Musings on Language #2

[Yora]

"Hello, we are talking about language." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHQ2756cyD8)

First thing, is "musings on" the correct way to say it? :smallbiggrin:

We had a similar thread before but it's too old be reused, and since we had quite a bit of talking about language in another thread, I guess it's a good time to make a separate thread so to not burry everything in OT.

I just quote the last post from the discussion, and let's continue from there:

You made me cringe by saying Académie Française, I think their attitude of "WE decide which word is French or not" seems so wrong to me, especially when the youth is speaking something completely different.

[DeadManSleeping]

Say what you will, but there is no justification for the misappropriation of the reflexive pronoun in the English language.

[Yora]

I don't even understand what you are saying. :smallbiggrin:

[DeadManSleeping]

Then perhaps you should study a bit more linguistics before debating them. You can't really have a deep discussion if the people involved don't have a common terminology to draw on. Meanwhile, I will let comics explain: Panel 3 (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=360#).Yes, correcting anyone on this makes you pedantic. Yes, I'm pedantic. Any further questions?

Accurate communication is the point of language. We should all strive to make ourselves understood on all levels.

And it's worth noting that what I brought up was a complete non-sequitor to the previous discussion. It was simply a thought on language.

[truemane]

Reflexive pronoun: "Sit yourself down." Only exists because of reflexive verbs in French (and, to some degree, Latin). My personal favourite is the verb 'to matrry' is reflexive. Because it's something you do to yourself.

Anyway.

I'm at that age when the shifts in common uses of language are starting to bother and start me off on 'you kids today' rants. Which I find funny. The way, for example, that using an apostrophe to denote a plural ("I have a lot of book's.") is starting to become accepted enough that I'm seeing it in official corporate memoranda and advertisements. It makes me cringe every time I see it, much the way that split infinitives used to drive my university Latin prof mental.

Languages change over time, in fact all the time. Language can't 'degrade' because it never had a perfect state from which it can fall. Every language, everywhere, is a living, organic thing that can't be captured or frozen in place.

The Acadamie Francaise can decide all it wants what's French and what's not, people will continue to say what they say until the members of the Academie all get old and retire and new people come in and revamp all the rules and start the whole cycle over again.

[Totally Guy]

Was reading a good book recently that kept using "alternately" when it meant "alternatively".

I want to put me reading it on youtube. Do I stay true to the text or true to the language? My goal is to convey the book's messages.

[CurlyKitGirl]

Oh hello fun . . . :smallsmile:


Reflexive pronoun: "Sit yourself down." Only exists because of reflexive verbs in French (and, to some degree, Latin). My personal favourite is the verb 'to matrry' is reflexive. Because it's something you do to yourself.

[QUOTE=truemane;12688987]Anyway.

I'm at that age when the shifts in common uses of language are starting to bother and start me off on 'you kids today' rants. Which I find funny. The way, for example, that using an apostrophe to denote a plural ("I have a lot of book's.") is starting to become accepted enough that I'm seeing it in official corporate memoranda and advertisements. It makes me cringe every time I see it, much the way that split infinitives used to drive my university Latin prof mental.

OH GOD YES!
Makes me twitch. You do not do that sort of thing. You just don't. Apostrophes (this is a plural) for plurals, honestly. Just because people don't (this is not a plural) know how to use them correctly doesn't mean they can play 'throw th'apostrophe at a sentence'!
Look it up in a grammar if you don't (still not a plural) know how to use them.
The children's (possessive plural apostrophe) books (plural concrete noun) underneath the ladies' (possessive plural apostrophe) coats (plural concrete noun) because their parents couldn't be bothered to hang up the coats (plural concrete noun) properly.
Easy.

(Of course irony being what it is, and me being ill, I bet something there's wrong)

I mean, I can see the general omission of apostrophes (I'm looking at you Bernard Shaw! (And texters)) thanks to a rise in texting and the like that only allow x number of characters, but additional apostrophes?
That's the sort of thing children do when they're confused about the grammar rules of English. And yes, I do acknowledge that grammar rules tend to be more descriptive than anything in English because our grammar is more analytic than most Indo-European languages.
(It has less inflection)
Doesn't mean I can't go Old Lady on it and say that if one doesn't know how to write a proper plural and are a native English speaker they ought to go back to primary and learn it over! And it makes even less sense for the more synthetic languages because of all the inflections they have!


Languages change over time, in fact all the time. Language can't 'degrade' because it never had a perfect state from which it can fall. Every language, everywhere, is a living, organic thing that can't be captured or frozen in place.

The Acadamie Francaise can decide all it wants what's French and what's not, people will continue to say what they say until the members of the Academie all get old and retire and new people come in and revamp all the rules and start the whole cycle over again.

Ah, the joys of diachronic change (and synchronic too). One of my favourite things about the linguistics and languages in general is their fluid and (usually) traceable changes.
That's why 'proper' or 'correct' grammar/language is such an odd thing. When you say 'proper' language you mean 'the language that is appropriate for the time and situation in which you are in'. Of course, this is less so for languages with a more rigid system of inflection.
And of course, l'academie francaise (pardon my absence of accents, but I can't be bothered).
I did my long coursework (1 000 words) on that in A Level French. In French. And it's so restrictive! I swear it's murdering the language. The official language that is.
En francais the mot correct pour 'an email' est 'un courriel'. Un mot qui est derive par 'courrier electronique'. Pourtant, la majorite utilisent 'un email'.
Mais la raison l'Academie l'a declare? Parce que le mot 'email' est plus anglais! L'Academie est vraiment stupide, elle tue la langue francaise!

Language purity. Honestly. Just another way of suffocating your language to death.

'Course, "[t]he problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
So maybe English is just a disease ridden doxy from Southwark while other languages are the chaste daughters of many a noble.

Personally I'd rather see a language grow. Besides, if I don't like a particular rule I'll just go back a few decades. Or centuries. Or millennia. And find one I do like an use it providing its general grammatic structure is applicable to modern English.
You can understand Chaucer after all, and that's near seven hundred years old.
Simple.

[Yora]

Reflexive pronoun: "Sit yourself down." Only exists because of reflexive verbs in French (and, to some degree, Latin). My personal favourite is the verb 'to matrry' is reflexive. Because it's something you do to yourself.
German has it as well (setz dich hin), and I suspect that's where it originates from. We have "setz dich!" as an order, but that actually means "sit yourself" and not "sit down".

Then perhaps you should study a bit more linguistics before debating them.
I actually do know a bit about linguistics on an academic level, but english isn't my first language and I am not particularly known in the vocabulary of english speaking linguists. And I don't think you need to be perfect on a subject to talk about, because the point of discussions is to share ideas to learn more things.

[The Succubus]

Oh hello fun . . . :smallsmile:

You might as well have just changed the title to "Summon Koorly". :smalltongue:

[CurlyKitGirl]

You might as well have just changed the title to "Summon Koorly". :smalltongue:

So this.
Granted I'm going to be a bit lax on the correct terminology for some of the more technical parts of linguistics, and I do tend to be a thematic follower of the diachronic change, specifically graphology, etymology, borrowings, loan words, neologisms and the like; and I detest studying spoken language, although I can talk the talk. Hahahaha.[/sad, sad joke]

As usual when it comes to a science, no matter how general or vague a one it is, I lean towards the historic side of things.
And SAUSSURE AND THOSE SODDING EARLY THEORISTS (and Chomsky) CAN GO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE FOR ALL I CARE! ESPECIALLY YOU ROLAND BARTHES! Death of the Author my foot.
Issues. I have them with them.

That and keeping my mouth shut.

[Grinner]

The problem with languages is that there are different languages, and each language also possesses a cultural history. For example, the Irish have Irish, even though they don't seem to use it that often.

This leaves the average American at a bit of a crossroad. You see, because we primarily speak English, despite being a multicultural nation, we have nothing to really call our own, besides a governmentally instituted mutation of "proper" English.

Compounding this, I used to think I possessed a formidable mastery of the English language, but, in reading this thread and that comic, I've realized how little I actually know about the English language.

[Goosefeather]

What does the Playground make of this (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565) article, and the concept of linguistic relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, etc) in general?

Personally, I find it pretty interesting, and though I wouldn't go as far as saying that language can actually restrict thought (à la Orwell, and his Newspeak), I wonder just how far it can influence it.

The problem is, however good I may get in the languages I'm learning, I wasn't born into a truly multilingual family and exposed equally to different languages from a young age, so I guess I'll probably never achieve complete enough fluency to judge from a perfectly objective position - I'll always feel slightly more comfortable in English. Still, that's no reason not to try! :smallsmile:




And SAUSSURE AND THOSE SODDING EARLY THEORISTS (and Chomsky) CAN GO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE FOR ALL I CARE! ESPECIALLY YOU ROLAND BARTHES! Death of the Author my foot.
Issues. I have them with them.


Derrida is by far the worst of them all.

I can just about cope with Saussure, Chomsky, Foucault and Barthes - I might not agree with many things they say, but I can see what they're getting at - but Derrida is just impenetrable nonsense.

Even Foucault accused him of "obscurantisme terroriste."

I read one of his works in French, and assumed the language barrier might be preventing me from grasping exactly what he was trying to say, so I found a copy of the same work in English. It made even less sense - and was a pretty faithful translation, as well. The man infuriates me! :smalltongue:

[Kneenibble]

I feel obliged to defend the honour of my sexy beloved manslut English here. Yes, okay, the gentleman has been around the world, yes his fingers smell of all the various partners he's been with, yes when you kiss him you're kissing all those other tongues too.

But it's only because he is so famous and so very very sexy that his reputation makes all the tabloids. I believe Swahili, Hindi, and Farsi, for example, are equally slutty. I believe several languages across Canada -- which are no longer widely spoken enough for me to name without consulting external references -- are the bastard love children of pioneer colonist and wise country wife.

Languages, when they're not locked in their cabinets or boudoirs, like to get it on. English, bless his flanks, cannot be blamed for it above his peers!

[Goosefeather]

snip

I can't help now imagining Byron as some kind of representative avatar for the English language, condensed and personified :smalltongue:

[Greenish]

Then perhaps you should study a bit more linguistics before debating them.What is the internet for, if not for discussing topics you have no knowledge of (and pictures of cats and porn, of course)?


Compounding this, I used to think I possessed a formidable mastery of the English language, but, in reading this thread and that comic, I've realized how little I actually know about the English language.Well, any native speaker knows more grammar than any book ever printed. Being conscious about said rules, let alone being able to discuss them using linguistic terms, is a different thing entirely.


In defense of Académie Française, keeping the written language nearly static has the advantage of allowing modern audiences enjoy older works of literature without an annotated guide or long studies. At least in theory.


As for English language, sure, many other languages may "get around", but no other is so cavalier about "borrowing" words from other languages. English, that veritable highwayman, has stolen words from every language it has met, and it's vocabulary is, as a result, obscenely bloated. One of the reasons I love it, really. :smalltongue:

[CurlyKitGirl]

I feel obliged to defend the honour of my sexy beloved manslut English here. Yes, okay, the gentleman has been around the world, yes his fingers smell of all the various partners he's been with, yes when you kiss him you're kissing all those other tongues too.

But it's only because he is so famous and so very very sexy that his reputation makes all the tabloids. I believe Swahili, Hindi, and Farsi, for example, are equally slutty. I believe several languages across Canada -- which are no longer widely spoken enough for me to name without consulting external references -- are the bastard love children of pioneer colonist and wise country wife.

Languages, when they're not locked in their cabinets or boudoirs, like to get it on. English, bless his flanks, cannot be blamed for it above his peers!

I love you.
I truly do.
Only you can stretch out a metaphor so much and yet make it make so much sense.
Here's to linguistics and the manslut English!
Waes hael!


I can't help now imagining Byron as some kind of representative avatar for the English language, condensed and personified :smalltongue:

:biggrin:

This must be turned into an avatar. Now.
English the manslutty Byron.
French would be somewhat prudish and conservative. But admittedly elegant.
German would be an accountant with glasses onna string.
Old English (or Anglo-Saxon if you will) would be a warrior with a musical instrument on his back. Harsh sounding, with numerous synonyms (although I hate to use them term when there are many shades of meaning to different ones) for battles and violence; and yet it mostly survives in poetry and semi-poetic prose.

And so on.

I wouldn't know how to personify Spanish or Italian much. Or any others.

Post about Goosefeather's question re: linguistic relativism pending.
I'm sorry, but leekspin's in the background of that audio!

[Goosefeather]

French would be somewhat prudish and conservative. But admittedly elegant.


French does attempt to get it on with other languages, especially English, but she's usually prevented from doing so by her chaperone, Mme Académie Française.

Her cousin, Québécois, is all kinds of messed up.

[Greenish]

I'm sorry, but leekspin's in the background of that audio!You mean Ievan polkka? It would seem against the theme of the thread to only listen the gibberish part. :smallamused:

[CurlyKitGirl]

German has it as well (setz dich hin), and I suspect that's where it originates from. We have "setz dich!" as an order, but that actually means "sit yourself" and not "sit down".

English has both forms - 'sit down' and 'sit yourself/sit yourself down'. The latter though is definitely much more formal than the other. Generally the former is a direct imperative, whereas the second is a more casual invitation, and can often be read as an indirect question:
A: "Sit yourself down."
B: "Thank you, but I'd rather stand." [I'm good thanks]

Then again, pragmatics, semantics, semiotics and objectified meaning all vary the [I]actual meaning of the exchange so hooray ambiguity!
But is there still a general implied difference between the use of direct imperatives and ones using reflexive pronouns?


I actually do know a bit about linguistics on an academic level, but English isn't my first language and I am not particularly known in the vocabulary of English speaking linguists. And I don't think you need to be perfect on a subject to talk about, because the point of discussions is to share ideas to learn more things.

I'm coming at it from a slightly different angle; I've done some study and I know some of the vocab, but mostly it's forgotten or possibly confused. Hence me checking Wikipedia on occasion to make sure I've not confused a synthetic language with an analytic one.
One of the reasons I don't like the French theorists so much is because of their jargon. And yet they're so influential.


The problem with languages is that there are different languages, and each language also possesses a cultural history. For example, the Irish have Irish, even though they don't seem to use it that often.

Irish is a tricky one.
See, it's, if I remember right, a relatively recently revived language, although it's one that's never fully died out, so it might be best to call it an endangered or minority language.
That is where diachronic studies and etymology pay off though to some extent. You can 'map' history onto language and watch loan words and borrowings appear meaning you can see general trends. Not having ever studied Irish I'd still venture the following statements:
Between the fifth and seventh centuries there was a massive influx of Latin and Latin derived words (perhaps even some elements of syntactic change, although this is very doubtful, grammar seldom alters on a large scale) thanks to missionary work. (Plus I know the Book of Kells was written c. 800 at an Irish monastery, so history!)
Eighth through tenth centuries we'd maybe see some Old Norse and general Germanic languages trickling over thanks to Viking raids and the settling of Angles, Saxons etc. in Northern England.
1066 and onwards. Anglo-Norman comes in and begins to beat up the Irish language. Particularly around the area known as the Pale thanks to continuous warring over that territory since basically 1200.
1750 onwards - English has become at least the second language learned along with Irish, maybe even the primary language.
1900 onwards - English is the primary language.
At a guess.


This leaves the average American at a bit of a crossroad. You see, because we primarily speak English, despite being a multicultural nation, we have nothing to really call our own, besides a governmentally instituted mutation of "proper" English.

That's because your country's an ickle baby country that only really began expanding during the industrial revolution when English was already the basic lingua franca of the ports and diplomacy. And then came the British Empire where you probably couldn't go to any country except the ones that didn't exist yet and not bump into someone speaking English.
And then you came into power and ended up speaking and writing English almost like the English did.
But don't worry, American English is a fully recognised language now with its own slang and spelling system now and everything! Seriously, American slang is pretty weird.
Shame you never really got to develop your own language, it would have made for an interest mix. Mostly Spanish and English with French up top and various African languages down south.


Compounding this, I used to think I possessed a formidable mastery of the English language, but, in reading this thread and that comic, I've realized how little I actually know about the English language.

Welcome to the formal (and informal) studies of linguistics in all its forms then!
And don't you worry yourself there, you probably know more about the English language than the majority of your peers.
Me, I'm just a nutter who's always loved this sort of thing. And made a slight study of it.
That and the making of dictionaries. No. Really.

EDIT:


French does attempt to get it on with other languages, especially English, but she's usually prevented from doing so by her chaperone, Mme Académie Française.

Her cousin, Québécois, is all kinds of messed up.

