Dolls in other languages

Yeah, I also usually use the English expressions instead of German, but there are a few exceptions:

joint - Gelenk
head cap - I sometimes use the German word: Kopfplatte
eyelash - Wimper
glass/acryl eye - Glasauge/Acrylauge

If I tell somebody that I collect Asian Ball Jointed Dolls people sometimes ask: "What?" Then I translate it into asiatische Gelenkpuppen.

 

I find it maddeningly interesting that English words are used as the standard in other countries, like how English-speakers tend to use foreign words for certain things, like menage-a-trois (bad example rofl), doppelganger, graffiti, klutz, guru, and other things. A lot of Americans, especially, probably don't even know these words aren't actual English words.

Gahhhh I love language.

 

@Ashercroix: Not so strange when you keep in mind that almost all technical terms in this hobby are english... or engrish and most of us primarily visit english-speaking forums.

@Chastity: In the Netherlands we use the word 'Wimper' too. And 'oog/ogen' when we're talking about eyes.

 

Yeah, your language is very similar to mine. I always understand a bit if somebody speaks Dutch.

 

People here are saying that the translation of doll into their language sounds more childish than saying the english word "doll", and english is my first language and saying "doll", but when I say I collect dolls or I like dolls, it sounds very childish and people would still group that together with more childish dolls.

I don't really have anything else to say, but I think the English words are just phrases put together through time in the doll world to differentiate between a human's possessions and a doll's because I can't say "face-up" without it not making sense when talking about "make-up" and vice versa. Some words/phrases are still the same when talking about a human though.

 

Yeah, I love languages too and I used to not like this, but the reason many people don't realize these are from different languages is because they've kind of been "transferred" over. I can't find the right word because they haven't been transferred, it's just that we use them now instead of making up our own? I mean, that's like saying since in another language they have a specific word for something and we want a word to mean that specific thing we just make up a word.

Also, you have to remember that language evolves, and words are borrowed. There are many "Germanic" and "Romance" language whose words are based off latin or they were once close, but they've evolved into being more unique by being separated or having interaction with different languages whose words then get filtered in.

The Japanese people use SO many English words in their language and realize this, but many of them can't differentiate between that word and its English counterpart.

The Moors occupied Spain for about 700 years and so there are many words in Arabic that are related to Spanish words and minor cultural details that they share.

This is just the evolution of language to me, really. I do wish people would be more educated and see their origin, but a lot of words we use now were once, possibly hundreds of years ago, just beginning to be borrowed words.

 

May I add some russian terms? ^^

asian ball-jointed doll is asiatskaya sharnirnaya kukla in Russian Xd
Elastic string is resinka
S hook - kryuchyok
Re-string a doll - peretyazhka kukli
the joint - sharnir

 

Spanish, Italian, and French evolved from Latin, but it's like English in America... We all speak practically the same language, but in different parts of America, people speak it with a weird accent or they have their own slang words. It's just that Spanish, Italian, and French have had like.. THOUSANDS of years to make their dialects of Latin really distinct. :P

English is a hodgepodge of both, honestly. There are a lot of Germanic words "and" and "und" and things like that... But there's a lot of Latin influence as well "patrem" (meaning father) and "patron" which would also mean father, but has evolved as a word. Not to mention most medical terms come from Latin roots, things like that.

This is a really really cool topic. Language is a passion of mine, I love learning it. I like to see the patterns in language, how it evolves, how so much is interconnected or very very alike. How some of it (the difference between Romanized writing languages like in Europe and the Americas, and the pictograph writing of Asia) is absolutely from one spectrum to the other.

I study Japanese (though it's been a few years, but I'm going back to school for it), but it's a life goal of mine to learn as many languages as possible before I die. :P

Anyway, these are some really neat words and stuff like that, and it's fun trying to pronounce them, even when you know you're doing it improperly, hehe.

 

Oh, this is a fun thread! Especially since some of our Finnish terms are very similar to the Estonian words.

Doll = nukke
Wig = peruukki (this is very similar to the Swedish word)
Eyes = silmät

S-hook = s-koukku
Ball-joint = pallonivel

hot glue sueding = kuumaliimasuedaus
ABJD = aasialainen pallonivelnukke

Often we use the English terms, such as white skin, tiny, faceup (but we also use the word 'meikki' for faceup)

 

Funny! 'Cause A hinge in Dutch is called a 'scharnier'.

 

Silk, cool!

and more:
hot glue sueding - prokleyka goryachim kleem *lol*

 

Apart from the one CinnamonTea mentioned a lot of times Swedish people just seem to use the English terms for things. Of course we have words for "doll" etc in Swedish but when it comes to BJD-specific jargon oftentimes we just borrow words, or we Swedify English words. Like fairly often you'll hear someone say "faceupa" which is really just turning faceup into a Swedish verb, that is "to do/paint a faceup". lol

 

*nodsnods*
Adding an -a at the end is common for these Swenglish words, to verb-ify them.
blushing (to blush) => blusha

timid, incidentally I was just explaining the term faceup to someone. And well, it is like makeup, only an entire face, so faceup seems logical, but one does wonder how it came to be!

For the most part technical words do tend to be untranslated from English, or moderately modified to fit the target language as seen by above posts, including Swedish examples. This makes me wonder, any Icelandic BJD owners here?!

If memory serves me right, they allegedly have a sort of linguistic council that translates foreign words in suitable words with Icelandic origin and so, so that there'll be no "Iclenglish".

 

I can add some Russian too ^^
"Ball-jointed doll", though translated as "sharnirnaya kukla", is frequently pronounsed easier - "sharnirka". It's not a dictionary word - just a term used among doll-owners.

 

on the oh so wonderfull french BJD site most terms are still in english.
but where I live, not in europe, where there is not english word in our french dictionnary... Ôo
forget that, here are some translated words XD
wig= perruque
dolls= poupées
hook= crochet
joints= joints (the pronounciation is different)
ball jointed dolls= poupées à joints rotulle (or joints en boule)

 

We do the same in Finnish.

blushing is 'blushaus' and to blush is 'blushata'

 

I don't think anyone else has added Welsh, so here goes The sentence structure of Welsh is very different to English (English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, Welsh is a Verb-Subject-Object language at face value, but the rules in Welsh aren't so strict!!), so translations may seem a bit strange!

Doll would be 'dol' or 'doli', 'doliau' is the plural.

Ball-joint doll would be 'dol cymal-pêl', and you could use that in a sentence such as "Dwi'n casglu doliau cymal-pêl, mae gen i chwech rwan." (meaning: "I collect ball-joint dolls, I have six now.")

Eyes - llygaid
Eye putty/wax - cwyr llygad
S-hook - bacha-S
Face-up - colur-wyneb (literally, make-up face)
Skin colour - lliw croen
Wig - gwallt-gosod (literally, 'hair-false'), but would usually be called a 'wig'
Blushing - gwladeiddia or cocha, I can't decide which is more appropriate!

 

Jescissa, wow, it is really hard to pronounce

 

I think the same about Russian! All I can say is do svidaniya!

 

Interesting topic!

I checked up some Korean ^^

구체관절인형 'ku che kwan jeol in hyeon' - BJD
Wow that's a mouthful!

가발 'kapal' - wig

신발 'shinpal' - shoes

의상 'wisang' - Clothing

안구 'anku' - eyes