Talk:Word Selection: carpet/@comment-128.54.60.219-20200107230653

Any word that is only in English in origin and borrowed by other languages is a red flag. Why? First because Google translate is sometimes plain wrong and just modifies the English word when there isn't yet a translation in a given language. So we can't actually be sure that Telugu actually uses "karpet", or even Filipino and Indonesian. I've already mentioned that Japanese Google translations are loaded with these incorrect, supposed borrowings from English. Not sure why japanese has so many.

The only way to check would be to use print dictionaries

Even then I would say we should avoid these English borrowings and go with a different concensus, if there is one. In this case, we could go with Arabic and Persian. It's transliterated as "Farsh" but I think it's actually pronounced "farash" in both languages. Another option is Hindi, Persian, Turkish (gali or hali). Either way, it's probably not a good choice since it's best not to have words end in -li, especially short words. Also, there are a lot of minimal pairs with these forms.

I think the only time when we should go with an English borrowing is when it's vastly international or when the concept was first introduced in English. "carpet" doesn't fit the bill. Carpets are probably originally from Persia, all the more reason to go with "farsh".

Ektor