Too true (also genius). In Quebec most of the curses are religious. Barmy that.
Then again in 1605 in England the theatres were banned from making any reference to God at all. And so they said farewell to 'bloody' 'zounds' 'steeth' and many more.
Until they were allowed back!


You mean Ievan polkka? It would seem against the theme of the thread to only listen the gibberish part. :smallamused:

It works though doesn't it though?

[The Succubus]

The problem with languages is that there are different languages, and each language also possesses a cultural history. For example, the Irish have Irish, even though they don't seem to use it that often.

This leaves the average American at a bit of a crossroad. You see, because we primarily speak English, despite being a multicultural nation, we have nothing to really call our own, besides a governmentally instituted mutation of "proper" English.

Compounding this, I used to think I possessed a formidable mastery of the English language, but, in reading this thread and that comic, I've realized how little I actually know about the English language.

I feel that learning an Indian language of some description such as Cherokee would have gone a long way to smooth relations all those years ago. But then again, English has a nasty habit of being a dominant language, through sheer weight of numbers.

It's also the reason why Chinese is the "go to" language in Firefly.

[CurlyKitGirl]

What does the Playground make of this (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565) article, and the concept of linguistic relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, etc) in general?

(Oh Gods, those American accent in the audio accompaniment to the article. Sorry, it's just grating. And yet I'm manning it out for you)
OH AND I WAS VERY DISTRACTED WHEN GAMBUZI WAS INTRODUCED BECAUSE THE LEEKSPIN SONG WAS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND!
I'm sorry, but my mind went straight to Orihime.


Personally, I find it pretty interesting, and though I wouldn't go as far as saying that language can actually restrict thought (à la Orwell, and his Newspeak), I wonder just how far it can influence it.

The problem is, however good I may get in the languages I'm learning, I wasn't born into a truly multilingual family and exposed equally to different languages from a young age, so I guess I'll probably never achieve complete enough fluency to judge from a perfectly objective position - I'll always feel slightly more comfortable in English. Still, that's no reason not to try! :smallsmile:

I can see how the first type of linguistics relativism (the strong type) is somewhat more sensible than the second as it's actually been proven to some extent that during the early stages of language acquirement the language centre and other linked parts of the brain are directly formed and influenced by the language(s) heard, spoken and learned.
You tell your child that the colour 'yellow' is actually 'green' and vice versa the child will believe that grass is yellow until otherwise told.
But yeah, more practically this is why people can say 'it doesn't translate exactly but . . . ', especially with idiomatic phrasing. I don't know why the hell 'tomber dans les pommes' [lit: 'to fall down amongst the apples'] translates into English as 'to faint', but it does.
In part linguistic relativism can probably be ascribed to the culture barrier again. "Exterminate!" would mean more to the British popular culture than to American popular culture (although it is catching up), and definitely more than to Polish, Chinese or Brazilian popular cultures. Although again, not in all circles.

And as for fluency?
I would say that I'm not even very fluent in English even though it's my first language and my first and best field of academic study. I don't know everything about it, and never will.
And I don't mean the obscure stuff either, obscure stuff I can tell you. I won't though, be able to tell you where all our slang comes from (even the more recent stuff), nor the origin of all the idioms, or why things are the way the way. Not off the top of my head any way.

However, as a general marker, once you start dreaming in your secondary or tertiary languages you can consider yourself reasonably fluent and able to understand most of the everyday language. And perhaps a specialised area or two depending on how or why the language was learned.


Derrida is by far the worst of them all.

I can just about cope with Saussure, Chomsky, Foucault and Barthes - I might not agree with many things they say, but I can see what they're getting at - but Derrida is just impenetrable nonsense.

Even Foucault accused him of "obscurantisme terroriste."

I read one of his works in French, and assumed the language barrier might be preventing me from grasping exactly what he was trying to say, so I found a copy of the same work in English. It made even less sense - and was a pretty faithful translation, as well. The man infuriates me! :smalltongue:

Derrida had me running scared before I read a proper work of his. His summarised theories alone (okay, and his name) were enough to make my mind spin.
About all I can say about one of his theory is that everything is relative because everything is a text and as everyone interprets a text in a unique fashion so this means no theories or readings are valid at all. Ever.
Is this real life
Is this just fantasy
[...]
No escape from reality
[...]
Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me
There. Derrida in a nutshell. Except reality doesn't exist because everyone sees the Reality Text differently and therefore it's not a thing at all. Why, it nothing my lord.
:smallamused:

And yes, the fact that he deliberately writes so densely and so obscurely really doesn't help. Saussure, Barthes and Foucault are much easier to read, so where I disagree with them it's with the actual content of their essays and theories, not with the actual structure and writing. But I do disagree with Derrida in general.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

On the topic of: l'Academie Francaise (meh, too lazy to do the 3 button presses to turn my keyboard from english to french)

I am of the opinion that anybody who tries to fit the language to the rules, rather than the rules to the language, should not be allowed to call themselves a linguist.

It can be the equivalent of going "This newly discovered bird is not a bird, because it has such-and-such characteristic", rather than going "We found a new type of bird that has such-and-such new and unprecendented characteristic! How exciting!"

[Ravens_cry]

I've made my feelings on language change clear before (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11465429&postcount=236). Simply put, I am unabashedly, practically militantly opposed to attempts to regulate language. I avoid the use of Internetisms only because I find other forms of speech both more beautiful and expressive.
If we LOL, do we not laugh?
If you PWN, do we not cry?
And if you HAXORZ, do we not revenge?

[Greenish]

I am of the opinion that anybody who tries to fit the language to the rules, rather than the rules to the language, should not be allowed to call themselves a linguist.The prescriptivist school has a long and glorious history trying to stop the inevitable. :smalltongue:

Why, should we go the other way, we'd have no way of declaring how someone is misusing the language, even though it's both obvious and annoying.

Some windmills have to be fought. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onQJZ-gzwsc)

[Eldan]

It can be the equivalent of going "This newly discovered bird is not a bird, because it has such-and-such characteristic", rather than going "We found a new type of bird that has such-and-such new and unprecendented characteristic! How exciting!"

Biologists do that all the time. Usually we go "Wow! We found an ocelot that looks like a bird! That's amazing!" after the first bit however. I think it adds to the experience, really, rather than detracting from it if you can not only admire the animal, but also the convergent evolution behind it.

[CurlyKitGirl]

The prescriptivist school has a long and glorious history trying to stop the inevitable. :smalltongue:

Why, should we go the other way, we'd have no way of declaring how someone is misusing the language, even though it's both obvious and annoying.

Some windmills have to be fought. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onQJZ-gzwsc)

I can give a brief history of prescriptivism in English if anyone wants! :smalltongue:
Well, I actually can, but no one wants it so.

Also, musical based on Don Quixote? Awesome and geeky.
Geekier yet is listening to that song, as sung by Captain Jack Harkness. He's got good pipes.

[SaintRidley]

I'm actually reading The Language Wars, which is pretty much exactly that. A history of English-language prescriptivism.

[CurlyKitGirl]

I'm actually reading The Language Wars, which is pretty much exactly that. A history of English-language prescriptivism.

Ooooh fun!
TO AMAZON!

By Henry Hitchings right? (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Wars-History-Proper-English/dp/1848542097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328829618&sr=8-1)

It's cheap too.

EDIT:
No I squeaked with interest when I read the amazon description.
Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in other Languages looks like a good read too.

[Greenish]

I can give a brief history of prescriptivism in English if anyone wants! :smalltongue:So can I:

P: That's wrong, you can't say things like that.
D: Can, too!
P: No, you can't, you nincompoop!
D: Can and will, poopy-head!
P: But it's wrong and stupid and not English!
D: It's how the English speakers speak English. Blockhead.
P: Then they're speaking it wrong! *storms out of room*

:smalltongue:

[ForzaFiori]

(Oh Gods, those American accent in the audio accompaniment to the article. Sorry, it's just grating. And yet I'm manning it out for you)

There is no such thing as an "American accent". That's like when we say that someone has a "British accent". The English they speak in California is as different from the English I speak in South Carolina by at least as much as the English spoken in England, and the accents of anyone from a northern city is as incomprehensible as Scottish or Welsh English.

Back OT though: Organizations like l'Academie Francaise (I'll be honest, I don't even know HOW to type the accents that should be on that) should exist to help GUIDE a language, not stagnate it. I won't deny the fact that languages need some sort of protection, just like the skanky man-whore's they keep being compared to. There are languages that are changing so quickly, that in a person's lifetime they can become unintelligible. I knew a turkish man once who had stopped going home, because he couldn't figure out what anyone was saying anymore, there was so much new slang and idioms from when he was a child, once that didn't even make sense, and places where they had taken another languages idioms and just translated them literally. It'd also keep languages from sounding like modern Italian, which has so many words taken straight from english, I almost forget which one I'm actually speaking. They words aren't even Italianized, they're just take straight over (for instance, "Computer", "Shopping", "Sport", and "Bar"). At least other languages make it seem like a word they came up with (Computadora, in Spanish, for instance.). Agencies like l'Academie Francaise should be figuring out how to do something like that, not just saying the word shouldn't be used.

[CurlyKitGirl]

So can I:

P: That's wrong, you can't say things like that.
D: Can, too!
P: No, you can't, you nincompoop!
D: Can and will, poopy-head!
P: But it's wrong and stupid and not English!
D: It's how the English speakers speak English. Blockhead.
P: Then they're speaking it wrong! *storms out of room*

:smalltongue:

You missed a bit.

D: Are not!
P: Are too!
D: Are not!
P: Are not!
D: HA! You've broken one of your own prescribed rules. Nyah nyah nyah. You can't speak no proper English no more can you?
P: MUMMY, THE DESCRIPTIVISTS ARE BEING MEAN TO ME AGAIN!!
M: Well if you insist on clinging to the foolish belief that all rules attached to a language remain inviolate for all of time then you'd better get used to it!
P: *cries*
D: *laughs*
M: *reads her book on on existentialism and how it was affected by French linguistic theorists* Amateurs.

[Greenish]

I knew a turkish man once who had stopped going home, because he couldn't figure out what anyone was saying anymore, there was so much new slang and idioms from when he was a child, once that didn't even make sense, and places where they had taken another languages idioms and just translated them literally.Mmn. Funnily enough, the oldest document with a scrap of written Finnish ("Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho somen gelen Emÿna daÿda"*, according to wikipedia) is still intelligible to modern readers.

The slang changes fast, yeah, but that's pretty much the definition. I remember being confused when being "kusessa" changed from being in trouble to having a crush practically overnight, but usually it's not that hard to get up to speed, at least enough to understand and be understood.


*"I'd like to speak Finnish, but I can't."

[Goosefeather]

*"I'd like to speak Finnish, but I can't."

No-one needs fifteen cases. It's just greedy :smalltongue:

[Greenish]

No-one needs fifteen cases. It's just greedy :smalltongue:Instructive or comitative aren't used much, outside writing. Exessive I can't say I've ever heard nor seen used.

Anyway, without the cases, you couldn't say "to the house" or "in the house" or "as the house" etc. at all in Finnish. That'd be rather inconvenient.

[Edit]: And knowing whether your neighbour just said that he shot a bear or that he shot at a bear can be vital.

[Vella_Malachite]

JUST FOUND THIS THREAD OMG LINGUISTICS ARGLFLARGL.
*cough*. You can guess what I'm majoring in, can't you? :smalltongue:

Re: Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism: I'm generally a descriptivist, myself - I believe that language is there to be understood, and if language is still understood, then it has served its purpose. Slang is not un-English (or un-[insert language]), it is non-standard, and fits perfectly well into the vocabularies of English speakers. Similarly, languages will change over time, and while I can chuckle at the rules people in the past insisted ought never to change, someone in 100 years is going to do the same for my views about the use of 'which' and 'that'.

However.

This doesn't mean, for me, that all variations on language are acceptable everywhere. Just because I approve of having different acceptable varieties of a language doesn't mean I disapprove of having a central 'standard' variety of it. For one, it makes it easier for non-native speakers to learn the language without having to complicate it with too many variations.
But the part that's really going to get me thwacked over the head is that I approve of regulating the use of language in certain situations. At its most basic level, if I talked in gamer slang to my grandmother, she would be terribly confused, and language has not served its purpose. But more, at university, I am expected to write in 'standard' English for academic purposes, and I don't think that restriction is necessarily a bad thing. Not necessarily for linguistic reasons (although it does make the body of work more homogenous and easier to understand, on some levels), but for social reasons. Standard English is for formal situations, and people who write standard English are seen as taking their subject seriously, which, for a ridiculous profession like academia (guess what job I'm aiming for...?) is sort of necessary as a self-defense mechanism.

Tl;dr (can't blame you): descriptivism is a fine point of view, which I wholeheartedly agree with, but having socially defined rules in place as to which form of the language is used where is a useful social tool for defining situations.

[Riverdance]

Mmn. Funnily enough, the oldest document with a scrap of written Finnish ("Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho somen gelen Emÿna daÿda"*, according to wikipedia) is still intelligible to modern readers.

*"I'd like to speak Finnish, but I can't."

An old Finnish dialect is what the elvish language (quenya I believe) was based on. I've heard (from a native swedish speaker) that finnish sounds like one is gargling a potato.

Something I think is cool about language is how all the romance languages have the same structure, so once you've learned one all you have to do to learn another is relearn the words (not that that's easy).

[Greenish]

I've heard (from a native swedish speaker) that finnish sounds like one is gargling a potato. Are you sure he wasn't talking about Danish? Because Danish sounds like you're speaking Swedish with a hot potato in your mouth.

[Aedilred]

Something I think is cool about language is how all the romance languages have the same structure, so once you've learned one all you have to do to learn another is relearn the words (not that that's easy).
Up to a point. It certainly helps understanding if you know one already (especially Latin). They're still all a bit different in terms of structure, though. If French is relatively permissive, Spanish is rather more uptight in grammatical terms. Catalan is, I guess, the strange middle sister who's jealous that French and Spanish got all the boys and has spent so long being bullied by each of them in turn that she's picked up the worst habits of both. Italian looks a lot like her mother (but the similarities don't go as deep as you might think) and Romanian's been off living with those Slavonic boys for so long that most people forget she's even part of the same family.

(I don't know anything about Portuguese).

[SaintRidley]

Ooooh fun!
TO AMAZON!

By Henry Hitchings right? (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Wars-History-Proper-English/dp/1848542097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328829618&sr=8-1)

It's cheap too.


That's the one. I'm currently hanging around the chapters on Victorian-era attempts to wrangle our language into some semblance of perfectly corsetted form, but we all know Albion is crafty like a fox and more than willing to add some new words to her hoard for use in an emergency.

The chapter is, funny enough, called "Fish-Knives and Fist-****s," both being words coined during the Victorian era.

[Eldan]

An old Finnish dialect is what the elvish language (quenya I believe) was based on. I've heard (from a native swedish speaker) that finnish sounds like one is gargling a potato.


I know quite a few German speakers who call American* "Speaking with a Sock in your Mouth".


*Movie American. How Americans speak in German movies. A strange kinda southern-ish accent.

[Eldan]

An old Finnish dialect is what the elvish language (quenya I believe) was based on. I've heard (from a native swedish speaker) that finnish sounds like one is gargling a potato.


I know quite a few German speakers who call American* "Speaking with a Sock in your Mouth".


*Movie American. How Americans speak in German movies. A strange kinda southern-ish accent.

[Goosefeather]

Up to a point. If French is relatively permissive, Spanish is rather more uptight in grammatical terms.

How do you figure that one? French is still obsessed with her subject pronouns, and she's downright OCD when it comes to agreements on the past participle (PDOs, reflexives, and être verbs in general). Spanish happily ignores the first whenever she feels like it, and as for making her past participles agree, well, she'll just stare at you blankly unless you make it clear to her that they are functioning as adjectives.

And French tends to keep her sentences a bit tidier than Spanish, who will far more happily invert her subjects and objects around the verb (lo que dije yo, lo que yo dije, lo que dije - vs. ce que j'ai dit).

French isn't quite as addicted to the subjunctive as her sister is, however, but she's doing nowhere near as well as English, who is practically going cold turkey these days. And even when he does fall off the wagon, it's through unthinking habit, not because he enjoys it.

Edit: I wonder what it signifies that we seem to have characterised English as male, but the Romance languages as female! :smalltongue:

[Thufir]

I'm at that age when the shifts in common uses of language are starting to bother and start me off on 'you kids today' rants. Which I find funny. The way, for example, that using an apostrophe to denote a plural ("I have a lot of book's.") is starting to become accepted enough that I'm seeing it in official corporate memoranda and advertisements.

