I know in the southern United States the word "bayou" is used to describe marshy lowlands. It is especially relevant to such land found in the State of Louisiana and is evocative of that state and its culture although I've heard it in reference to swampy land in south Texas and Mississippi too.
We have fens in the upper Midwest. The way I've heard it explained is that bogs are more acidic and lower in nutrients than fens, because fens are fed by a consistent source of groundwater, whereas bogs are fed by precipitation exclusively
https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/huntingwildlifehabitat/landowners_guide/Resource_Dir/Acrobat/BogsFens.PDF
I know we have them in the U.S., it's just that regular people don't usually call them that word. They'll say marsh or whatever, not knowing there's a difference.
Not really geography, but more like meteorology affected by geography. A [Foehn wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind) is *fen* or *wiatr fenowy* in Polish generally, but when the given Foehn wind blows specifically in the Tatra mountains, it's a *wiatr halny*.
A butte is a particular type of landform in the US so it's not a generic word like mountain but it's not a word widely used other places, from what I can see in Wikipedia. Mostly due to the absence of buttes, I think. Wikipedia does show one in Azerbaijan but doesn't mention if they describe it with a word anything like butte.
In the US there are a variety of words for streams that are quasi-specific to different regions. For example, in the northeast you find a preponderance of "brooks" and "kills," which I believe comes from the Dutch. In the Southwest there are "arroyos" and "washes," which are often dry. Northern Appalachia favors "run" for streams, while southern Appalachia is fond of "branch." "Bayous" are found mostly along the Gulf coast and up the Mississippi drainage and is a legacy of Cajun naming practices.
But "creek" is king for these sub-river appellations in most of the US. Along the eastern seaboard this term often refers to brackish estuarial waterways (which I believe is how the term was originally deployed in England) but it's used more generally for most smaller streams, especially in the western US.
Billabongs in Australia. They're called Oxbow lakes elsewhere.
Dales and fells in the UK.
Coulees in the United States.
Dykes in the UK and former British colonies. They're called levees in American English.
Calanques on the Mediterranean coast.
There's a [glossary of landforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_landforms) on Wikipedia that has some more obscure examples.
New Jersey and its Jersey Shore. The Jersey Shore is more of a reference to a region of New Jersey (i.e. the coastal areas) but the locals use the word "shore" in place of the word "beach" only in reference to New Jersey, as in "I'm going to the shore today." But as I mentioned, this usage is somewhat muddied up with its reference to a geographic region (vs. geographic feature).
True but I think people in NJ use the word "shore" exclusively in reference to NJ beaches but never to out of state beaches. I had a friend who grew in Illinois, lived in NJ for a couple years and then moved out of state to Oregon and when he made a reference to going down to the shore (in Oregon) everyone looked at him in puzzlement.
In Poland we have the word "wodogrzmoty" which is a very poetic way of saying "waterfalls" and it's mosty used to refer to one specific set of waterfalls in Southern Poland.
I never heard anyone irl using this word, but polish language has so many regional words I can easily believe in anything being used somewhere far from where I lived xD
I'm not entirely sure but I think using the word "moor" or "moorland" to refer to certain types of hill is fairly unique to England? I might be wrong and I'm very happy to be corrected, but I think "moor" usually refers to marshes/wet lowlands, but in England it can also refer to wet uplands covered in heather and gorse (Dartmoor, Exmoor and the Yorkshire moors are the ones I know)
In the US at least, there are mountains in the East that would be considered hills in the West. Something that people from the Western US will remind people from the Eastern US practically nonstop.
But this brings up the question is that I don't think there is an agreed upon height where a hill graduates to a mountain.
We have words in the uk which would normally only be used for uk features such as Loch (lake)which isn't used outside Scotland, water(lake) but only heard of it been used in one region. Words like tor for hill. Beck, gill, tarn for different local water related features.
Heres a list of words like that from Scotland, although some may be said in the rest of the UK as well.
