From there, their and they’re to (or is it two?) than and then, all of us could go on and on about the rules of the English language.
As a native English speaker, it’s easy to latch onto how arbitrary the rules of our language’s grammar and spelling can be.
While the origin of words and phrases can be really interesting, they also make you realize how complicated English is.
This became abundantly clear to me when I went on a service trip to Guatemala while in college.
Naturally, when we met other college students from Guatemala, we talked about and compared everything from school to music to food.
One of the most interesting comparisons was between currencies.
Guatemalans use the quetzal, which is named after the national bird.
The gold coins and banknotes – like the Guatemalan flag and coat of arms – are embossed with an image of the small, colorful bird that is nearly endangered.
Not only is the animal beloved because the species is threatened but because it is important to Mesoamerican mythology.
Various legends consider the quetzal to be divine and closely associated with a major deity, Quetzalcoatl.
Ancient Mayans also saw the bird as a symbol of freedom and wealth and used their feathers as a medium of exchange (although it was forbidden to kill the animals), as well as an image of goodness and light.
Even language itself shows how important the birds are, as “quetzal” can also be translated to “precious” or “sacred” in some Mesoamerican languages.
While they didn’t explain in such depth, our Guatemalan friends could very quickly convey to us that the name of their currency had a deep, special meaning.
On the other hand, of about a dozen Americans, not one of us had even a guess as to why dollars are called dollars.
As it turns out, the “dollar” is pretty much the result of a game of telephone.
According to Merriam-Webster, at the beginning of the 16th century, the Count of Schlick opened a mine in a town in the present-day Czech Republic, known by the German name Sankt Joachimsthal.
Traders wanted an international standard for currency and coins made at that mine spread throughout Europe. They began to be called Schlicken thalers or joachimstalers (which came from Joachim’s thalers).
Soon, the long names were shortened to the German term “taler,” which was added to the English vocabulary as “daler.”
In the 1780s, the dollar was proposed as the monetary unit of the United States.
Needless to say, there wasn’t a sentimental meaning behind the name of our money.
Likewise, there were lots of phrases we used while we were in Guatemala that left our new friends baffled.
For instance, people had a lot of motivational phrases to share before we got to work each day.
In 2019, a bunch of college kids were saying “let’s get this bread,” which is definitely something that could be confusing considering it doesn’t make a lot of sense even in English.
Essentially, “let’s get this bread” means “let’s get this money,” which we could only assume probably came from money being nicknamed “dough.”
Still, questions from our friends made us realize we had no idea about the origin of much of our slang – it just caught on and became part of our vocabulary before we thought twice.
Apparently, if enough of your friends say something, it’s easy to join in the trend.
That played out the next morning when one of the Honduran students we were working with was so excited to kick the day off by saying, “Alright guys, let’s bake this bread!”
At least there’s one phrase we don’t need to wonder about: “lost in translation.”
-Kayleen Pretrovia is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.