RAGE. :furious:


Doesn't mean I can't go Old Lady on it and say that if one doesn't know how to write a proper plural and are a native English speaker they ought to go back to primary and learn it over!

I still boggle at the fact my GCSE English class had to be taught how to correctly use apostrophes. :smalleek::smallyuk::smallannoyed::smallsigh:


'Course, "[t]he problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
So maybe English is just a disease ridden doxy from Southwark while other languages are the chaste daughters of many a noble.

Except that they're the ones we took all those words from.
Wait, but then if all languages are female, with whom did English get so impure and acquire all those words?
I suppose one could envision all languages having a male and female avatar, with both still being the same entity, just with two bodies.
I may be overthinking this.


I feel obliged to defend the honour of my sexy beloved manslut English here. Yes, okay, the gentleman has been around the world, yes his fingers smell of all the various partners he's been with, yes when you kiss him you're kissing all those other tongues too.

But it's only because he is so famous and so very very sexy that his reputation makes all the tabloids. I believe Swahili, Hindi, and Farsi, for example, are equally slutty. I believe several languages across Canada -- which are no longer widely spoken enough for me to name without consulting external references -- are the bastard love children of pioneer colonist and wise country wife.

Languages, when they're not locked in their cabinets or boudoirs, like to get it on. English, bless his flanks, cannot be blamed for it above his peers!

Much as I love that you did this, I don't really feel it to be necessary. In the context of language, this promiscuity is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. It adds to the charm of English (Not that it needed any more, since it was already charming enough to bed every other language it came across).


I can't help now imagining Byron as some kind of representative avatar for the English language, condensed and personified :smalltongue:

YES. I love this idea.


Me, I'm just a nutter who's always loved this sort of thing. And made a slight study of it.
That and the making of dictionaries. No. Really.

It's true!
What was that amusing Johnson quote, again? Was he disparaging the French or something?


I would say that I'm not even very fluent in English even though it's my first language and my first and best field of academic study. I don't know everything about it, and never will.

I question your definition of 'fluent'.


I can give a brief history of prescriptivism in English if anyone wants! :smalltongue:
Well, I actually can, but no one wants it so.

Why wouldn't we want that? I'd be interested.


There is no such thing as an "American accent". That's like when we say that someone has a "British accent". The English they speak in California is as different from the English I speak in South Carolina by at least as much as the English spoken in England, and the accents of anyone from a northern city is as incomprehensible as Scottish or Welsh English.

Yes there is. In fact, there are a lot of such things as an American accent, just as there are many such things as British accents. All accents associated with regions of America are American accents, and all accents associated with areas of Britain are British accents. The fact there are many subdivisions does not invalidate the blanket category, particularly since to someone from elsewhere, that is how it comes across. I hear an American accent, I can identify it as an American accent. I know there are different types of American accent, but I can't identify which is which, and if I hear one in isolation, all I get is 'American accent'. I imagine this would be similar for an american hearing British accents. No, they're not all the same, but there is enough commonality between them that someone from far enough away can group them together.
Hell, even within England it can happen - Curly swore at the UK Meetup last weekend that Qwaz and Archonic Energy sounded the same. They don't. They both have London accents, but from different parts of London, they definitely don't sound the same. There are definitely lots of different accents in London, so should we say there is no such thing as a London accent? No. No we should not. That would be ridiculous. It is perfectly reasonable to say someone has a London accent, and that that person has a British accent; and other people have American accents.

That ended up a lot longer than I intended...


Re: Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism: I'm generally a descriptivist, myself - I believe that language is there to be understood, and if language is still understood, then it has served its purpose. Slang is not un-English (or un-[insert language]), it is non-standard, and fits perfectly well into the vocabularies of English speakers. Similarly, languages will change over time, and while I can chuckle at the rules people in the past insisted ought never to change, someone in 100 years is going to do the same for my views about the use of 'which' and 'that'.

However.

This doesn't mean, for me, that all variations on language are acceptable everywhere. Just because I approve of having different acceptable varieties of a language doesn't mean I disapprove of having a central 'standard' variety of it. For one, it makes it easier for non-native speakers to learn the language without having to complicate it with too many variations.
But the part that's really going to get me thwacked over the head is that I approve of regulating the use of language in certain situations. At its most basic level, if I talked in gamer slang to my grandmother, she would be terribly confused, and language has not served its purpose. But more, at university, I am expected to write in 'standard' English for academic purposes, and I don't think that restriction is necessarily a bad thing. Not necessarily for linguistic reasons (although it does make the body of work more homogenous and easier to understand, on some levels), but for social reasons. Standard English is for formal situations, and people who write standard English are seen as taking their subject seriously, which, for a ridiculous profession like academia (guess what job I'm aiming for...?) is sort of necessary as a self-defense mechanism.

Tl;dr (can't blame you): descriptivism is a fine point of view, which I wholeheartedly agree with, but having socially defined rules in place as to which form of the language is used where is a useful social tool for defining situations.

That... describes some of my views much better than I've ever been able to. Thank you.

[SaintRidley]

Edit: I wonder what it signifies that we seem to have characterised English as male, but the Romance languages as female! :smalltongue:

You might have, but I'm firmly in the "English is a lady*" camp.


*She's a bit rough and tumble and certainly doesn't have any inhibitions regarding belching and scratching herself in front of the other languages. And sure, she's omnisexual and has hit at least second base with every other language (French being her last long-term lover who wasn't already dead--by the way, way to go Latin on making English a necrophile on top of it all) but she's still a lady.

[Goosefeather]

by the way, way to go Latin on making English a necrophile on top of it all

To make it even more icky, English sometimes even dug up Ancient Greek and brought her to the party, resulting in such three-way monstrosities as 'television', 'automobile', 'sociology', and, ironically, 'monolingual'.

Edit: relevant link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_word)

[Aedilred]

My observations are based more on my attempted flirtations with each of them than anything more analytical; I don't profess to know any of them intimately (I did get on rather well with French once upon a time, though, and would like to get to know Catalan rather better than I do).

Spanish verbs seemed to be more inflected, and I also seem to recall a (possibly obsolete?) neuter gender. Subjunctive is something else that always makes my eyes narrow too, albeit English still has a residual subjunctive that I can get pretty anal about when I remember, so that's just hypocrisy on my part. I certainly didn't think French was any more inflected than Spanish; I'm prepared for any actual linguists to correct me on that point, though.

I don't set so much store by word order. Considering how laid back English is about most things, word order remains pretty important (much more so than in a more heavily inflected language). You can mix up the word order a bit, but it usually makes you sound either like a foreigner or a poet. Or a tosser. In many social circumstances the last two are pretty much interchangeable.

Of course, by comparison with English, any language will look highly structured. English used to be much stuffier than today, mind, but loosened up a lot after a long period of enforced cohabitation with French. Since then it hasn't looked back and has been running around stealing anything from other languages that isn't nailed down, and several things that are.


Edit: I tend to consider words like "television" to be the product of English's failed lab experiments to clone dead languages, but which it adopted anyway because it was in a hurry and couldn't be bothered to do it properly. Truly it has no shame.

[Vella_Malachite]

That... describes some of my views much better than I've ever been able to. Thank you.

*whew*. So glad I'm not the only one who thinks like that...

[SaintRidley]

To make it even more icky, English sometimes even dug up Ancient Greek and brought her to the party, resulting in such three-way monstrosities as 'television', 'automobile', 'sociology', and, ironically, 'monolingual'.

Edit: relevant link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_word)

I've done my best to forget the offspring of that devil's threeway.

Thanks for reminding me.


edit - Aedilred - the neuter gender in Spanish is pretty much confined to certain pronouns, kind of like how inflection for case in English (outside the genitive) is mostly confined to our own pronouns.

I mean, using an adjective as a noun gets the neuter definite article, but that's about it otherwise.

[John Cribati]

This is sort of about language, so I guess it fits here:

Recently, I was watching Digimon Frontier on Youtube, and the whole "Agnimon/Agunimon" thing was brought up in the comments. For those who don't know, because of the pronunciation rules of Japanese, a hard k or g is followed by a short pause that ends up long enough that it sounds like an actual syllable to an untrained ear. So the character named after the Hindu (IIRC) god of fire is called "Agunimon" in the English dub because the dubbers heard the "extra syllable" got picked up on and lengthened. It worked well enough because now Takuya's entire line of evolutions is a callback to the first gogglehead, Tai. and his Agumon. I still think that it was a flub, though.

[Goosefeather]

Spanish verbs seemed to be more inflected, and I also seem to recall a (possibly obsolete?) neuter gender.

Ah, maybe it's because French slurs so much that many of her endings sound identical. Probably all that wine. When you get into the slightly less common tenses (passé simple, imperfect subjunctive, etc), you'll see when she actually fully expresses herself she's at least as much of a dominatrix as Spanish.

Neuter gender is still around, mainly with adjectives that you want to use as a noun (lo bueno de la situación, for example), and when you see a mixed group of men and women referred to with the 'masculine' article, it's technically neuter as well, though it's functionally identical to the masculine.



Subjunctive is something else that always makes my eyes narrow too, albeit English still has a residual subjunctive that I can get pretty anal about when I remember, so that's just hypocrisy on my part.


To be honest, since I started seriously studying French and Spanish, I've starting using the subjunctive more in English. Lest we forget, it still has its place, be it pedantry or be it plain old showing-off :smalltongue:



I don't set so much store by word order. Considering how laid back English is about most things, word order remains pretty important (much more so than in a more heavily inflected language). You can mix up the word order a bit, but it usually makes you sound either like a foreigner or a poet. Or a tosser. In many social circumstances the last two are pretty much interchangeable.


It's 'cause English can't be arsed with cases, for the most part. I think a slightly stricter word order is probably the lesser of two evils when compared to German.
EnglishaaaaaaaaaGerman
Theaaaaaaaaaaaader/die/das/die
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaden/die/das/die
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaades/der/des/der
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaadem/der/dem/den

Yeah, we'll just keep our SVO word order and avoid all those declensions, thanks! And the grammatical gender! My God, the genders... They're so ARBITRARY! Maybe I'll go and learn something nice like Persian instead, just to avoid them! :smalltongue:

[DeadManSleeping]

This is sort of about language, so I guess it fits here:

Recently, I was watching Digimon Frontier on Youtube, and the whole "Agnimon/Agunimon" thing was brought up in the comments. For those who don't know, because of the pronunciation rules of Japanese, a hard k or g is followed by a short pause that ends up long enough that it sounds like an actual syllable to an untrained ear. So the character named after the Hindu (IIRC) god of fire is called "Agunimon" in the English dub because the dubbers heard the "extra syllable" got picked up on and lengthened. It worked well enough because now Takuya's entire line of evolutions is a callback to the first gogglehead, Tai. and his Agumon. I still think that it was a flub, though.

The dubbers were right.

Japanese language is actually founded on something similar to a syllable called a "mora". There is a list of mora in the Japanese language for which characters exist. Every one of these, with the exception of the "n" character, contains either a single vowel, or a consonant followed by a vowel. This means that you cannot make the "g-n" sound out of Japanese writing. There is such a thing called a "whispered mora", where the vowel is not enunciated, but that only occurs between voiceless consonants (like "k" and "t", and unlike "g" and "n"). Thus, the script was written "Agunimon" (and if you look on the wiki, you can find the Japanese rendition to prove it), and the voice actor probably read it as such, and, of course, the translators faithfully rendered it the same way. However, because mouths are lazy, mora can get quite shortened, so listeners who don't speak Japanese might not be able to tell the difference between a shortened vowel and a nonexistent one.

Oh, and before anyone gets uppity, yes, I am aware that it is possible for a consonant to be its own mora when you stretch one mora by doubling the consonant.

[The Second]

I am not a linguist, I am in point of fact barely able to conjugate verbs, I often abuse plurals, and I never did learn just what the heck a participle was supposed to be.

I probably butchered the above sentence. Ah, well, such is life, I guess, I am much more of an informal speaker than a formal one. Even in informal speech, however, there are usages that rub me raw.

"I'll do it right now."

This phrase has somehow, unbelievably, come to mean 'I'll do it soon', or 'I'll do it in a moment from now'. How? Why? It is so absurd that it drives me up the wall every time I hear it said.

"I'm fine."

Ugh. Ok, I realize that when someone asks how you are doing, they are not asking for a life story; but this stock, two word response is just... lazy.

"Hon" - "Girl" - "Babe"

When did it become acceptable to walk up to a complete stranger and open a conversation with the words, "Hey babe." Come on, really? When did I become everyone's 'honey', 'babe' and 'home girl'? Even omitting the pronoun all together would be, ever so slightly, more polite. At this point I might even accept a 'Hey you' with a smile.

"Yeah"

When answering a phone, it seems that it is now much more fashionable to blurt out 'yeah' than it is to say 'Hello?' Well ok, I'll give you that, with the advent of cellular phones, most people know at a glance who they are talking to, but still. Saying 'yeah' instead of 'hello' sounds so crude, as if you are telling the person on the other line something along the lines of "Oh, it's you. I really don't feel like talking to you right now, but I'm not going to tell you that because it would probably hurt your feelings, so I'll listen to what you have to say and just make an annoyed grunting sound every ten seconds or so just to let you know I haven't hung up on you."

There are, of course, many, many more words and phrases that annoy me, but these are the ones that top my list.

[The Succubus]

RAGE. :furious:

I share your pain. Its amazing how kids' these days do'nt learn how to aspotrophize properly. Im of the school of thought thats in favour of savage beating's for kids that wont make the effort to put them in the right place.

[Goosefeather]

"I'll do it right now."

This phrase has somehow, unbelievably, come to mean 'I'll do it soon', or 'I'll do it in a moment from now'. How? Why? It is so absurd that it drives me up the wall every time I hear it said.


You should probably never come to Wales. We have the wonderful expression, "I'll do it in a minute now".

[CurlyKitGirl]

You should probably never come to Wales. We have the wonderful expression, "I'll do it in a minute now".

Try down Cornwall then. We have a phrase: "'e'll do 'er dreckly."
This breaks down into 'he/she/they/we'll do/finish/buy/other verb [whatever] after [pronoun]'s done doing whatever it is they're doing now'.
'dreckly' specifically means 'a unit of time anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours or more'.

I known some people say they'll do a task dreckly and do it a few days later, other do it dreckly and do it a few minutes later. Others do it dreckly and do it right then.

[The Succubus]

These musings on language have stirred a rather dusty memory in my head.

When I was in middle school (that's 9 or 10ish), I was in an English lesson and we were discussing descriptive words, specifically, in regards to the way a phrase can be said.

For example:

"Your doom is now at hand," he intoned.

"All the chocolate biscuits are gone!" she wailed.

"Nyer-nyer, your a silly poopy-head!" he mocked.

The blazing row came about because of this sentence, or something like it:

"Well, it looks like you're in trouble now!" he grinned.

I took exception to this because, for me at least, grinning is firstly a facial expression, not involving the vocal chords and secondly grinning is a silent action, having no sonic component which can translate into speech.

So I have to ask - is there a way you can say something "grinningly"? Also, if "grinningly" is a word, it really, really shouldn't be.

[dehro]

apparently an hour has different lenghts across the globe.
when I landed in Cuba, traveling with a dutch company, the resort manager told me and my travel mates that we should be andvised that hours, in Cuba, consist of 90 minutes and punctuality is not highly rated.
I failed to mention to the man that I understood because I live in a country where dinner is served at varying hours, depending on the latitude you're at..from 7 pm to as late as 22.30.. and that in the south of the country, people say they meet around midnight at the local to decide what to do next, and actually turn up sometimes around 2 am. the fun comes when one of the members of the party is northern, has actually turned up at midnight and by the time everybody is there is roaring drunk.

[Thufir]

"I'm fine."

Ugh. Ok, I realize that when someone asks how you are doing, they are not asking for a life story; but this stock, two word response is just... lazy.

How so? How more so than other two/one word answers (Possibly omitting the "I'm") such as "alright", "OK, etc?
What else should one say if one has nothing in particular to say?


I share your pain. Its amazing how kids' these days do'nt learn how to aspotrophize properly. Im of the school of thought thats in favour of savage beating's for kids that wont make the effort to put them in the right place.

...:smallannoyed:
You are treading on very thin ice...


So I have to ask - is there a way you can say something "grinningly"? Also, if "grinningly" is a word, it really, really shouldn't be.

Yes, clearly. And why shouldn't it be a word? It has a perfectly obvious meaning which otherwise lacks a word.

[Dogmantra]

I took exception to this because, for me at least, grinning is firstly a facial expression, not involving the vocal chords and secondly grinning is a silent action, having no sonic component which can translate into speech.

