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Comment by exidy

6 hours ago

English is unusual in that we have both Germanic "weld" and Latinate "solder" and they've acquired different meanings. Spanish (and other Romance languages) use the term "solder" (soldado) for both.

Czech uses "Pájení" (derived from "joining") vs "Svařování" (derived from "boiling".

So, also different with different etymology in a language from a different group (although these things were probably influenced by German)

Interesting. In dutch we use 'solderen' vs 'lassen', in German they use 'schweizen' and 'loten'.

English has a third term like that as well called 'brazing', then there is silver solder (a high temperature version of soldering), in dutch we'd call that 'hardsolderen', whereas what the English call brazing we call oxy-acetyleen lassen (which is more of a process name by virtue of naming the ingredients).

Soldadura autogeno and Soldadura en el arco (sp?) are what I think the modifiers used in Spanish to indicate brazing and (arc) welding.

  • Schweissen und löten. Has nothing to do with Switzerland (Schweiz) ;)

    • Ah yes, you are right! I was going by ear, rather than by the written version, in fact I can't recall seeing it written. German is a language that I will happily use but don't ask me to write a letter in it, you'll probably need exponential notation to represent the number of errors.

As an aside: Chinese also uses the same term for both (焊接), and the standard English translation is "welding". This can lead to some confusion when Chinese manufacturers start talking about e.g. "surface-mount welding". :)

  • Heh, that would be a funny misunderstanding to have as well as the opposite, when you get back something soldered when you expected it to be welded.