My guess is that it is so because of sharing some common Literature. The Latin and Greek roots are of course common, but then so is Shakespeare and Dante (to some degree). After all Europe is a pretty small continent. Actually, it's not even a continent strictly speaking.furrykef wrote:Yeah, it's surprising what idioms European languages share sometimes.
Not quite sure what you mean here. I don't know any Spanish, and I thought I knew English ...furrykef wrote:For instance, you can translate "I'm going to eat it" word for word into Spanish, as long as you shift the word "it" before the verb:

Do you mean "to be going to do something" as in "to be about to do something"?
In Italian it's grammatically correct to literally translate the expression but saying "to go to do" (andare a fare) always implies the motion and never the "to be about to".
By the way, about idioms. In Italy idioms are usually regional (not surprising considering Italian history): once I was talking with a friend who is from the south and he wasn't understanding idioms like "ogni due per tre" (every two times three -- meaning: almost always) and "hanno aperto le gabbie" (they opened the cages -- meaning: it's a mayhem). I always thought those idioms were Italian and not Milanese ...
Well not that there are many ways to say "you are welcome"furrykef wrote: Then there are lots of other things that are harder to notice. For instance, bienvenido (and the Italian form "benvenuto", etc.) means "welcome", right? But if you look closely, you'll also see that it's formed from "bien" (well) and "come" (venido). Well come = welcome.In fact, even Japanese shares this idiom with "yoku irasshaimashita", since "irassharu" is just the honorific form of "kuru".

but thinking of Japanese ... what about ようこそ, as far as I know it doesn't come from よくいらっしゃいました or similar. But I might be very wrong.
Something that always struck me is the words for mam and dad, as in almost all the languages they share the same phonemes (ma or pa or ba ...)
Though it's not very surprising since those phonemes are the ones children utter first. This makes me thinks about Japanese: はは and ちち are used when talking with out-circle people, and お母さん and お父さん when talking directly to one's parent. Is it the same with babies? That is those (おかあさん and おとうさん) are the words used by toddlers when they first learn to speak when addressing their parents? (I'm not really asking about さん instead of ちゃん but to me はは and ちち would be easier to pronounce for little babies than おかあさん or おとうさん ...)