Unless there's a very good reason for it, most of the time in good writing, you will get "said" or an action. It's a bit like in film, if you have a child on a bicycle going one way, cut to a car coming the other way, then cut to a bicycle on the floor with its wheel still spinning, you haven't shown a car crash, but that's what the viewer will assume happened, just like if you've got speech marks and then someone right afterwards doing something, the reader's going to add meaning to the speech from what they're doing and they'll know that this person was the one to say it. Facial expressions are a common one, and they help to add a second layer of meaning to the word without compromising the flow. Sighing is a good one too, or even just whatever they're doing at the time, like
"I just hate you, I hate you and your arse face." She punched the nasty robber.
or
"English is such a dumb language," he sipped his drink, "it has too many rules, y'know?"

"he said, grinning" is fine too, but it could lead to "said saturation" which is something I just made up a term for but sounds pretty legitimate, no? So you might want to a) use it sparingly and b) make up for it by using fewer saids elsewhere.

Now obviously, since you're aware of this, you can choose to do whatever you want in your own writing as long as you acknowledge that the flow of it will be unconventional (which is quite often a good thing).


Personally I would advise against "he said grinningly". Adverbs in modern writing are an odd one. The rule is typically each one you use halves the impact. Again, your writing, do what you want as long as you're aware that adding adverbs can decrease the perceived quality of the writing. And of course there are exceptions, sometimes saying "he slowly paced the room" is going to be more appropriate than leaving out the slowly. But adverbs after "Said" tend to be rather iffy, they break up the conversation a little too much for most people's liking, since the reader tunes out saids, but if there's an adverb there, they can't.

[The Succubus]

"he said, grinning" is fine too, but it could lead to "said saturation" which is something I just made up a term for but sounds pretty legitimate, no? So you might want to a) use it sparingly and b) make up for it by using fewer saids elsewhere.

"He said, grinning" is absolutely fine and make sense to me. But using "grinned" as an adjective for vocal expression does not. Another one is "He said, laughingly" is ok as well as it suggests speech being punctuated with short bursts of laughter. Whereas something like ""When you come to Newcastle, I'm going to leave your grammatically incorrect butt to freeze at the station" Thufir laughed." doesn't make sense to me because you're either laughing, or you're talking. It's very difficult to do both at the same time.

[Dogmantra]

It's just montage, y'see.

It's like, someone's doing the laundry. They're talking to someone.
"So, how's the wife?" Charlie flipped the switch to a hot cycle, "She still doing fine?"
"Yeah, she's out with her friends every night now though." Fred poured in the detergent.


They're not doing the laundry in such a way as to form words, they're talking and doing it at the same time. In the same way, they're not laughing in Morse Code or anything, they are simply laughing and talking at the same time, you just omit the "said" because you have quotation marks for that. It's pretty much the definitive way to do conversations in conventional modern writing. Of course you can do it your own way, 's not wrong.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I'm afraid in this case, you're wrong, Succubus. The word structure there does not necessarily refer to how the sentence was actually said. More often than not, it refers to actions done concurrently, or in between the bits said.

So, you laughing example, he could be talking and breaking up his talking with small bits of laughter. Also, take the below example?


"You're really going to do that?" he said

"You're really going to do that?" he said, laughing

"You're really going to do that?" he laughed


The first example Is much more serious than the other two, with completely different overtones. The latter two are much more light-hearted in tone. Of those, the former is much clumsier. The most common, concise, and accepted one would be the latter.
In addition, "he said, laughing", to me at least, is a little more... derisive? It seems like he's laughing AT the person who he's talking too. "he laughed", on the other hand, is that much more friendly and light-hearted. Or at least, SEEMINGLY so. You could use it for great affect in an antagonist character, by showing him as a faux-ami.

[Greenish]

Of course, by comparison with English, any language will look highly structured.What do you mean?


"I'll do it right now."

This phrase has somehow, unbelievably, come to mean 'I'll do it soon', or 'I'll do it in a moment from now'. How? Why? It is so absurd that it drives me up the wall every time I hear it said.You think that's bad? How about people saying "*I could care less" when they mean the exact opposite?

[The Succubus]

Yes, I do appreciate that it can be an immediate action following a spoken phrase but in the context of the lesson, it was purely used in a descriptive fashion.

Going back to what someone said earlier about over-using the word "said" in conversation, the teacher was looking for alternatives, such as:

"XYZ" he moaned.
"XYZ" she whined.
"XYZ" she growled.
"XYZ" he shouted.

All of the above are descriptive alternatives to using the word "said". The point clumsily trying to make is that "grinned" is not an appropriate descriptor when dealing with speech.

Easier way to resolve this - can anyone find me a spoken example of someone saying something in the manner of "grinning"?

[Dogmantra]

Best example I can think of for when "he grinned" would be appropriate is David Tennant's Doctor. Can't find any clips on Youtube right now, but you'd know it when you see it 'cause his mouth takes up half the screen and his voice goes all high.

Also I'd argue that "grinned" is more appropriate than any of those other descriptors, since it's actually an action and the others are just different ways of saying "said". In most cases it should be obvious from what's happening how they're saying it, and using a word that's not "said" or an action reminds the reader that they're reading a story.

[Asta Kask]

You think that's bad? How about people saying "*I could care less" when they mean the exact opposite?

You know what I dislike? People who are so tin-eared that they don't that I could care less is sarcasm, and hence perfectly grammatical.

[Greenish]

You know what I dislike? People who are so tin-eared that they don't that I could care less is sarcasm, and hence perfectly grammatical.I'm not objecting on the grounds of grammar. It just means the opposite of what it's user intended it to mean.

Sarcasm nothing, it's barbaric vandalism!

[Asta Kask]

I'm not objecting on the grounds of grammar. It just means the opposite of what it's user intended it to mean.

Sarcasm nothing, it's barbaric vandalism!

No it does not, because it is sarcasm.

[dehro]

what baffles me are websights with bearnaked ladies

[SaintRidley]

On the said synonyms. Try to avoid them. Most of the time it's perfectly obvious from the words in the quotation marks how the words are being said, which just makes the synonyms redundant. Plus, readers naturally glide over said.

Same problem with adverbs, really. They're often redundant, so chop them off in most cases and you're fine.



what baffles me are websights with bearnaked ladies

Sounds like you might enjoy the baffling power of the eggcorn database. (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/)

[Greenish]

No it does not, because it is sarcasm.If it was done on purpose, maybe. Mostly, though, it seems to be out of sheer ignorance, by people who don't know any better.

[The Succubus]

*picks up bucket of icy water*

*dumps on Asta and Greenish*

If someone is using it in a non-sarcastic tone of voice, it is bad grammer and you can give them a clip round the ear for it. If they are using it in a sarcastic tone of voice, they are being snarky and you can give them a clip round the ear for that instead.

It's win-win. :smalltongue:

[Dogmantra]

If it was done on purpose, maybe. Mostly, though, it seems to be out of sheer ignorance, by people who don't know any better.

I was under the impression that it's something of an eggcorn.

I'd imagine either someone said "could care less" sarcastically (so totally legitimate use), or "couldn't care less" in a certain accent (some accents sometimes condense the ends of couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't so they can be misheard as could, would and should) and then the person they used it to went on to use it either straight or as they misheard it, or both ways happened. Then people heard it and it spread from there.

I'd say that, while maybe a little bothersome, it's a perfectly legitimate idiom even when said unsarcastically because it's gained such widespread use to mean "I don't care". It's like... Jeggings. Irksome word, legitimate meaning because people understand what you mean when you say it.

[The Succubus]

I'd say that, while maybe a little bothersome, it's a perfectly legitimate idiom even when said unsarcastically because it's gained such widespread use to mean "I don't care". It's like... Jeggings. Irksome word, legitimate meaning because people understand what you mean when you say it.

Ewww. :smallyuk: I really hate Franken-words like that. :smallannoyed:

[Greenish]

It's like... Jeggings. Irksome word, legitimate meaning because people understand what you mean when you say it.I had to look up jeggings, but now that I know what they are, the name makes perfect sense, and is descriptive enough that in context, you'd understand what sort of article of clothing it is.

So, yeah, I'm cool with "jeggings".

[John Cribati]

Ewww. :smallyuk: I really hate Franken-words like that. :smallannoyed:

I know right? I mean, i'd totally prefer to say things like "pack I wear on my back" or "man who tells people what the weather is" or "board that we skate with." :roy:

[The Succubus]

I know right? I mean, i'd totally prefer to say things like "pack I wear on my back" or "man who tells people what the weather is" or "board that we skate with." :roy:

Yay! Someone who agrees with me! :biggrin:

I know, I know, all part of an evolving language - it just grates me a little that people come up with new buzzwords like that but nobody bothers to tell me what they mean. It's like there's a new dictionary all the cool kids are using but I don't get to read it because I'm not cool. :smallfrown:

[Greenish]

I know, I know, all part of an evolving language - it just grates me a little that people come up with new buzzwords like that but nobody bothers to tell me what they mean. It's like there's a new dictionary all the cool kids are using but I don't get to read it because I'm not cool. :smallfrown:Try google or urban dictionary. Or maybe just asking the people what the words they're using mean. :smalltongue:

I'm all for new phenomena getting new names, and the ones that make sense are the best. Like "jeggings" (from "jeans" plus "leggings"), or, to use some Finnish examples, "puhelin" ("a phone", literally, "a tool for talking casually") or "kännykkä" ("a cellphone", literally, "something held on the palm of the hand"). A language that's not constantly coining new words is a dead language.

[Themrys]

I'd say that, while maybe a little bothersome, it's a perfectly legitimate idiom even when said unsarcastically because it's gained such widespread use to mean "I don't care". It's like... Jeggings. Irksome word, legitimate meaning because people understand what you mean when you say it.

Actually, I didn't know "I could care less" as an idiom. I only know "I couldn't care less". (I'm from Germany, but if it was that common, I'd have read it somewhere)
And it is not like "Jeggins". "Jeggins" replaces "a mix between jeans and leggins" which is a long sentence and therefore needs to be replaced by something shorter.

I only approve of new words if they are necessary. I do not approve of the idea that, once enough people use a word or figure of speech or whatever incorrectly, that usage becomes correct. (Of course I know I can do nothing against that. Still.)


Concerning the usage of "said" in writing...It's interesting that this seems to be commonly accepted in English language, while, in Germany, it is considered bad style to use "said" more than once a page or so. There are lots of other words for "said + adverb" and German teachers want you to use them. Like, for example "shouted" instead of "said loudly". (The German equivalent of "grinned" is used as synonym for "said" by some fanfic writers, but many people don't approve. I am one of them.)

[Dogmantra]

Actually, I didn't know "I could care less" as an idiom. I only know "I couldn't care less". (I'm from Germany, but if it was that common, I'd have read it somewhere)
I do believe it's an almost exclusively American thing. I think it's highly likely it was an accident that it's coined as an idiom, but language is defined by use and to deny that "I could care less" is, I think, rather futile. It's not something you'd use in formal writing though. Never heard anyone English use it except in a discussion of the term.


Concerning the usage of "said" in writing...It's interesting that this seems to be commonly accepted in English language, while, in Germany, it is considered bad style to use "said" more than once a page or so. There are lots of other words for "said + adverb" and German teachers want you to use them. Like, for example "shouted" instead of "said loudly". (The German equivalent of "grinned" is used as synonym for "said" by some fanfic writers, but many people don't approve. I am one of them.)
English teachers encourage their students to use lots of synonyms for "said" in England, and probably in other English speaking schools too, but the reason there is that the emphasis is on developing a larger vocabulary rather than learning how to write professional standard stories, which is how it should be if the class is advertised as an English class, you're learning about the language, which involves learning lots of words, you're not learning how to use one specific application of the language. The emphasis in a story isn't on showing off one's knowledge of the language, more about engaging the reader and telling a good story (even for arty stories, it's more about getting a message across or showing off one's use of the language), and that's why there's a stigma against anything that's not an action, said, or asked.

[ForzaFiori]

Ewww. :smallyuk: I really hate Franken-words like that. :smallannoyed:

Words like that have been a staple of English since... well, since before it was the current English. Kennings, usually refering to Old English words, are just there version of compound words (like weatherman, skateboard, backpack, etc). What else are you supposed to do? I mean, what would you call a mixture of leggings and jeans, because "a cross between leggings and jeans" is way to long.


Best example I can think of for when "he grinned" would be appropriate is David Tennant's Doctor. Can't find any clips on Youtube right now, but you'd know it when you see it 'cause his mouth takes up half the screen and his voice goes all high.

Also I'd argue that "grinned" is more appropriate than any of those other descriptors, since it's actually an action and the others are just different ways of saying "said". In most cases it should be obvious from what's happening how they're saying it, and using a word that's not "said" or an action reminds the reader that they're reading a story.

This is an excellent example. The reason it works is because by grinning, it actually does change the inflection and intonation of the words. It's also why in chorus classes, your told not to smile. It changes the way the word sounds. Therefore, grinning while speaking makes the words sound different, and that's why it's used as a synonym for "said".

[Ravens_cry]

It's also why, when doing telemarketing, it's good to smile when you talk, even if you have to force it. It changes the tone of your voice in a way that people can pick up on, even if only subconsciously.
It's why Elton John's 'Your Song' is one of my favourites', there is a definite smile in a his voice, especially in the last line, you can hear his love for the person he wrote that song for.

[noparlpf]

I'm frequently called a "grammar Nazi". I'm told I have a "frighteningly fascist" view of the evolution of language. (The latter because I was complaining about how "discrimination" has evolved to mean the opposite of what it means.)
I'll admit that I'm something of a stickler for rules. I'll also admit that I tend to believe that when it comes to language what was there first is right and that changes from that are wrong. (Of course, updating those rules to accommodate new concepts is necessary.) I think etymology is neat, but I know if I studied it I'd end up speaking incredibly archaically, rendering me (even more) incomprehensible.
So I stick to correcting peoples' more egregious grammatical errors, but using silly modern speech, like, all the time.
I happen to like the subjunctive, so the hypothetical "were" is one of my favorites. One pet peeve is the misuse of "me" and "I", as in, "He is better at math than me", when it should be, "...than I (am)".
I also mix and match Oxford commas with non-Oxford commas, depending on my mood, which may vary midway through a sentence. I also frequently switch from US English to UK English midway through a sentence; in Bio earlier I wrote "may polymerize or depolymerise spontaneously" in my notes.

[Dogmantra]

Speaking of Oxford Commas, I know that it includes whether or not you put a comma before the and at the end of a list (eggs, milk, and bread) or whatever, but does it also include commas before other ands (and other buts)?

If so, the Oxford Comma is the single greatest linguistic invention since the Interrobang
(I am well aware the Oxford Comma almost certainly came first)

[Greenish]

All I know about Oxford comma I've learned from webcomics.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lroovsKtS71qgiws1o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId =AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329001681&Signature=20c6ryOL%2FFpVG4G%2B17dMig4weGw%3D

[NNescio]

Yes, I do appreciate that it can be an immediate action following a spoken phrase but in the context of the lesson, it was purely used in a descriptive fashion.

Going back to what someone said earlier about over-using the word "said" in conversation, the teacher was looking for alternatives, such as:

"XYZ" he moaned.
"XYZ" she whined.
"XYZ" she growled.
"XYZ" he shouted.

All of the above are descriptive alternatives to using the word "said". The point clumsily trying to make is that "grinned" is not an appropriate descriptor when dealing with speech.

Easier way to resolve this - can anyone find me a spoken example of someone saying something in the manner of "grinning"?

"Chuckled", "chortled", " "snickered/sniggered", and their various synonyms, with each implying a different degree of friendliness and/or derision. The second one is also notable for being a 'frankenword' coined by Lewis Carroll.

[Xuc Xac]

I know right? I mean, i'd totally prefer to say things like "pack I wear on my back" or "man who tells people what the weather is" or "board that we skate with." :roy:

You would prefer to carry your things in a bapack and go out to ride your skoard after hearing the weaman say it's going to be a sunny day? Because those are portmanteau words like "jeggings". "Backpack", "skateboard", and "weatherman" are not the same thing.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

See, in my opinion, no matter how stupid something might be, if enough people say it, it's a word, and thus part of the language. No matter how much I might not LIKE the word, that doesn't change the fact that it is a word in the English language.

[Yora]

It depends on how you approach the subject of language. As a system of patterns and rules, or as a social phenomenon. While there is a certain value in creating a set of standard vocabulary, ortography, and gramar, for expample to teach the language to other people, it does, and have to, ignore the evolving aspect of language as a cultural product.
Patterns in language, that arise fast often also disappear fast as well, and it would be nonsense to try updating a written set of rules all the time. Once you updated it, it's already outdated. Therefore it makes a lot more sense to limit yourself to the patterns that turn out to endure for a very long time. But you can identify these only after they have already been used for a ling time and have become so common that it's unlukely to disappear again soon.