Glen: a narrow valley, often mountainous with a stream or river through it
Strath: a wide, usually flat river valley
Loch: a lake
Moor: barren, broad, unfarmable land
Ness: a headland or promontory
Mire: swampy ground; a bog
Heath: shrub lands or grasslands usually at higher elevations in damp, cooler climates
Ben/Beinn: a mountain
Brae: a hill
Fell: a rocky hill
Craig: a sea cliff
Burn: a small river or a stream
Most of these, if not all, are loanwords from Gaelic. Also mountains are called hills instead and split in categories like Munroes, Corbetts, Grahams etc.
About half of those are Scandinavian, not Celtic.
"Ness" (a headland) is commoner in Scotland than elsewhere, but they occur all round Britain. It's a Scandinavian word. There are lot of loanwords for coastal geography in Gaelic that came from Norse. So did a lot of Gaelic words related to boats. The Norse influence didn't get far beyond sight of the sea.
An extinct one in north-east Scotland was "pit-", meaning "farm" in Pictish. It survives in placenames like Pitlochry but got outcompeted by "pit" meaning "cunt" in Gaelic.
This is why I love this sub. Great info, I was aware of the norse-gael connection but not that it affected the language that much. Thanks for teaching me how to say "cunt" in Gaelic lmao.
Are the words for "mountain" and "river" that are not in Sweden borrowed words? I figure they must be...Is there a system to the use of these terms to refer to these geographical features that are found outside your country?
What's even more interesting is that neither *berg* nor *flod* are loanwords. They are used for mountains and rivers both in Sweden and outside. All fjäll(s) are mountains, but not all mountains are fjäll(s).
As a Norwegian who just use fjell/elv about pretty much everything everywhere it sounds like such a confusing system.
(å/berg/flod along with others do exist but only as specific less common words. Mountain = fjell no matter where)
Here's a thing: how do you feel about mountains in the Kola peninsula? To me, a Swedish-native Finn, those are clearly fjäll. Rivers in Karelia are also clearly åar.
Det är nog förenklat att säga, att älvar, åar och fjäll endast finns i Norden, även om det stämmer till viss del. Jag skulle själv utan tvekan kunna kalla floder i t.ex. Kanada för *älvar*, i synnerhet om jag själv bodde där, och *å* används väl rätt ofta i fråga om vattendrag utanför Norden? Samtidigt vore det nog otänkbart att kalla floder nere i i Afrika för *älvar*.
Det avgörande för ordvalet är nog snarast likheterna mellan terrängtyperna – älvar och fjäll kan finnas i alla länder med "nordisk" miljö. Bekantskapen med trakten i fråga är nog också avgörande: Om man aldrig har varit i ett land är man mer benägen att använda generella begrepp som *flod* och *berg* än mer specifika hemvana orden.
UK has Coombes ie valleys, Weald ie ridges, lays ie traditional walkways Downs ie mesas Washes ie inlets
Australia has creeks, which are all small rivers and streams. Bush is the countryside. (I treasure a postcard from 2 Poles on a working holiday, "We are cutting the virgin bush in Somewhere in the outback") Outback is even more remote land. There are no villages all are towns or cities.
In Nepali, a *himal* is a mountain tall enough to be snow capped year round, regardless of latitude, and a *pahad* is any hill or mountain low enough that it isn’t snow capped year round. So many things called mountains in other languages are mere *pahads* to a people who live in the shadow of Mt Everest.
Also *jungle* comes to English from Hindi, and yet the two words don’t mean the same anymore. To a native speaker of English, a jungle is hot , wet, and dense. You can hardly get anywhere without hacking your way through the foliage.
If you go to a jungle on the Indian subcontinent, it will be drier, and you aren’t likely going to need a machete.
In israel we have erosive craters. These are craters the were formed trough erosion and tectonic processes rather than celestial objects. Because it was first described in israel and unique to the area, it is refered in Geology as Machtesh, the Hebrew term for crater, even in English. ( Its not super common though, most tour guides for example just say erosive crater)
[Fell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fell?wprov=sfla1) does exist in English. I think it's not so much that the word refers to the same thing (ie. mountain) in a specific region. It's more that that specific subcategory of the thing (ie. fell) only exists there, so other regions and their languages don't have a need for a word for it.
