Language

You say “toe-may-toh,” I say “toe-mah-toe.” While this playful phrase highlights the differences between British and English accents, there are many words that are extremely similar across multiple languages. Linguists call these terms “cognates,” meaning they share the same root word or origin. Here are several words that travel across

borders and languages, always staying recognizably similar. The edible chocolate known and loved today comes from the cacao bean, first grown thousands of years ago in the Amazon basin. These beans were so valuable for flavoring food and drink that Indigenous peoples traded the beans as currency when Europeans arrived...