I do believe it's an almost exclusively American thing. I think it's highly likely it was an accident that it's coined as an idiom, but language is defined by use and to deny that "I could care less" is, I think, rather futile. It's not something you'd use in formal writing though. Never heard anyone English use it except in a discussion of the term.
It is part of the language, no doubt about that. But it makes you look stupid, so you still shouldn't say it. :smallbiggrin:

Which happens to open up a whole new issue: "Speaking is acting" as one of my professors often said. By the choice of your words, you are presenting your personalty to the outside world, just like your choice of clothing, food, cars, and whatever. You display allegiance to a certain group of people while distancing yourself from others. Which I think means that you can very well criticize bad language. But not so much as to deny the speech patterns used by another person as invalid, but rather as a way of showing disapproval about the position the person is taking by chosing certain words and patterns.

[Kalmageddon]

English teachers encourage their students to use lots of synonyms for "said" in England, and probably in other English speaking schools too, but the reason there is that the emphasis is on developing a larger vocabulary rather than learning how to write professional standard stories, which is how it should be if the class is advertised as an English class, you're learning about the language, which involves learning lots of words, you're not learning how to use one specific application of the language. The emphasis in a story isn't on showing off one's knowledge of the language, more about engaging the reader and telling a good story (even for arty stories, it's more about getting a message across or showing off one's use of the language), and that's why there's a stigma against anything that's not an action, said, or asked.

In other countries the repetition of a single word in the length of a few lines (how many exactly varies) can be considered a real error.
In Italian language you are not only encouraged but forced to avoid repetition of words at all costs by using synonims, it's percieved as very simplistic and clumsy to not do so.
That is, unless you want to put an emphasis on the meaning of the repeated word, but that's used mostly on words that carry a strong meaning, obviously, so the word "said" wouldn't qualify, usually.

[Grinner]

It depends on how you approach the subject of language. As a system of patterns and rules, or as a social phenomenon. While there is a certain value in creating a set of standard vocabulary, ortography, and gramar, for expample to teach the language to other people, it does, and have to, ignore the evolving aspect of language as a cultural product.
Patterns in language, that arise fast often also disappear fast as well, and it would be nonsense to try updating a written set of rules all the time. Once you updated it, it's already outdated. Therefore it makes a lot more sense to limit yourself to the patterns that turn out to endure for a very long time. But you can identify these only after they have already been used for a ling time and have become so common that it's unlukely to disappear again soon.

Does that mean that all of the wildly wonderful neologisms produced by modern societies will die soon? Will I soon no longer LOL my MFAO?

[Aedilred]

Slang, being on the cutting edge of language evolution, tends to be more vulnerable to extinction. Some of it (the core group of English swear words) survives for hundreds of years. Some of it dies out functionally within a few decades (when was the last time you heard anyone say "radical" or "hip" other than to make fun of it? When was the last time you heard anyone say "beezer" at all?)

I don't know how long "lol" will survive. I think it might last the distance, although some similar abbreviations ("fmao", for instance, might not). "Rofl" could go either way.

[SaintRidley]

Speaking of slang and how easily it dies out, here (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5402)'s a dictionary of slang published in 1811 detailing the slang of the late 18th century.

[Ravens_cry]

Some of those are still in use. Interesting. I wish I had more time to read that.

[ForzaFiori]

In other countries the repetition of a single word in the length of a few lines (how many exactly varies) can be considered a real error.
In Italian language you are not only encouraged but forced to avoid repetition of words at all costs by using synonims, it's percieved as very simplistic and clumsy to not do so.
That is, unless you want to put an emphasis on the meaning of the repeated word, but that's used mostly on words that carry a strong meaning, obviously, so the word "said" wouldn't qualify, usually.

Actually, you can repeat ANY adjective in Italian to put emphasis on it.
IE (the "e" should have an accent. I don't know how to type them):
La macchina e veloce. -The car is fast
La macchina e veloce veloce. - The car is very fast

You can also add the suffix "-issimo/a".

In other areas of speach though, your completely right. "Ne" (also supposed to be accented) is used to avoid repition of "non", for instance, but it usually makes you then repeat ne, as it's commonly found when listing negatives.
IE
Non ho ne un aereo, ne una barca - I don't have an airplane or a boat.
instead of
Non ho un aereo. Non ho una barca. - I don't have an airplane. I don't have a boat

[Kalmageddon]

Actually, you can repeat ANY adjective in Italian to put emphasis on it.
IE (the "e" should have an accent. I don't know how to type them):
La macchina e veloce. -The car is fast
La macchina e veloce veloce. - The car is very fast

You can also add the suffix "-issimo/a".

I was talking about repeating a word in the span of a short text instead of using synonims, not using it two times in a row, which is still outdated and awful to read anyway.

Like this:

Marco entrò nella macchina e si allacciò le cinture poi mise in moto la macchina e uscì dal parcheggio,

Any decent Italian teacher would consider the above repetition as a mistake, since you can easly use another word to say "macchina", such as "veicolo" and thus avoid an unecessary repetition.

This has been hammered in my head ever since elementary school and it's pretty much a rule of decent writing. No one would publish material with these kind of repetitions.

[ForzaFiori]

I apologize, I misunderstood what you meant.

what you said is true in pretty much every language I've ever studied though, not just Italian. I've had several English teachers get onto me because I used the same words over and over again. That's why most English classes now want you to have a thesaurus.

[Weezer]

I apologize, I misunderstood what you meant.

what you said is true in pretty much every language I've ever studied though, not just Italian. I've had several English teachers get onto me because I used the same words over and over again. That's why most English classes now want you to have a thesaurus.

Really? I've always had English teachers warn me away from the thesaurus, it's really obvious when someone doesn't actually understand the word and just used a thesaurus to find it. On the other hand English teachers do try to ensure that you have a broad vocabulary, so you can avoid repeating words by virtue of knowing a lot.

[ForzaFiori]

Mine generally wanted you to have them, but also wanted you to know the words. Basically, if you find yourself using a word over and over again, look it up in the thesaurus. If you don't know what the synonyms mean, look them up. But honestly, who can remember every single synonym to a word that they know? I've found myself looking for a substitute word, then doing a headsmack when I saw the list, because there were at least 3 or 4 that I should have known off the top of my head.

[Weezer]

I think my teachers were coming at it from the position that the misuse of a thesaurus is far more common than the proper use of one, especially amongst people just learning how to write well. Of course they have a proper use, or they wouldn't exist, but I've found that the proper use is far outnumbered by improper use.

[Greenish]

The Oxford American* Dictionary & Thesaurus that came with my laptop has these sweet sections on the correct use of near synonyms. They explain the different connotations of the words.


*No, I've no idea why I got the American English edition.

[Yora]

What is the english word for eating greedily and hastly, bordering on disgusting? Eating like a pig. I think there was one, but I can't remember it.

[Goosefeather]

What is the english word for eating greedily and hastly, bordering on disgusting? Eating like a pig. I think there was one, but I can't remember it.

Gobbling, guzzling, wolfing down?

[Brother Oni]

What is the english word for eating greedily and hastly, bordering on disgusting? Eating like a pig. I think there was one, but I can't remember it.

Gorge or engorge (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gorge) I think fits your bill.

[Yora]

Hm, non of these seem to carry the implication of disgusting glutony that the German "fressen" has.

The reason the question came up was that I tried to translate the humorous term FDH, which is often cited as an efective diet method. It's short for "Friss die Hälfte", which means "eat half as much", but has the added sting of implying "you could be thinner if you just wouldn't be such a glutton". Since studies of diet methods seem to have come to the conclusion that the only thing that really matters is eating less, I occasionally think it would be great to be able to use this sarcastic remark in english conversations.

[Brother Oni]

Binge half as much?

[Greenish]

Settle for two cheeseburgers?

Doesn't quite have the rhythm.

[Aedilred]

Well, like many idiomatic expressions it probably doesn't translate as pithily. I'd like to add the following terms to the discussion, though:

Scoff; shovel; stuff one's face/gob/cakehole with; devour; nom

The best of those for these purposes is probably "scoff" as it conveys the impression best without qualifying words or extreme informality.

[Kneenibble]

What is the english word for eating greedily and hastly, bordering on disgusting? Eating like a pig. I think there was one, but I can't remember it.

Scarf
Snorf
Gobble


An equivalently sarcastic phrase might be "put down the fork."

[razark]

What is the english word for eating greedily and hastly...
snarf (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/snarf)

Is this long enough to actually post now?

[dehro]

Sounds like you might enjoy the baffling power of the eggcorn database. (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/)

not sure if I should laugh or weep

[Greenish]

not sure if I should laugh or weepI did both, and have been trying not to return ever since.

[dehro]

I did both, and have been trying not to return ever since.

gotta love the feeble position though

[SaintRidley]

Scarf
Snorf
Gobble


An equivalently sarcastic phrase might be "put down the fork."

I'll second the suggestion of "Put down the fork" as the best analogue for Yora to use.

[Yora]

PDF would do the job quite well, I think. :smallbiggrin:

Since we are at the topic. Why is it that there is a word for when you are no longer hungry, but no word for when you stop being thirsty? I don't know of any in English and know for sure there isn't one in German.

Fun fact: The reason that english has different names for animals and the meat of the animals dates back to the norman conquest. The nobles and rich who spoke a french language, would encounter those animals only as meat on the table, while those who tended to live animals were servants who spoke their anglo-saxon language. Because the names for meat come from french, and the names for the animal from german:
Cow = Kuh, Calf = Kalb, Sheep = Schaf, Lamb = Lamm, Swine = Schwein, Deer is related to Tier, which means "animal".

[Goosefeather]

PDF would do the job quite well, I think. :smallbiggrin:

Since we are at the topic. Why is it that there is a word for when you are no longer hungry, but no word for when you stop being thirsty? I don't know of any in English and know for sure there isn't one in German.


The equivalent to 'sating/satiating/slaking one's hunger' is to 'quench one's thirst'. I don't think I've ever heard it used adjectivally (i.e. 'my quenched thirst'). I'm pretty sure there's no parallel to 'full' though, beyond 'no longer thirsty'.

[Eldan]

I think my teachers were coming at it from the position that the misuse of a thesaurus is far more common than the proper use of one, especially amongst people just learning how to write well. Of course they have a proper use, or they wouldn't exist, but I've found that the proper use is far outnumbered by improper use.

Interestingly, we were thought hte exact opposite in German class, really. From about third grade on, our teacher would grab a highlighter pen and mark ever instance of the verb "sagen" (say) we used in the same text and tell us not to use it more than once, if we could avoid it. In general, we were told to vary our words as often as possible, especially with commonly used verbs. E.g. "Sagen", "sprechen", "reden" (say, speak, talk) and two dozen more. Also, not using basic verbs with adverbs (or adjectives, in German) added to them. I.e. not using ""...", sagte er zorning" ("...", he said angrily.), but use verbs which describe the state. And then maybe add the adverbs to those for emphasis.

In general, overuse of the same word in the same text was massively discouraged and called lazy writing, as well as proof of a lack of a well-developed vocabulary.

Which is why I still have problems writing in a proper English style. My inner Student still wants to show of his Thesaurus-skills whenever the verb "say" comes up.

[dehro]

The equivalent to 'sating/satiating/slaking one's hunger' is to 'quench one's thirst'. I don't think I've ever heard it used adjectivally (i.e. 'my quenched thirst'). I'm pretty sure there's no parallel to 'full' though, beyond 'no longer thirsty'.

sure there is: drunk

[Greenish]

Since we are at the topic. Why is it that there is a word for when you are no longer hungry, but no word for when you stop being thirsty? I don't know of any in English and know for sure there isn't one in German.…Well, that's funny. There isn't one in Finnish, either, and that's not a Germanic (or even Indo-european) language.

[Asta Kask]

We use "unthirsty" (otörstig) in Swedish, but it is a real word. It's not something thrown together in desperation.

[Kneenibble]

The equivalent to 'sating/satiating/slaking one's hunger' is to 'quench one's thirst'. I don't think I've ever heard it used adjectivally (i.e. 'my quenched thirst'). I'm pretty sure there's no parallel to 'full' though, beyond 'no longer thirsty'.

Slaking is for thirst though, isn't it? To slake one's thirst. My slaked thirst. I have never heard of slaking one's hunger.

[Goosefeather]

sure there is: drunk

Nope - when you're full, you don't want to eat any more, but personally even when I'm drunk that rarely stops me from wanting to drink more :smalltongue:

Reminds me of this extract from HHGTTG :smallbiggrin:

Arthur Dent: What are you doing?
Ford Prefect: Preparing for hyperspace. It's rather unpleasantly like being drunk.
Arthur Dent: What's so wrong about being drunk?
Ford Prefect: Ask a glass of water.


EDIT:

Slaking is for thirst though, isn't it? To slake one's thirst. My slaked thirst. I have never heard of slaking one's hunger.

Oops, yeah, my bad!

Also, 'allay' one's hunger.

[GolemsVoice]

I've heard some language comitee has made up the word "sitt" (no longer thirsty) to go with "satt" (no longer hungry). But just like "Elter", meaning "one parent", no one uses it, exept in mockery. Explanation: so far, German only had the word Eltern, meaning parents, and if you wanted to talk about a single parent, you'd have to use father or mother.

[Eldan]

"Elternteil" is commonly used for one parent, at least in Switzerland. Which translates to, more or less "Part of the Parents".

[GolemsVoice]

Yep, we use that too, but now, we could also use "Elter" should we really really want to.

[HeadlessMermaid]

One pet peeve is the misuse of "me" and "I", as in, "He is better at math than me", when it should be, "...than I (am)".
Actually, I never understood how this works. (Non-native speaker here, so don't shoot.) By the same token, shouldn't you say "I am better at math than he"? And doesn't that sound awful? Doesn't "I am better at math than him" sound better?

I believe that it's quite acceptable to use the accusative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative)/dative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dative_case) case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case) ("him" instead of "he", "me" instead of "I" and so on) after a preposition. In this case, the pronoun ("him") is the object of the preposition ("than"). For comparison, it is definitely correct to say "for him" and "after them" and "before her", right? Is there any reason why the preposition "than" shouldn't be used in the same way?

Now, saying "I am better than math than he" is no less grammatically correct - though I still believe it sounds awful. :smalltongue: It just assumes a different syntax. In this case, the object of the preposition "than" is an entire relative clause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_clause) ("he is (good at math)"), most of which is omitted. So the pronoun is rightly in the nominative case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_case), because it's now the subject of the omitted verb ("is").

Or at least, that's how I understand it. Am I wrong? And if so, why? I'd love to learn.

EDIT - Here's wikipedia's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Than) take. I still don't understand why "than him" is wrong. Or if it IS wrong, for that matter.

[Yora]

What do you thin about the claim "Germans can't say squirrel"?

It's a bit easier than Massachusetts, but really, how do you pronounce it? I think the closest I can get is "skwirel" :smallbiggrin:

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Squirrel?

"Skwuhrl"

[Eldan]

The best solution for us German speakers, I've found, is to say Skwöll and mumble a bit.

[GolemsVoice]

What's wrong with Massachusets?
Mass-ah-chew-sets, nein?

[John Cribati]

What do you thin about the claim "Germans can't say squirrel"?

It's a bit easier than Massachusetts, but really, how do you pronounce it? I think the closest I can get is "skwirel" :smallbiggrin:

SK+whirl......

[Xuc Xac]

I still don't understand why "than him" is wrong. Or if it IS wrong, for that matter.

What are you comparing with "than"? That will tell you the answer.

"I'm better at math than him." Here, you compare your skill at math and him. "I'm better at math than I am better than him." That's not what you want to say, is it?

If you're comparing your math skill and his math skill, then you should say it like this: "I'm better at math than he is."

[Eldan]

A thing that just occurred to me, and that is a bit strange: why is the pronoun I capitalized in English, but no other pronoun is?

[noparlpf]

A thing that just occurred to me, and that is a bit strange: why is the pronoun I capitalized in English, but no other pronoun is?

Because I am more important than you, obviously. (Though then the question would be why "me" isn't capitalized. Another question would be, why do I keep switching back and forth between British and American spellings? Last thread I posted in I was spelling things "-ise".)

[Eldan]

I have a weird mixture of spellings anyway. I got used to -ize, and the word "tyre" just looks weird, but -our just makes so much more sense for most words!