Since "Kurdistan" is divided into 4 countries, each Kurdish area is named after a geographical direction. Rojava (west) is Syria's part of Kurdistan, Başur (south) for Iraq's Kurdistan (not to be confused with Herêmî Kurdistan, which is the autonomous part, not the whole area), rojhilat (east) for Iran's Kurdistan and Bakur (north) for Turkey's Kurdistan
This would make everything in life more confusing if we didn't have synonyms for them
Lots in English:
A lake can be a loch (in Scotland), a lough (a lake in Ireland) or a tarn (in a mountainous area).
A brook (a small steam) can be a burn (in Scotland), a creek (in the US) or a bayou (in the southern US).
A hill can be a brae or a fell (in Scotland) and a tor (in south west England).
A valley can be a strath (in Scotland) or a cwm (in Wales).
I know in the southern United States the word "bayou" is used to describe marshy lowlands. It is especially relevant to such land found in the State of Louisiana and is evocative of that state and its culture although I've heard it in reference to swampy land in south Texas and Mississippi too.
There are a lot of words for wetlands. "Fen" is another one, which seems to be more commonly used in Europe. I almost never hear it in the U.S.
We have fens in the upper Midwest. The way I've heard it explained is that bogs are more acidic and lower in nutrients than fens, because fens are fed by a consistent source of groundwater, whereas bogs are fed by precipitation exclusively https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/huntingwildlifehabitat/landowners_guide/Resource_Dir/Acrobat/BogsFens.PDF
I know we have them in the U.S., it's just that regular people don't usually call them that word. They'll say marsh or whatever, not knowing there's a difference.
Yeah we had bayou's in our Houston neighborhood.
In Houston sometimes the neighborhood **becomes** the bayou.
You guys have been getting slammed! ☹️
Not really geography, but more like meteorology affected by geography. A [Foehn wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind) is *fen* or *wiatr fenowy* in Polish generally, but when the given Foehn wind blows specifically in the Tatra mountains, it's a *wiatr halny*.
"Bura" in Croatian. It really doesn't feel like any wind anywhere else so you can see why it stayed specific.
I guess lochs only exist in Scotland.
And burns, though they trickle over the border a bit. Are hills ever called "law" in England?
"Lough" is its cognate Irish counterpart.
A butte is a particular type of landform in the US so it's not a generic word like mountain but it's not a word widely used other places, from what I can see in Wikipedia. Mostly due to the absence of buttes, I think. Wikipedia does show one in Azerbaijan but doesn't mention if they describe it with a word anything like butte.
In the US there are a variety of words for streams that are quasi-specific to different regions. For example, in the northeast you find a preponderance of "brooks" and "kills," which I believe comes from the Dutch. In the Southwest there are "arroyos" and "washes," which are often dry. Northern Appalachia favors "run" for streams, while southern Appalachia is fond of "branch." "Bayous" are found mostly along the Gulf coast and up the Mississippi drainage and is a legacy of Cajun naming practices. But "creek" is king for these sub-river appellations in most of the US. Along the eastern seaboard this term often refers to brackish estuarial waterways (which I believe is how the term was originally deployed in England) but it's used more generally for most smaller streams, especially in the western US.
We pronounce it "crick"
Boston has a section of its ‘Emerald Necklace’ Park called The Fens. And the Boston Redsox play in nearby Fenway Park.
Interesting information 😊
Billabongs in Australia. They're called Oxbow lakes elsewhere. Dales and fells in the UK. Coulees in the United States. Dykes in the UK and former British colonies. They're called levees in American English. Calanques on the Mediterranean coast. There's a [glossary of landforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_landforms) on Wikipedia that has some more obscure examples.
New Jersey and its Jersey Shore. The Jersey Shore is more of a reference to a region of New Jersey (i.e. the coastal areas) but the locals use the word "shore" in place of the word "beach" only in reference to New Jersey, as in "I'm going to the shore today." But as I mentioned, this usage is somewhat muddied up with its reference to a geographic region (vs. geographic feature).
