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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 November 24

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November 24

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Amiga

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The Amiga family of computers was named after the Spanish word amiga, because (1) it came before rivals Apple and Atari alphabetically, and (2) it sounded friendly.

Now amiga means a female friend in general in Spanish, just like Freundin means a female friend in German. I have heard that the distinction between "a female friend of mine" and "my girlfriend" in German is eine Freundin von mir versus meine Freundin. So what is the distinction in Spanish? JIP | Talk 00:53, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

JIP: the Spanish word for "girlfriend" is "novia". The word for "boyfriend" is "novio". {{u|Squeeps10}} {Talk} Please ping when replying. 00:59, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Squeeps10: OK, so it's different from pretty much every language I can understand. I explained the German word above, you obviously understand "girlfriend" because you replied here, and in Finnish it's tyttöystävä and in Swedish it's flickvän, both meaning literally "girlfriend". JIP | Talk 01:06, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why, but I find flickvän to be an especially fun word to say. {{u|Squeeps10}} {Talk} Please ping when replying. 01:12, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]