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Which shared loan translations occur across Mesoamerican languages?
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In the Mesoamerican linguistic area, languages share a number of calques, or loan translation compounds, which serve as evidence of long-term language contact. These shared expressions include:
- Boa: translated as "deer-snake"
- Egg: translated as "bird-stone" or "bird-bone"
- Knee: translated as "leg-head"
- Lime: translated as "stone(-ash)"
- Wrist: translated as "hand-neck"
These loan translations are among the five primary areal traits that characterize the Mesoamerican linguistic region, distinguishing its languages from neighboring groups outside the area.1