Comment by bloppe
20 days ago
These are called translingual words. 2 interesting ones are coffee and chocolate. basically no matter where you are in the world, people will understand those (with slight regional differences like "cafe", similar to hello)
Chocolate is native to the Americas and started to spread around the world in the 17th century, so it makes sense that most languages use the same word, as it is a quite recent addition.
Chili peppers, tomatos, and potatos (among others) are all from the Americas, but have their own names in every area they've spread to, or have taken the name of something else. Why is chocolate different?
True, but you could say the same thing about e.g. pineapple, which has a bunch of different words for it.