[SaintRidley]

A thing that just occurred to me, and that is a bit strange: why is the pronoun I capitalized in English, but no other pronoun is?

One of the best searchable sites for English etymology, etymonline.com, has this for the origins and reason for capitalization of the word I:


12c. shortening of O.E. ic, first person singular nominative pronoun, from P.Gmc. *ekan (cf. O.Fris. ik, O.N. ek, Norw. eg, Dan. jeg, O.H.G. ih, Ger. ich, Goth. ik), from PIE *eg-, nominative form of the first person singular pronoun (cf. Skt. aham, Hitt. uk, L. ego (source of Fr. Je), Gk. ego, Rus. ja, Lith. aš). Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, it began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.


The reason for writing I is ... the orthographic habit in the middle ages of using a 'long i' (that is, j or I) whenever the letter was isolated or formed the last letter of a group; the numeral 'one' was written j or I (and three iij, etc.), just as much as the pronoun. [Otto Jespersen, "Growth and Structure of the English Language," p.233]

The form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c.1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. The dot on the "small" letter -i- began to appear in 11c. Latin manuscripts, to distinguish the letter from the stroke of another letter (such as -m- or -n-). Originally a diacritic, it was reduced to a dot with the introduction of Roman type fonts.

[Ashen Lilies]

Squirrel?

"Skwuhrl"


SK+whirl......

Only if you're speaking American or Canadian, of course. If you're speaking British (and possibly Australian? I've never heard an Australian say squirrel before... :smallconfused:) then Yora is right in splitting it into two syllables: Skwi-rell. (Sounds like Quirrel, of Harry Potter fame, only with an 'S' in the front. :smalltongue:)

[noparlpf]

I have a weird mixture of spellings anyway. I got used to -ize, and the word "tyre" just looks weird, but -our just makes so much more sense for most words!

Speaking of weird mixtures of spelling--has "dialog" vs "dialogue" come up in this thread? The weirdest bit is that "monologue" retains the "ue" in American English.


One of the best searchable sites for English etymology, etymonline.com, has this for the origins and reason for capitalization of the word I:

j love that site!

[GolemsVoice]

In Germany, there's the age-old debate whether it's Spontaneität, or Spontanität (spontanity).
Also, whether it's Kemie and Kina or Chemie and China,

[Yora]

That's no debate, that's a speech impediment Spontaneität does not exist and Kina and Kemie are just wrong.

[Eldan]

There was a suggestion in Switzerland to spell it Schemie and Schina, though. That's only for a handful of dialects, though, and the official language is very much on the China and Chemie side of the discussion.

[GolemsVoice]

That's no debate, that's a speech impediment Spontaneität does not exist and Kina and Kemie are just wrong.

NO YOU! I admit I mostly say Chemie, but hey.

[Yora]

9 Foreign Words the English Language Desperately Needs (http://www.cracked.com/article_19695_9-foreign-words-english-language-desperately-needs.html)

[Greenish]

9 Foreign Words the English Language Desperately Needs (http://www.cracked.com/article_19695_9-foreign-words-english-language-desperately-needs.html)Heh. There've been several of those lists. I remember "schadenfreude", for example, appearing on an older one.

As if English didn't have enough words as is. :smallamused:

[Eldan]

You already nabbed Schadenfreude.

That said, aren't there already words for quite a few of those in English?

[Greenish]

You already nabbed Schadenfreude.If by "you", you mean them*, then yes, that's what I meant.


*Native English-speakers.


[Edit]: Also, the #1 on the linked list can be applied to all manner of pedants and other people too in love with insignificant details. :smalltongue:

[Brother Oni]

Another thread on here has reminded me about something - phrases that simply do not have an easy translation into another language.

The one what was used was the Japanese phrase "yoroshiku onegaishimasu", which has a context dependent meaning - it can mean anything from 'nice to meet you', 'please be kind to me' or 'thank you for being kind to my child/friend/acquaintance' among others.

I was trying to think of some English phrases that also defy easy translation - 'pull the other one, it's got bells on' for example - and I was wondering do other people here know of similar untranslatable phrases (Friss die Hälfte was mentioned earlier).

[Anarion]

Actually, I never understood how this works. (Non-native speaker here, so don't shoot.) By the same token, shouldn't you say "I am better at math than he"? And doesn't that sound awful? Doesn't "I am better at math than him" sound better?

I believe that it's quite acceptable to use the accusative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative)/dative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dative_case) case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case) ("him" instead of "he", "me" instead of "I" and so on) after a preposition. In this case, the pronoun ("him") is the object of the preposition ("than"). For comparison, it is definitely correct to say "for him" and "after them" and "before her", right? Is there any reason why the preposition "than" shouldn't be used in the same way?

Now, saying "I am better than math than he" is no less grammatically correct - though I still believe it sounds awful. :smalltongue: It just assumes a different syntax. In this case, the object of the preposition "than" is an entire relative clause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_clause) ("he is (good at math)"), most of which is omitted. So the pronoun is rightly in the nominative case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_case), because it's now the subject of the omitted verb ("is").

Or at least, that's how I understand it. Am I wrong? And if so, why? I'd love to learn.

EDIT - Here's wikipedia's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Than) take. I still don't understand why "than him" is wrong. Or if it IS wrong, for that matter.

The easiest way to think about these kind of sentence is to add in the missing verb at the end that nobody says. Compare "I am better at math than he is" and "I am better at math than him is." Saying "him is" should sound clearly wrong to you, and it's the fact that the verb is assumed in those sentences that calls for the nominative case.

Note, however, that the expression "it's me" has come into common usage and announcing yourself using "it is I" will make you sound like you've been rehearsing your Shakespeare.



You already nabbed Schadenfreude.

That said, aren't there already words for quite a few of those in English?

I like Zeitgeist. It's super useful when you're trying to convince people to go see movies or TV shows that are good. For example, "you should go watch My Little Pony so you can understand the giantitp Zeitgeist."


Another thread on here has reminded me about something - phrases that simply do not have an easy translation into another language.

The one what was used was the Japanese phrase "yoroshiku onegaishimasu", which has a context dependent meaning - it can mean anything from 'nice to meet you', 'please be kind to me' or 'thank you for being kind to my child/friend/acquaintance' among others.

I was trying to think of some English phrases that also defy easy translation - 'pull the other one, it's got bells on' for example - and I was wondering do other people here know of similar untranslatable phrases (Friss die Hälfte was mentioned earlier).

The hardest English expressions to translate are those that draw on words that have a specific meaning in expressions. For example "I'm a ham" meaning I enjoy performing and being the center of attention. Also, pretty much any American southern expression kills translation. For example, "He's got a 10 gallon hat for a 5 gallon head."



And, if I may add a personal pet peeve. Stop killing the subjunctive tense, all of you! If the sentence refers to a case other than reality, it takes "were" rather than "was." If you have said, "If I was there" you're doing it wrong and it should be "if I were there."

[SaintRidley]

And, if I may add a personal pet peeve. Stop killing the subjunctive tense, all of you! If the sentence refers to a case other than reality, it takes "were" rather than "was." If you have said, "If I was there" you're doing it wrong and it should be "if I were there."

Minor correction. The subjunctive is a mood. If it were a tense it would refer in some way to a point in time.

[noparlpf]

Minor correction. The subjunctive is a mood. If it were a tense it would refer in some way to a point in time.

Darn you! You stole my nitpick! :b
Failure to use the subjunctive mood properly is my biggest pet peeve besides "its/it's" being misused.

Edit: And if I were you I would have written "If it was a tense..." just for the irony.

[Brother Oni]

The hardest English expressions to translate are those that draw on words that have a specific meaning in expressions. For example "I'm a ham" meaning I enjoy performing and being the center of attention. Also, pretty much any American southern expression kills translation. For example, "He's got a 10 gallon hat for a 5 gallon head."

I'm a ham = I am an overactor.

I think the second one means he's pompous idiot who has an inflated opinion of himself or his abilities?


I learnt English as a native speaker - you're going to have to explain that subjunctive mood thing to me more carefully. :smalltongue:

[Greenish]

I was trying to think of some English phrases that also defy easy translation - 'pull the other one, it's got bells on' for example - and I was wondering do other people here know of similar untranslatable phrases (Friss die Hälfte was mentioned earlier).Some expressions have spread far and wide ("a storm in a glass of water"), others are so local the native speakers from the neighbouring village won't recognize them.

Whether anything is truly translatable (or untranslatable) probably depends on who you ask it from. All translations lose some meaning, but just because the literal translation of a phrase loses it's meaning doesn't mean the idea can't be conveyed in the target language.

For English expressions that can't directly be translated to another language, you don't have to look too hard. Say, "please" has no equivalent in Finnish.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Never heard that "a storm in a glass of water" thing before? :smallcool::smallcool:

[Brother Oni]

Never heard that "a storm in a glass of water" thing before? :smallcool::smallcool:

Being a commonwealth citizen, you may recognise it better as 'storm in a teacup'. :smalltongue:

It essentially means blowing a small event out of all proportion.

[Eldan]

That same one exists in German too, with the same words. So it's probably pretty old.

[Greenish]

Never heard that "a storm in a glass of water" thing before? :smallcool::smallcool:I didn't claim it to be universal, but, well…


Arabic: زوبعة في فنجان (a storm in a cup)
Bulgarian: Буря в чаша вода Burya v chasha voda (storm in a glass of water)
Chinese: 茶杯裡的風波、茶壺裡的風暴 (winds and waves in a teacup; storm in a teapot)
Czech: Bouře ve sklenici vody (a storm in a glass of water)
Danish: En storm i et glas vand (a storm in a glass of water)
Dutch: Een storm in een glas water (a storm in a glass of water)
Esperanto: Granda frakaso en malgranda glaso (a large storm in a small glass)
Estonian: Torm veeklaasis (storm in a glass of water)
Finnish: Myrsky vesilasissa (storm in a glass of water)
French: une tempête dans un verre d'eau (a storm in a glass of water)
German: ein Sturm im Wasserglas (a storm in a glass of water)
Greek: πνιγόμαστε σε μια κουταλιά νερό (to drown in a spoon of water)
Hebrew: סערה בכוס תה Se'arah bekos teh (storm in a teacup)
Hungarian: Vihar egy pohár vízben (a storm in a glass of water)
Icelandic: Stormur í vatnsglasi (a storm in a glass of water)
Italian: una tempesta in un bicchiere d'acqua (a storm in a glass of water)
Japanese: コップの中の嵐 koppu no naka no arashi (a storm in a glass)
Latin: Excitare fluctus in simpulo (to stir up waves in a ladle)
Latvian: vētra ūdens glāzē (storm in a tea cup)
Lithuanian: Audra stiklinėje (storm in a glass)
Norwegian: storm i et vannglass (bokmål) / storm i eit vassglas (nynorsk) (a storm in a glass of water)
Polish: Burza w szklance wody (a storm in a glass of water)
Portuguese: Tempestade em copo de água / Uma tempestade num copo de água (storm in a glass of water / a tempest in a glass of water)
Romanian: Furtună într-un pahar cu apă (storm in a glass of water)
Russian: Буря в стакане burya v stakane (a tempest in a glass)
Spanish: Una tormenta en un vaso de agua (a storm in a glass of water)
Swedish: Storm i ett vattenglas (storm in a glass of water)
Turkish: Bir kaşık suda fırtına (storm in a spoon of water)
Telugu: Tea kappu lo thufaanu (storm in a tea cup)
Ukrainian: Буря в склянці води (a tempest in a glass of water) - Transliteration: Buria v sklyantsi vody
…Tempest in a teapot really gets around.

[Kneenibble]

And, if I may add a personal pet peeve. Stop killing the subjunctive tense, all of you! If the sentence refers to a case other than reality, it takes "were" rather than "was." If you have said, "If I was there" you're doing it wrong and it should be "if I were there."


Not necessarily. It would depend on the nature of your conditional sentence.

"If I was there, then I won the Internet!"
(Past simple condition)

vs.

"If I were there, then I would have won the Internet!"
(Contrary-to-fact past condition)

[gooddragon1]

...and what have you...
-Nothing except the lint in my pockets my good sir.
...If you will...
-No, I won't.
...What ho...
-The one I use on my garden good sir.

[Xuc Xac]

There's a big difference between "can't be translated" and "doesn't make sense when translated word for word". A decent translator won't try to translate an idiom literally unless it's an obvious metaphor.

For example, "I'm a ham" doesn't mean "I'm a pork haunch". No translator would translate it that way any more than they would translate "Is your refrigerator running?" as "Is your refrigerator moving quickly on foot?"

Some things, like "and what have you" don't really make literal sense in English but the phrase represents an idea, which can be described by other languages as long as the concept isn't so unique to one culture that there are no ways to describe it. Most languages have an equivalent of "and what have you". Even English has many ways to say the same thing: "and so on", "and the rest", "et cetera".

Oh, that's one of my language pet peeves: "etc." is short for "et cetera", which is Latin for "and the rest". Using "ect." would be (I assume) "ec tetera", which is just gibberish.

[Dogmantra]

...If you will...
-No, I won't.

That brings up an interesting point, anyone know why the I from will turns into an O when you abbreviate will not, but when you abbreviate do not, shall not, cannot, and so on, they keep their vowels as they are? I would imagine it's simply that win't got a little bit corrupted over time and when standardised spelling was introduced it typically sounded more like won't but I hope there's some fantastic story instead.

[Greenish]

For example, "I'm a ham" doesn't mean "I'm a pork haunch". No translator would translate it that way any more than they would translate "Is your refrigerator running?" as "Is your refrigerator moving quickly on foot?"Well… ideally, no, but translators have bad days too.

A book I own mentions an "*orjaileva hirviö" (which would mean something like "a monster that casually acts like a slave"). It took me a while to realize, but I think the English original had a "slavering monster". :smallamused:

[Xuc Xac]

That brings up an interesting point, anyone know why the I from will turns into an O when you abbreviate will not, but when you abbreviate do not, shall not, cannot, and so on, they keep their vowels as they are? I would imagine it's simply that win't got a little bit corrupted over time and when standardised spelling was introduced it typically sounded more like won't but I hope there's some fantastic story instead.

"Won't" is short for "woll not" or "wonnot". "Will" had a lot o different pronunciations and spellings. "Willn't" was used occasionally too, but when things standardized "will" beat "woll" but "won't" survived and "willn't" didn't.

[Eldan]

Well… ideally, no, but translators have bad days too.

A book I own mentions an "*orjaileva hirviö" (which would mean something like "a monster that casually acts like a slave"). It took me a while to realize, but I think the English original had a "slavering monster". :smallamused:


And of course, the famous joke from German Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Paraphrased:
"Hyperspace travel is like being swallowed by another person."
"What is so bad about having ingested too much alcohol?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

[Greenish]

And of course, the famous joke from German Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Paraphrased:
"Hyperspace travel is like being swallowed by another person."
"What is so bad about having ingested too much alcohol?"
"Just ask a glass of water."Puns are the bane of many a translation, and one of the reasons I started reading books in English (the other one was that English paperbacks are dirt cheap). Pratchett and Adams have great translators, for example, but there's no keeping up.

[Yora]

And of course, the famous joke from German Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Paraphrased:
"Hyperspace travel is like being swallowed by another person."
"What is so bad about having ingested too much alcohol?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

How does that one go in German? I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

[Asta Kask]

Swedish: "Up like a sun, down like a pancake"
"There's no cow on the ice"
"Empty barrels make the most noise"
"There he stands with a washed neck"

[Xuc Xac]

The Hitchhiker's Guide reference is supposed to be
"Hyperspace travel is like being drunk."
"What is so bad about being drunk?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

[GolemsVoice]

Yeah, or the German Warhammer 40K novels, that a) translated most of the weapons, the chapter names and all the other stuff (a single glance in ANY of the other Warhammer 40K publications could have helped) and b) translated "fire in the hole LITERALLY. I died a little inside. Especially since that expression could have been easily translated to your favourite expression along the lines of "Take cover!"

[Eldan]

How does that one go in German? I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

The English is:
"Hyperspace travel is like being drunk."
"What's so bad about being drunk?"
"Just ask a glass of water."

While the German was:

"Es ist wie getrunken werden."
"Was ist so schlimm daran, betrunken zu sein?"
"Frag mal ein Glas Wasser."

Paraphrased again, I don't have the German book anymore.

[Yora]

And that's the reason you should never get translations if you are reasonably capable to understand the original language. :smallbiggrin:

[GolemsVoice]

The same thing is encountered by the translators of Terry Pratchett's works, which also feature much wordplay. It's a sad fact of life that much of that gets lost, even if the translators are aware of it. Often enough, though, they aren't, so that's that.

