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Language: Vlax Romani
Vlax Romani (rmy) is a(n) Indo-European language of Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Belarus, Switzerland, Czechia, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Republic of, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Russian Federation, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Türkiye, Ukraine, marked as not endangered
The Greek word that mean both (the organ) “tongue” and “language” (glossa) allows for a word play in Acts 2. While English still has some traces of “tongue” also being used as “language” (such as in “mother tongue“) it is generally considered archaic in that use, although a number of modern English Bible translations (New International Version, Christian Standard Bible, English Standard Version) maintain “tongue” as the word for “language” in Acts 2:4.
Other languages have a more natural match between the words for “tongue” and “language”:
The Hebrew and Greek pesach/pascha that is typically translated in English as “Passover” (see below) is translated in a variety of descriptive ways of various aspects of the Jewish festival. (Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight):
Umiray Dumaget Agta: “the celebration of the day of their being brought out of bondage”
(source for this and above: M. Larson / B. Moore in Notes on Translation February 1970, p. 1-125.)
Obolo: ijọk Iraraka — “Festival of Passing” (source: Enene Enene)
Yakan: “The festival of the Isra’il tribe which they call For-Remembering” (source: Yakan Back Translation)
Wolof: “Festival of the day of Salvation” (“the term ‘pass over’ brings up the image of a person’s crossing over a chasm after death”) (source: Marilyn Escher)
Bura-Pabir: vir kucelir fəlɓəla kəi — “time-of happiness-of jumping-over house”
Sabaot: Saakweetaab Keeytaayeet — “Festival of Passing-by” (source: Iver Larsen)
Language spoken in India and Bangladesh: “Festival of avoidance”
Vlax Romani: o ghes o baro le Nakhimasko — “the Day of the Passing”
Saint Lucian Creole: Fèt Délivwans — “Feast of Deliverance” (source: David Frank)
Finnish: pääsiäinen (“The term is very probably coined during the NT translation process around 1520-1530. It is connected to a multivalent verb päästä and as such refers either to the Exodus (päästä meaning “to get away [from Egypt]”) or to the end of the Lent [päästä referring to get relieved from the limitations in diet]. The later explanation being far more probable than the first.”)
Northern Sami: beas’sážat (“Coined following the model in Finnish. The Sami verb is beassat and behaves partly like the Finnish one. Many Christian key terms are either borrowed from Finnish or coined following the Finnish example.”)
Estonian: ülestõusmispüha — “holiday/Sunday of the resurrection” — or lihavõttepüha — “holiday/Sunday of returning of meat”
Karelian: äijüpäivü — “the great day” (“Here one can hear the influence of the Eastern Christianity, but not directly Russian as language, because the Russian term is Пасха/Pasha or Воскресение Христово/Voskresenie Hristovo, ‘[the day of] the resurrection of Christ,’ but the week before Easter is called as the great week.”) (Source for this and three above: Seppo Sipilä)
Russian (for Russian speaking Muslims): праздник Освобождения/prazdnik Osvobozhdeniya — “Festival of-liberation” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
English: Passover (term coined by William Tyndale that both replicates the sound of the Hebrew original pesah — פסח as well as part of the meaning: “passing over” the houses of the Israelites in Egypt) — oddly, the English Authorized Version (King James Version) translates the occurrence in Acts 12:4 as Easter
Low German: Osterfest “Easter” (translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1933, republ. 2006)
Many Romance languages follow the tradition from Latin that has one term for both “Easter” and “Passover” (pascha). Portuguese uses Páscoa for both, Italian uses Pascha, and French has Pâque for “Passover” and the identically pronounced Pâques for “Easter.”
In languages in francophone and lusophone (Portuguese speaking) Africa, indigenous languages typically use the Romance word for “Easter” as a loanword and often transliterate pesach/pascha. In Kinyarwanda and RundiPasika is used, in Swahili and Congo SwahiliPasaka, and in LingalaPasika. In some cases, the transliteration of “Passover” is derived from the European language, such as Umbundu’sPascoa (from Portuguese) and Bulu’sPak (from French).
As John Ellingworth (in The Bible Translator 1980, p 445f. ) points out “in most contexts only the presence or absence of the definite article distinguishes them [in French la pâque for Passover and Pâques for Easter]. Since most African languages do not have definite articles, there remains no way to distinguish between the two terms where the general population has borrowed the word for Easter and the Bible translators have borrowed the word for Passover to use in their translation. Some even consider the references to [Passover] before the death of Christ as prophetic!”