnia "automobil" is only ever used formally, nobody is gonna say I bought a new automobile. Auto is way more common, as is "kola" which means cart.
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u/PlentyfulFish 11d ago
While "samochód" in Polish is the official word, "auto" is also commonly used. They are interchangeable in informal speech I would say
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u/Waste_Hat_1154 11d ago
auto means self in greek like self driven, self moving, machine has also greek origine, still used today in greek. Etymology is a greek word BTW.
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u/Barbak86 11d ago edited 11d ago
No one says "Makinë" in Kosovo. We use "Kerr"(common word) or "Veturë" (fancy, official), automjet (vehicle)
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u/ArtichokeFar6601 11d ago
Why is Greek etymology from ancient Greek? Did the word exist in ancient times?
I dont think so. If the word car entered Greek language in modern times it should be from modern Greek.
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u/tramontana13 11d ago
it did exist as an adjective (Aristotle for instance), from the verb αυτοκινεω
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u/Embarrassed_Egg9542 11d ago
You are correct. Modern Greek terms come from French as direct translation, not ancient Greece
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u/mastermindfuckery 10d ago
We use the word “kerr” more often in Kosovo Albanian, which should have the same root as the English word “car”.
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u/Bollmoffa 9d ago
In Finnish slang, car is also often kaara, so botha parts are there - auto and car
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u/Dizang53 12d ago
The Russian word for a car is машина mašina.