[Aedilred]

Oftentimes the best way to do it is to ignore the literal translation entirely and write afresh to get the same sense across in a more idiomatic way. The best example of this of which I'm aware are the excellent English translations of Asterix, where appropriate English puns and wordplay have been substituted for the French ones, rather than trying to translate the French puns directly - which would be pretty pointless.

[Kneenibble]

That brings up an interesting point, anyone know why the I from will turns into an O when you abbreviate will not, but when you abbreviate do not, shall not, cannot, and so on, they keep their vowels as they are? I would imagine it's simply that win't got a little bit corrupted over time and when standardised spelling was introduced it typically sounded more like won't but I hope there's some fantastic story instead.

I don't have any fantastic stories for you. In Middle English the word was woll. For some reason we hung on to won't (woll not) but still switched to will.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/15665982.jpg


edit
Oh. Xuc Xac already said that.

Well then.

[Brother Oni]

Yeah, or the German Warhammer 40K novels, that a) translated most of the weapons, the chapter names and all the other stuff (a single glance in ANY of the other Warhammer 40K publications could have helped) and b) translated "fire in the hole LITERALLY. I died a little inside. Especially since that expression could have been easily translated to your favourite expression along the lines of "Take cover!"

Well "Take cover as I have just ignited a large amount of explosive material in our general vicinity". :smalltongue:


The best example of this of which I'm aware are the excellent English translations of Asterix, where appropriate English puns and wordplay have been substituted for the French ones, rather than trying to translate the French puns directly - which would be pretty pointless.

Except some of the characters names have been changed depending on which territory they're marketed for - for example in the US version, Getafix is named Magigimmix and Unhygienix has been changed to Fishstix. :smallsigh:

[Ravens_cry]

Being a commonwealth citizen, you may recognise it better as 'storm in a teacup'. :smalltongue:

It essentially means blowing a small event out of all proportion.
I hear that much more commonly as "making a mountain out of a molehill" than either variation.

[Eldan]

That would be "turning a mosquito into an elephant" in German.

[Ravens_cry]

I'm sure there is variations in languages and cultures the world over given human nature.

[Yora]

I am quite a fan of Knorkator and Rammstein, not just for their quite decent music, but even more so for the often clever lyrics and interesting use of words and sentences (which unfortunately for you, really don't translate well).
Does anyone know of bands or musicans with english language songs, that would go into a similar direction?

The only one that comes to my mind is Tom Lehrer, and he's from the 50s. :smallamused:

[Greenish]

I hear that much more commonly as "making a mountain out of a molehill" than either variation."Storm in a teacup" would be used of something that's already been blown out of proportion when looking at it from the outside. The molehill -> mountain has more immediacy.


In Finnish, you'd "make a bull out of a fly".

[Asta Kask]

In Finnish you can "put the cat on the table." Finns are weird. My cat jumps up on the table when he wants.

[dehro]

In Finnish you can "put the cat on the table." Finns are weird. My cat jumps up on the table when he wants.

you mean like this? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sQkEfAdfY)

[Greenish]

In Finnish you can "put the cat on the table." Finns are weird. My cat jumps up on the table when he wants.A cat is a most useful thing. When you want to get straight to the point, you lift one on a table, and when you want to do your utmost best at avoiding going straight to the the point, you have one circle around hot porridge.

[Yora]

How do you call this device in english?

http://bin.ilsemedia.nl/m/m1dykwjwqs34.jpg

Because I just read that the english word we use in German does not actually exist in english. Which sounds silly to me, but is the harsh truth about cell phones.

[noparlpf]

That looks like a projector to me. What does that have to do with cell phones?

[Yora]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayk3oxOqYXU

[Yora]

Getting this thread back out for a topic I think we havn't takled about before.

I've just read an article about some 80 year olds giving classes on reading and writing old German scripts. Since in Germany, we had quite a number of rather exotic scripts, which all have pretty much disappeared from schools and printing after world war two.

Now I was still learning writing Cursive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive) in primary school, which I think is still done everywhere in Germany, but not everywhere where the latin alphabet is used. It's useful to be able to read other peoples handwriting, but many of us stopped using it after 8th grade and I havn't used in in well over 10 years, even though I write a lot with pencils. If you can read Cursive, you can decipher most handwriting. Apparently I learned an older version, but even that one already did not include some letters you can still find in some places today.
Fraktur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur) is a completely different beast. I think I tought that one myself, which really only was possible because I knew cursive. No, Fraktur is not Nazi-Script. In fact they were the ones to really make a push to adopting standard latin script, I assume because foreign allies and colaborateurs couldn't read it. But Fraktur was mostly used in print, so you still can find it in many places and it is quite easy to get something to practice with and it always looks pretty much the same.
Not so with Sütterlin, which was the handwriting counterpart. That one got also discontinued, so it is used only by people who went to school before 1941. Who are all now almost all more than 80 years old. Since it's handwriting, it was used for personal notes and letters, so you won't ever encounter it in printed books. In fact, I saw it only once in my whole life, when I was digging through old files for a research project on the 1930s. It looks completely different than anything else.
http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-338655-galleryV9-dgft.jpg
That's just very simple German, I know Cursive, but I can't read anything of it.
And that's from a beginners textbook. Since it's a handwriting script, every text looks different:
http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-338657-galleryV9-ltvk.jpg
http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-348428-galleryV9-stow.gif
Good luck with that. :smallbiggrin:
Apparently the shape of the letter also changes depending on the letters next to it. And we had a couple of chaotic and confusing spelling reforms in the meantime, so you can't even guess an unreadable letter if you recognize the rest in the word.

Could be Cuneiform to me. :smallbiggrin:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fej16GyiJzU/TxHxpQe2-XI/AAAAAAAAazI/54SxJ8civls/s1600/hittite-cuneiform-tablet.jpg

Now that's a really messed up script, if there ever was one. :smalleek:

I am currently learning Japanese and think I've now mastered two of the three scripts, and it's funny how I can read those without any trouble but am unable to read something in my own language, written in a script that quite a number of people in Germany used all their life.
But that must be weird. You're just an ordinary pensioner wh used to have a simple job and no academic experience at all, and now younger scientists are comming to you with old papers, asking you for the same service they would ask of famous egyptologists who can read and translate hyroglyphs. And all you do is reading a short plain letter.
Of course, there are books where the script is documented, so it's not like it will become a lost skill and the contents of all those old documents will be lost forever. But as a historian, you need to sift through huge stacks of papers to spot just one or two pages that contain something of interest, and if there are some you can't read, you just discard it and go to the next one. And even if you know it would probably be worthwhile to learn the script, since you will probably encounter more often in the future, it's still handwriting and knowing the letters in theory is a very different from being able to read whole text of shoddy, faded, and damaged handwriting with ease. That's something you learn from having used the script everyday and reading texts written by other people on a constant basis. 10 more years, and many of such documents will require finding obscure experts on ancients scripts in hard to find places.
I think that's quite facinating and also slightly creepy. Yes, as a 75 year old, you know that you are old! But being one of a small group of elders who are the keepers of ancient lore lost to the people of the present world. That probably makes you feel a lot older.
Though of course it's cool if you stopped working as a cashier decades ago and now highly educated people come begging to you to recieve your special powers. :smallbiggrin:

Is that a special case, since it just happens that it's now 70 years after a local writing system was replaced with a more common one? Or do you have that in other places as well, that old documents are no longer readable to most people? I think the Chinese are having something similar.

[Yora]

What do you think?

Should "whom" be phased out of the english language?
I am sure you can explain how the rules work, but language is not what is codified in some gramatical rules but what people actually speak with each other. And it's not even an issue of non-native speakers, even a big number of native speakers appear to never use it at all.

In German, the genitive article is increasingly disappearing and even though I consider my speaking quite close to the gramatical standard, this is one thing I don't think I ever use at all.
Das Ende vom Genetiv ist mir ziemlich wurscht. :smallbiggrin:

But what do native english speakers think? Is it something you even notice when people don't use whom when it should be used, and it something that makes anyone who does do it appear to speak bad english?
I've looked up one site that has a couple of examples, and intuitively I think I would have used "which" instead of "whom" in most places. Or is that even worse than who?
Or are you among those who could care less? :smallbiggrin:
(Sorry, had to make that joke. ;) )

[dehro]

...

the second one looks pretty much like how I learned and still use cursive..
for reference, I'm 33 and learned it that way in holland first and then in italy
that said, other than signing my name, I haven't actually written anything bigger than a grocery list by hand in years, what with computers and all.

[Gnomish Wanderer]

I personally like 'whom' better than 'which' because it's clarifying beyond context. However the 'rules' for 'whom' are one of the more shaky ones in terms of general understanding, so it's really easy to find it used 'incorrectly.'

Heh, sorry, I'm purposefully messing around with apostrophes. That sentence used them as emphasis, both as segregation and sarcasm. Is it clear of the difference? Do you use such nuances in your written speech

[factotum]

To all intents and purposes, "whom" has already been phased out of the English language as it is spoken--nobody ever uses the word, or if they do, they risk sounding ridiculously formal; they might as well be speaking Latin. I couldn't tell you myself when it is correct to use whom as opposed to who!

[Xuc Xac]

I couldn't tell you myself when it is correct to use whom as opposed to who!

"Who" is a subject (it performs the action) and "whom" is an object (it "receives" the action of a verb or preposition).

Bill gave Jim a letter.

Who gave Jim a letter?

Bill gave whom a letter?

To whom did Bill give a letter?

Et cetera.

[Rawhide]

In all of those cases, who is correct, even when whom is also correct. This is thanks to, as factotum mention, the phasing out of the word whom in favour of just using who.

See also: http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/0024-whowhom.htm

[Craft (Cheese)]

"Who" is a subject (it performs the action) and "whom" is an object (it "receives" the action of a verb or preposition).

Bill gave Jim a letter.

Who gave Jim a letter?

Bill gave whom a letter?

To whom did Bill give a letter?

Et cetera.

Note, however, that "Who" is used when the word undergoes movement (which, as an interrogative word, it almost always does). Someone who understands syntactic movement better than I do can probably explain why; Likely something to do with case-assignment processes.

[Aedilred]

What do you think?

Should "whom" be phased out of the english language?
I am sure you can explain how the rules work, but language is not what is codified in some gramatical rules but what people actually speak with each other. And it's not even an issue of non-native speakers, even a big number of native speakers appear to never use it at all.

But what do native english speakers think? Is it something you even notice when people don't use whom when it should be used, and it something that makes anyone who does do it appear to speak bad english?
I've looked up one site that has a couple of examples, and intuitively I think I would have used "which" instead of "whom" in most places. Or is that even worse than who?
I'm a prescriptivist, so I'd rather "whom" stayed. I do notice when it's missed, although misuse of it is so common that it doesn't annoy me as much as some errors. "Which" would, I'd say, relate to objects rather than persons. You could get away with it, but I'd argue that "who" is less objectionable, even if wrong.

I've never been much of a fan of the descriptivist position that "if enough people get it wrong, it becomes right". I can understand the logic behind it, but in today's digital age where people are communicating more and more in a context-free environment with no body language or tone of voice, I think precision of language is more important than ever. There's the odd word which is now pretty much useless (see "moot"; "literally" is going the same way) because it's been used erroneously for so long to mean its antonym that it now has no value as a concept since you have to explain what meaning you're assigning to it. I don't think that's a good thing.

Or are you among those who could care less? :smallbiggrin:
I was going to ask if you did that on purpose until I saw the whitetext :smalltongue:

[Yora]

To all intents and purposes, "whom" has already been phased out of the English language as it is spoken--nobody ever uses the word, or if they do, they risk sounding ridiculously formal; they might as well be speaking Latin. I couldn't tell you myself when it is correct to use whom as opposed to who!

On the other side, I think it is correct to say "The machine whose lever broke off", isn't it?

There probably was a word like "whichs", but that one is entirely gone.

[Aedilred]

I don't like it, but I think it'd be acceptable, and I think it's the only way you can express that sense exactly.

I'd prefer, though, "the machine (from) which the lever broke off (from)" (earlier "from" sounds more correct but a bit arch) or "the machine that the lever broke off" (albeit this could have a bit of ambiguity depending on context).

[Craft (Cheese)]

I've never been much of a fan of the descriptivist position that "if enough people get it wrong, it becomes right". I can understand the logic behind it, but in today's digital age where people are communicating more and more in a context-free environment with no body language or tone of voice, I think precision of language is more important than ever. There's the odd word which is now pretty much useless (see "moot"; "literally" is going the same way) because it's been used erroneously for so long to mean its antonym that it now has no value as a concept since you have to explain what meaning you're assigning to it. I don't think that's a good thing.

You're confusing clear communication with "correct" communication: These are completely different things, and one does not guarantee the other.

Really I don't think you disagree with descriptivism here. We don't disagree with "You shouldn't say 'literally' with hyperbole because that's really confusing." What we do have a problem is with sentiments like "You shouldn't split infinitives because Latin didn't do that and Latin is the uberlanguage that all languages should strive to emulate."

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

No, Yora pretty much summed up my descriptivist outlook. "rules" are an artificial concept placed on a fluid language. If people don't know when to say "whom", and people don't it's not a part of the language.

I'd say that, at this point in history, and if not know than CERTAINLY in ten years time, you could definitely say that "whom" is an archaic word no longer used in modern English, except in such texts where archaicisms are encouraged and, yea, even prescribed. Academic texts and such-like.

[Rawhide]

No, Yora pretty much summed up my descriptivist outlook. "rules" are an artificial concept placed on a fluid language. If people don't know when to say "whom", and people don't it's not a part of the language.

I'd say that, at this point in history, and if not know than CERTAINLY in ten years time, you could definitely say that "whom" is an archaic word no longer used in modern English, except in such texts where archaicisms are encouraged and, yea, even prescribed. Academic texts and such-like.

Also, how do you spell apron (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/apron)?

[Yora]

I'd say that, at this point in history, and if not know than CERTAINLY in ten years time, you could definitely say that "whom" is an archaic word no longer used in modern English, except in such texts where archaicisms are encouraged and, yea, even prescribed. Academic texts and such-like.

Oohh.... You're a native English speaker. You have no idea... :smallbiggrin:
Once you have a good grasp on the english language, it's easier for German students to read English academic texts than to read German ones. German academic texts are just really, really awful. And once you've read a few, you start to emulate it. The main goals of a sentence are not to make the information in it easily comprehensible, but to use as many rare words and complex gramatical constructions and to go without a period for as long as possible. It sounds smart, but only because nobody can read it.
When I read english books, it always amazes me that they use a kind of language that I can follow with language skills I gained from reading forum posts and internet articles. It's not exactly like spoken English, but clearly the same language. With written German in academic texts, I am not so sure about that.
If you read english scientific books, you may not completely understand what the information in a sentence means, but you can decipher the sentence. German scientific text are almost entirely in code. When German students have to take out their markers and resolve to the techniques from their first lessons in Latin to mark the subject and the verb, and underline the primary sentence and the secondary sentences differently, then there's something very wrong. :smallbiggrin:

Fortunately many German scientists know that there are not that many potential readers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, so quite a lot start to publish in English as well. At the same time there are no translations into German anymore, so you can avoid reading text in German almost completely.
Yes, avoid reading texts in your native language. :smallamused:

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I told that to my mother, who edits textbooks (she's actually editing a biology AND a psychology textbook right now. She says that since she started in the business, not a single new thing has been in the psychology textbooks, none of them), and she was horrified. Legitimately horrified.

Edit: as for the "apron" bit, I don't understand. I spell it "apron". I don't think I've ever seen alternative spellings...

[factotum]

I think he may be referring to the apparent origin of the word being a misspelling of "a napron" -> "an apron", as an instance of a simple mistake becoming a full-blown part of the language?

[Aedilred]

Supposedly it's the same with "orange" (the fruit) although I think that must have predated its adoption into the English language and happened somewhere in France.

[Rawhide]

I think he may be referring to the apparent origin of the word being a misspelling of "a napron" -> "an apron", as an instance of a simple mistake becoming a full-blown part of the language?

Correct. A mistake made so much, it became the correct spelling and the old one was dropped. This happened in English, after the word had transferred from French.

[SaintRidley]

Correct. A mistake made so much, it became the correct spelling and the old one was dropped. This happened in English, after the word had transferred from French.

Of course, it happened in the 1400s, when the idea of standardized spelling was not even a twinkle in our language's eye. If it looked like it sounded (since every letter was pronounced at the time), it was considered correct back then.

[Greenish]

(since every letter was pronounced at the time)As is just and reasonable. :smallwink:

[dps]

That looks like a projector to me. What does that have to do with cell phones?

