I figured that all of you fine attendees of the Polyglot Conference might be able to answer this little quandary for me.
Do other languages use the doubling of a word to emphasize something?
e.g. I like him, but I don’t like like him. -or- That color is red red.
Usually when this is done in English, there is a bit of emphasis on the first of the doubled words. I am so curious if this is a phenomenon in any other languages.
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This is called contrastive focus reduplication if you want to look it up - apparently it exists in German? I don’t speak German so I’m not sure. Interesting question though!
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This research paper gives some examples in German (see section 2.1.(7), section 4, etc) - https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/5295/ - and as Ewan suggests, those seem to be the two languages in which it is most common, though the start of section 2 references papers that discuss the same phenomenon in other languages too.
I’ve also read that it’s more open to confusion in German than in English (though I imagine it can be confusing in English too, especially if it’s written rather than spoken) and that it’s one of the many imperfect ways that can be used to distinguish between Freund/in = friend and Freund/in = boy/girlfriend, e.g. Ja, sie is meine Freundin aber nicht meine Freundin Freundin.
Hopefully better speakers than me of the other languages can confirm/expand on or deny this!
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I’m German and I have NEVER heard of something like this before. The examples on this link just made me laugh – I don’t know anybody here in Germany who would speak like this. Never heard of this in books, TV, real life, NEVER. I’d not believe there’s really something like this, I don’t know who put this information out in the world. It’s not true.
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That’s funny 
There are certainly some academic papers about languages that appear to contain preposterous theories, but this wasn’t the only example I found that talked about CFD in German - e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335325963_Extravagant_expressions_denoting_quite_normal_entities_contrastive_focus_reduplication_in_German & http://spiphanies.blogspot.com/2009/10/contrastive-focus-reduplication.html.
I wonder if it’s just very rare, maybe some people who learn English think it’s cool try to force examples in German but they never catch on, or if it is actually used in some regions or among some population groups. Given that you’re so sure, I’d guess the former is more likely than the latter!
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I’ve just tried to google it and the funny thing is that I can’t find anything about this topic in German websites. It seems this is either some wrong information (that a lot of English websites speak about, as I can see) or it’s just extinct?!
There are three things that the websites here call “reduplication” in German language.
First: things like “zackzack” (quick-quick) or “Kuckuck” cuckoo", but they don’t exist when you shorten them (“zack”, “kuck” don’t exist), so I’d say it’s not a real reduplication.
Second: vorgestern -> vorvorgestern (the day before yesterday -> the day before the day before yesterday), übermorgen -> überübermorgen (the day after tomorrow -> the day after the day after tomorrow), Uroma -> Ururoma (great-grandma -> great-great-grandma). In these cases, only a part of the word gets repeated.
Third: Kuddelmuddel (mess, muddle), Zickzack (zigzag), Krimskrams (odds and ends). These ones are also called reduplication but I personally wouldn’t call them like that either because nothing gets repeated, some letters change. But I’m not the inventor of German grammar 
So, long story short: I have never heard anybody speak like mentioned in the links, nor have I ever read this anywhere. When I google it, I can’t find any German websites that speak about this topic. I don’t know where it’s coming from but I think it’s kind of funny, actually, that foreigners need to learn something about German grammar that no German would ever use.
I wonder what other Germans think about this. Maybe there’s somebody else here who can say something different?
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Malay uses double words to denote plural form. For example, buku “a book” and buku-buku “books”.
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I know there must be more instances of this in Irish, but I’ve commonly seen and heard “fadó fadó” used for “a long time ago” in storytelling and casual speech, from the word “fada” for long.
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Your provided examples (and similar ones) do exist in (very colloquial) Dutch, which I only hear (and occasionally use) with native family members and friends during oral conversations. In other situations, I try to come up with an alternative because I’ve internalised the idea that this construction is inferior, to say the least.
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Hi Tiffany,
Not sure about other languages but I have come across “Igbo” (from the Niger-Congo language family) spoken by the Igbo tribes, one of the things that caught my attention is that they not only repeat the name of the colors, but also have two different names names for exactly the same color. :
For example ORANGE can be:
“Popo popo” or “Nchara nchara”
Another example is RED can be:
“Mmee Mmee” or " Obara obara"
This morning there was an Italki tutor for “Igbor” that gave us a basic lesson and when I asked why they not only repeat the name of the color she said she thought it was for emphasis.
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Very late response (joined today), but the german example of friend is also ised in scandinavian languages - but the example use would be to lessen the impact - or maybe even negate it. She is my friend, but not my “friend” friend. Cannot attest to use in German - but I use this a lot in whatever language. Maybe it is not a part o languages in them selves - but part of (personal) communication in itself?
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