Hypothesis: You can learn a lot about a culture from what they have to borrow words for. E.g. it's a good sign we had to borrow schadenfreude, but worrying that we had to borrow joie de vivre.
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you can also learn a lot from a culture when a word doesn’t exist. for example in french the word « successful » doesn’t exist
I once tried to explain the word "success" to an Italian friend, to figure out what the Italian word for it was. When she finally understood what I meant, she said "Ah! Fortuna!"
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Interesting. In Hungarian we do have a word for successful (sikeres) but not really for “accomplished”. Missing the subtle difference and implied hard work in “accomplished” - how luck is so much less emphatic in it! - from the language imho says a lot.
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In Quebec, the French word for leadership is “le leadership”. Not sure what they do in France
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Same for leader is “un leader”
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Well, your Italian friend probably didn't really speak Italian
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Also because, to be honest, "success" is a Latin word.
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Interesting that “fortuna” means so many things depending on the context: luck, destiny, etc. Things that might be related to “success”.
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The Italian cognate "successo" means it happened. I would personally say someone is wealthy/important/famous speaking Italian. The Italians replying defending "successo" as the same as "success" is similarly telling as translating to "fortuna"
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Interesting fact: In spanish we use "Exito" when you achieve some kind of success. So if you do an "Exit" selling your company it has a similar phonetic.
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