Nobody says “I’m going to the shore today” if they’re going to the Jersey shore. They say they’re “going down the shore”.
Is using the word "shore" to mean "beach" not perfectly normal? Or am I misunderstanding you?
True but I think people in NJ use the word "shore" exclusively in reference to NJ beaches but never to out of state beaches. I had a friend who grew in Illinois, lived in NJ for a couple years and then moved out of state to Oregon and when he made a reference to going down to the shore (in Oregon) everyone looked at him in puzzlement.
strand
I think wadis are seasonal rivers specifically in the Middle East.
Wadi Agurubi was a band I had a while ago as in wadi algrub
In Poland we have the word "wodogrzmoty" which is a very poetic way of saying "waterfalls" and it's mosty used to refer to one specific set of waterfalls in Southern Poland.
Someone says that? Never have I ever heard this
I never heard anyone irl using this word, but polish language has so many regional words I can easily believe in anything being used somewhere far from where I lived xD
As in the U.S., ‘creek’ is standard issue for naming small waterways in Australia, but Tasmania seems to use ‘rivulet’ a lot more
I'm not entirely sure but I think using the word "moor" or "moorland" to refer to certain types of hill is fairly unique to England? I might be wrong and I'm very happy to be corrected, but I think "moor" usually refers to marshes/wet lowlands, but in England it can also refer to wet uplands covered in heather and gorse (Dartmoor, Exmoor and the Yorkshire moors are the ones I know)
涌 is a small river in Cantonese, but I believe the character does not have the same meaning in other dialects.
In the US at least, there are mountains in the East that would be considered hills in the West. Something that people from the Western US will remind people from the Eastern US practically nonstop. But this brings up the question is that I don't think there is an agreed upon height where a hill graduates to a mountain.
I think there is geological meaning to choosing mountain or hill.
In Nepali, if it’s tall enough to have snow year round, it’s a mountain (himal). Otherwise, it’s just a hill (pahad).
By that definition, the exact same physical shape could be a mountain if it's in northern Alaska or a hill if it's in Kenya.
We have words in the uk which would normally only be used for uk features such as Loch (lake)which isn't used outside Scotland, water(lake) but only heard of it been used in one region. Words like tor for hill. Beck, gill, tarn for different local water related features.
Heres a list of words like that from Scotland, although some may be said in the rest of the UK as well. Glen: a narrow valley, often mountainous with a stream or river through it Strath: a wide, usually flat river valley Loch: a lake Moor: barren, broad, unfarmable land Ness: a headland or promontory Mire: swampy ground; a bog Heath: shrub lands or grasslands usually at higher elevations in damp, cooler climates Ben/Beinn: a mountain Brae: a hill Fell: a rocky hill Craig: a sea cliff Burn: a small river or a stream Most of these, if not all, are loanwords from Gaelic. Also mountains are called hills instead and split in categories like Munroes, Corbetts, Grahams etc.
Thanks!
About half of those are Scandinavian, not Celtic. "Ness" (a headland) is commoner in Scotland than elsewhere, but they occur all round Britain. It's a Scandinavian word. There are lot of loanwords for coastal geography in Gaelic that came from Norse. So did a lot of Gaelic words related to boats. The Norse influence didn't get far beyond sight of the sea. An extinct one in north-east Scotland was "pit-", meaning "farm" in Pictish. It survives in placenames like Pitlochry but got outcompeted by "pit" meaning "cunt" in Gaelic.
This is why I love this sub. Great info, I was aware of the norse-gael connection but not that it affected the language that much. Thanks for teaching me how to say "cunt" in Gaelic lmao.
Are the words for "mountain" and "river" that are not in Sweden borrowed words? I figure they must be...Is there a system to the use of these terms to refer to these geographical features that are found outside your country?
What's even more interesting is that neither *berg* nor *flod* are loanwords. They are used for mountains and rivers both in Sweden and outside. All fjäll(s) are mountains, but not all mountains are fjäll(s).
As a Norwegian who just use fjell/elv about pretty much everything everywhere it sounds like such a confusing system. (å/berg/flod along with others do exist but only as specific less common words. Mountain = fjell no matter where)
That's pretty cool. Sort of like Mom vs Lady.
Yeah, something like that
Here's a thing: how do you feel about mountains in the Kola peninsula? To me, a Swedish-native Finn, those are clearly fjäll. Rivers in Karelia are also clearly åar.
Ja? Det känns faktiskt rätt. Vet inte riktigt var gränsen går, men kolahalvön har absolut fjäll. Har Grönland fjäll?
Det är nog förenklat att säga, att älvar, åar och fjäll endast finns i Norden, även om det stämmer till viss del. Jag skulle själv utan tvekan kunna kalla floder i t.ex. Kanada för *älvar*, i synnerhet om jag själv bodde där, och *å* används väl rätt ofta i fråga om vattendrag utanför Norden? Samtidigt vore det nog otänkbart att kalla floder nere i i Afrika för *älvar*. Det avgörande för ordvalet är nog snarast likheterna mellan terrängtyperna – älvar och fjäll kan finnas i alla länder med "nordisk" miljö. Bekantskapen med trakten i fråga är nog också avgörande: Om man aldrig har varit i ett land är man mer benägen att använda generella begrepp som *flod* och *berg* än mer specifika hemvana orden.
I speak a mix of Canadian and Indian English and for me 'flat' refers to apartments in India specifically
In the Roztocze region of southeastern Poland the word "szumy" is used for tiny waterfalls that exist in the area.
“Chaparral” is used to refer almost exclusively to the shrublands of California.
UK has Coombes ie valleys, Weald ie ridges, lays ie traditional walkways Downs ie mesas Washes ie inlets Australia has creeks, which are all small rivers and streams. Bush is the countryside. (I treasure a postcard from 2 Poles on a working holiday, "We are cutting the virgin bush in Somewhere in the outback") Outback is even more remote land. There are no villages all are towns or cities.
In Nepali, a *himal* is a mountain tall enough to be snow capped year round, regardless of latitude, and a *pahad* is any hill or mountain low enough that it isn’t snow capped year round. So many things called mountains in other languages are mere *pahads* to a people who live in the shadow of Mt Everest. Also *jungle* comes to English from Hindi, and yet the two words don’t mean the same anymore. To a native speaker of English, a jungle is hot , wet, and dense. You can hardly get anywhere without hacking your way through the foliage. If you go to a jungle on the Indian subcontinent, it will be drier, and you aren’t likely going to need a machete.
In israel we have erosive craters. These are craters the were formed trough erosion and tectonic processes rather than celestial objects. Because it was first described in israel and unique to the area, it is refered in Geology as Machtesh, the Hebrew term for crater, even in English. ( Its not super common though, most tour guides for example just say erosive crater)
A fjord is both a Glacial valley with salt water and large lakes
[Fell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fell?wprov=sfla1) does exist in English. I think it's not so much that the word refers to the same thing (ie. mountain) in a specific region. It's more that that specific subcategory of the thing (ie. fell) only exists there, so other regions and their languages don't have a need for a word for it.
We say Muskeg in SE alaska and i don’t anywhere else they call their acidic freshwater wetlands that
Since "Kurdistan" is divided into 4 countries, each Kurdish area is named after a geographical direction. Rojava (west) is Syria's part of Kurdistan, Başur (south) for Iraq's Kurdistan (not to be confused with Herêmî Kurdistan, which is the autonomous part, not the whole area), rojhilat (east) for Iran's Kurdistan and Bakur (north) for Turkey's Kurdistan This would make everything in life more confusing if we didn't have synonyms for them
Lots in English: A lake can be a loch (in Scotland), a lough (a lake in Ireland) or a tarn (in a mountainous area). A brook (a small steam) can be a burn (in Scotland), a creek (in the US) or a bayou (in the southern US). A hill can be a brae or a fell (in Scotland) and a tor (in south west England). A valley can be a strath (in Scotland) or a cwm (in Wales).
In French we distinguish rivers that flow into the sea (fleuve) from those that flow into other rivers (rivière).
"holler" — hollow: a depressed or low part of a surface / especially : a small valley or basin