I'm not sure that it's a projector. I though maybe it was an emergency light of some kind, though if it's either of those, then I, too, don't see what it has to do with cell phones.

Perhaps if Yora would tell us what the supposedly non-existant English word that they use in German is it might help. And if that doesn't help, maybe telling us what the device's function is might.

[Rawhide]

I'm not sure that it's a projector. I though maybe it was an emergency light of some kind, though if it's either of those, then I, too, don't see what it has to do with cell phones.

Perhaps if Yora would tell us what the supposedly non-existant English word that they use in German is it might help. And if that doesn't help, maybe telling us what the device's function is might.

It most definitely is a projector. It looks exactly like one, it's made by a brand that makes projectors, and if you punch in the model number shown in the picture into Google, you can find a review of it (http://reviews.cnet.com/home-theater-projectors/nec-mt1065/4505-7858_7-20585431.html).

[Siosilvar]

I'm not sure that it's a projector. I though maybe it was an emergency light of some kind, though if it's either of those, then I, too, don't see what it has to do with cell phones.

Perhaps if Yora would tell us what the supposedly non-existant English word that they use in German is it might help. And if that doesn't help, maybe telling us what the device's function is might.

They use "Beamer" for projector.

[dps]

They use "Beamer" for projector.

Well, that word exists in English, but it isn't normally used to designate a home theater projector.

And Rawhide has much better eyesight than me. I couldn't make out the brand name for certain, and I don't see any model number at all.

Or maybe it's a better monitor instead of better eyesight.

[Inglenook]

The only thing I've ever heard described as a "Beamer" is a BMW.

[Yora]

Beamer and Handy are the only two fake english words that come to my mind right now, but I'm sure there are many more.

[dehro]

Beamer and Handy are the only two fake english words that come to my mind right now, but I'm sure there are many more.

try Footing..
it's been used in Italy for many years, until even the most hardened ignorant finally acknowledged that you cannot translate Jogging with another randomly picked word in the same foreign language...just because you do the jogging with your feet. (also, that would have made it feeting..but there you go.)

but wait..there is more:


a Box is Italian for Garage.. don't ask me why
Autogrill is a motorway service station..though this has an explanation. The most part of them are owned by the brand Autogrill, which has now become the term under which they're known.. some people believe it's an english word though.
Autostop means hitch-hiking.. how? I don't know
a Camping is actually a campsite
golf means golf in italian..but also.. jumper (the piece of clothing).
a Flipper is a Pinball machine
a Dinner Jacket or Tuxedo, for some reason, has become a Smoking.
sellotape has become Scotch (I think that too is a brand name)
a Slip is in fact a pair of Knickers

[GolemsVoice]

a Flipper is a Pinball machine
a Dinner Jacket or Tuxedo, for some reason, has become a Smoking.

That's the same in Germany, so they must share some common ancestry.

[Emmerask]

Well thats mainly because the english language is not very exact often times.

This is a pinball machine (bagatelle machine) which was around long before "flipper"
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Flipper1948.jpg&filetimestamp=20070430125720

the name of the gif is wrong though :smallwink:

In the english language the name was just reused although the actual gameplay is quite a lot different ie you actual have (legal) unfluence after you plunge the ball.
It obviously evolved from pinball though other languages wanted to be more exact when they describe this new (or evolved) game so they focused on the most important difference which are the "flippers".

[factotum]

Beamer and Handy are the only two fake english words that come to my mind right now

Handy isn't a fake word--it means "convenient". We don't use it to refer to a mobile phone, though. (We generally call them mobiles or even just phones, now they're so ubiquitous).

[Aedilred]

a Dinner Jacket or Tuxedo, for some reason, has become a Smoking.

This is probably the result of a confusion between a dinner jacket and a smoking jacket, which to an eye unfamiliar with weird British behaviour might appear to be worn worn at similar times, and often have a similar cut. They serve a different function, though (a smoking jacket is much more casual) and where DJs are usually black (occasionally white) smoking jackets tend to be more colourful, and made from a different material.

[dehro]

This is probably the result of a confusion between a dinner jacket and a smoking jacket, which to an eye unfamiliar with weird British behaviour might appear to be worn worn at similar times, and often have a similar cut. They serve a different function, though (a smoking jacket is much more casual) and where DJs are usually black (occasionally white) smoking jackets tend to be more colourful, and made from a different material.

I figured as much..still, you'd think that the fashion conscious italians would have picked up on the difference

[Lycunadari]

Beamer and Handy are the only two fake english words that come to my mind right now, but I'm sure there are many more.

There's another one: public viewing, watching football or other sports in a restaurant, stadium or another public place on a screen.

[Yora]

Don't you watch a game?

It would either be a public watching, or much rather a public screening.

[Yora]

Handy isn't a fake word--it means "convenient". We don't use it to refer to a mobile phone, though. (We generally call them mobiles or even just phones, now they're so ubiquitous).

The morphem, that is the sound, "handy" does exist in the english language. But the concept it stands for is a completely different one, making it two different words.
And the natural assumption of native German speakers who are used to have English words integrated into their language, is to assume that Handy is one of these words. Especially when they knew that this morphem does exist in the english language when cell phones started to become common. Which was actually the case for me. Ohmygodi'msoold...

[Goosefeather]

try Footing..
it's been used in Italy for many years, until even the most hardened ignorant finally acknowledged that you cannot translate Jogging with another randomly picked word in the same foreign language...just because you do the jogging with your feet. (also, that would have made it feeting..but there you go.)

but wait..there is more:


a Box is Italian for Garage.. don't ask me why
Autogrill is a motorway service station..though this has an explanation. The most part of them are owned by the brand Autogrill, which has now become the term under which they're known.. some people believe it's an english word though.
Autostop means hitch-hiking.. how? I don't know
a Camping is actually a campsite
golf means golf in italian..but also.. jumper (the piece of clothing).
a Flipper is a Pinball machine
a Dinner Jacket or Tuxedo, for some reason, has become a Smoking.
sellotape has become Scotch (I think that too is a brand name)
a Slip is in fact a pair of Knickers

Slip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_(clothing)) is actually valid, or at least pretty close. I've never heard anyone use this sense of the word in actual speech, though.

Presumably, autostop is from 'stopping' an 'automobile', to get a ride. Correct me if I'm wrong, but 'auto' does mean 'car' in Italian, French, Spanish and German, after all. It's just that in English we decided to use a shortened version of 'carriage' rather than of 'automobile'. The French also use 'stop', though not quite the same way as in English, so I guess they'd be the ones who came up with 'autostop'.

In fact, the French use a lot of those same examples (e.g. 'footing', 'camping', 'autostop'), and I've definitely heard 'autoestop' and 'autoestopista' in Spanish. It's kinda funky how multiple languages all use the same 'English'-looking word, when English itself doesn't!

Another weird example I came across today, on a Spanish news site, was 'el elepé'. Meaning an album, or LP... :smalltongue:

[GolemsVoice]

The Russians do this like crazy, you can read most loanwords phonetically. When I read advertisements or such things, I've learned to read words I don't understand out loud for that reason :-)

[dehro]

don't the japanese do that too, some sort of local rendition of english words?
nekutai (necktie)
ofisu (office)
hotto rain (hotline)
and so on..

[Aedilred]

I figured as much..still, you'd think that the fashion conscious italians would have picked up on the difference
They probably thought smoking jackets were much more interesting than dinner jackets and thus adopted them as their standard formal evening wear.

Heck, I would, if I were able to dictate mens' fashion.

The Russians do this like crazy, you can read most loanwords phonetically. When I read advertisements or such things, I've learned to read words I don't understand out loud for that reason :-)
My favourite one is the word for "pencil", after the brand name emblazoned on the side of what I can only assume must have been the first pencil in Russia.

[Yora]

don't the japanese do that too, some sort of local rendition of english words?
nekutai (necktie)
ofisu (office)
hotto rain (hotline)
and so on..

Yes, which someone I once met on a birthday party called "the worst thing that ever happened to the Japanese language".
Japanese script really only works for Japanese words since it's not based on letters but on syllables and the language has a rather small pool of sounds. While I think all Japanese can read and write latin leters (Romaji) perfectly well today, at one point someone decided that a variant of the japanese script (Katakana) should be used for foreign words and the other variant (Hiragana) for Japanese ones. It works well when you simply import technology and scientific concepts from outside into your country, but turned out to have a terrible side effect when Japanese and particularly Americans actually start to interact with each other.
When you have a foreign word, you transcribe it to katakana in a way that is as close as you can get to the original word and after that nobody really cares what the original pronounciation was. Here in Europe, we have lots of languges very close to another with a long history of migrant groups all over the place, so we're used to the fact that other languages are pronounced differently and the correct pronounciation is indicated by different rules of spelling. Spoting a French or Spanish word isn't hard, because we know how some are pronounced and how they are spelled.
But until rather recently, the only thing you'd hear in Japan is dialaects of Japanese. And when you see a foreign word, it's written in Katakana. And as a Japanese, you know how katakana are pronounced as there is only one way to pronounce them. Now while english has a simple grammar, let me tell you that it has a really weird way of pronouncing sounds. You probably got that from the French, who do it as well. :smallbiggrin:
When you learn a language that is full of sounds you never have tried to pronounced or may not even have heard pronounced before, your pronounciation will of course be terrible. And maybe it's because in Europe and America we're accustomed to strong accents of foreigners, but some Japanese people have told me that most Japanese are quite embarrased for their bad english and so they avoid speaking it at all. And when you have to deal with a foreign word, you don't try to figure out how it is pronounced, you transcribe it to Katakana and pretend it's pronounced like a a Japanese word. Which of course doesn't do anything to improve the situation.

To make things worse, since Japanese only has syllables, you often end up with a large number of unneccessary "u" and "o"s. In theory, they are not pronounced. But if you don't know the latin spelling of the word or someone told you how it is pronounced, you don't know that and it gets pronounced anyway.
Also there are some transcription rules that are "not very good" at best and "just wrong" at worst. Since there is a letter "n" that can stand by itself, also using it for "m" may be acceptable. But why "v" is transcribed as "b" even though Japanese has exactly the sound as "w" is beyond me. (The english "w" is weird.)
And last, Japanese words are usually quite short (though you can string a lot of them together), so if a word has more than three syllables, it usually gets cut down. In a way that is not really predictable.

When teaching Japanese, it's common to learn Japanese script as soon as possible and get away from transcribing to latin. To teach any language to Japanese, the very first thing should be banning any form of transcription. :smallamused:

[Sallera]

But why "v" is transcribed as "b" even though Japanese has exactly the sound as "w" is beyond me. (The english "w" is weird.)

Well, it is partially English being weird, aye, but using b probably provides a closer approximation; while Japanese does have a w, it doesn't really get pronounced outside of 'wa' (hence the gradual disappearance of most of the w-line from the kana tables). For extra fun, most other words with an (English) w get transcribed using an initial u + vowel instead.

Yeah, I heard a lot of hate for katakana from my fellow students.


Now while english has a simple grammar, let me tell you that it has a really weird way of pronouncing sounds.

The problem isn't that we have 'a' weird way of pronouncing sounds, it's that we've got twenty or so and we can't keep them straight. :smalltongue:

[dehro]

But why "v" is transcribed as "b" even though Japanese has exactly the sound as "w" is beyond me. (The english "w" is weird.)

meh.. try the vowels..
the word Apple starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word Apple as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word ignite starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word ignite as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word egg starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word egg.. as it is pronounced in the alphabet
and it's not like they don't have those sounds..because..well..they're right there in the alphabet.
I'm sure there are a few such cases with the consonants as well..

[Yora]

For extra fun, most other words with an (English) w get transcribed using an initial u + vowel instead.

Yeah, I heard a lot of hate for katakana from my fellow students.

How else are you supposed to pronounce "w". :smallbiggrin:

I love katakana, it always tells me if I should look it up or if I should decode it into a probably english word. But I'm not Japanese, I'm not affected by the cultural side effects. :smallwink:

[Goosefeather]

meh.. try the vowels..
the word Apple starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word Apple as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word ignite starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word ignite as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word egg starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word egg.. as it is pronounced in the alphabet
and it's not like they don't have those sounds..because..well..they're right there in the alphabet.
I'm sure there are a few such cases with the consonants as well..

Well, that's because we have something like 16 vowels, different accents notwithstanding, but only 5 (or 6, including 'y') symbols to represent them. And then there's the schwa, which is a massive pain to try to explain to someone who's just starting to learn English...

French is almost as bad - say you hear a verb ending in the sound 'eɪ'. Without context, you cannot know whether it's, for example, 'regarder', 'regardez', 'regardé', 'regardée', 'regardés', 'regardées', 'regardais', 'regardaient', 'regardait' or 'regardai'.

Italian and Catalan are somewhat better, though not quite at the level of Spanish, which has a perfect 5:5 ratio. Though the Spanish do mess up when it comes to consonants, however, with 'b/v', and the whole 'to cecear or not to cecear' issue...

Consonantwise, I maintain we should reintroduce Þ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)) into English, just because it's so damn funky.

[Sallera]

Heh, granted, it is more a matter of degree than anything, but it does tend to lead to them suffering from the same over-pronunciation problem.

I don't mind katakana myself; it is useful, and leads to some interesting diversions to find out where certain words come from (saboru's an amusing one, given its common usage). To be fair, a lot of the complaints I heard were probably about the physical structure of the script rather than its usage (reading the katakana of someone with poor handwriting can be... heavily context-dependent, shall we say?)

[WalkingTarget]

meh.. try the vowels..
the word Apple starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word Apple as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word ignite starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word ignite as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word egg starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word egg.. as it is pronounced in the alphabet
and it's not like they don't have those sounds..because..well..they're right there in the alphabet.
I'm sure there are a few such cases with the consonants as well..

This is similar to the problem of transcription in Japanese that Yora talked about. We're using an alphabet that was originally developed for a different language. Sure, we've tweaked it somewhat over the centuries, but it's still the Latin alphabet for the most part. Modern English just has more individual morphemes in it than there are letters, so some have to pull double (or triple, or more) duty.

Add in the problem of things like the Great Vowel Shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift) where English's pronunciations of vowels diverged from much of the rest of the world that used the same alphabet and our tendency to lift any useful piece of vocabulary that isn't nailed down and you've got a recipe for confusing orthography.

[dehro]

"great vowel shift" sounds like something that involves great barges floating across the channel, at about the time of the Battle of Hastings, full of scribes surreptitiously invading cloisters and monasteries, with big red markers and changing all the vowels in bibles and other such manuscripts..

[Inglenook]

I used to have a t-shirt that said "I SURVIVED THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT". The linguistics department always got a chuckle out of it. :smalltongue:

[Yora]

In German we have the opposite problem. We have too many letters for the same sounds. :smallbiggrin:

> V is either pronounced W or F.
> I is always followed by a consonant, J is always followed by a vowel. Otherwise they are identical.
> C can be either a K or a Z and has no own pronounciation. In current spelling, it is used only as part of "ch" and "sch", which effectively have become distinct letters like the "sz" letter "ß" used to be, or as part of "ck", which is actually "kk".
> "IE" is identical with "IH". All other vowels are drawn out always with *H.
> X is pronounced KS.
> Y doesn't even exist in German words and is only used in english or greek words.
> Q only exists as "qu" and is identical to KU. But like J, it is usually followed by a vowel, while KU is followed by a consonant. And there are maybe 5 or 6 words in the entire language in which it appears at all.
> Z is pronounced TS.
> PH is F

The only exception would be "CH", which has three different pronounciations "cr", "kh", and a softer form of the english "ch".
While Ä sounds a lot like E, there's a very slight difference, but which might not even be present in most dialects.

You could have a perfect German pronounciation with only the letters A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, Ä, Ö, Ü plus the combinations SCH, CH1, and CH2. That's 25 instead of 39.

"Man könnte dih deutsche Sprache auch follkommen problemlos mit einem ferkürtstem Alfabet von lediglich fünfundtswantsig Buchstaben schreiben anstelle fon neunundreissig, ohne dabei irgendwelche Einschränkungen bei der Lesbarkeit der Aussprache zu erleiden. In der Tat befinden sich in dihsem Tekst-Beispihl nur sehr wenige Stellen, an denen irgendeine Form von Änderung durchgeführt werden müsste."
All changes marked bold.

[Yora]

What is it with the word "squirrel"? I've even seen english people and americans having a good laugh with German visitors and guests by asking them to say that word.

And of course, it's very funny. :smallbiggrin: There's no way to say it correctly.
Like Massachusetts.
Or the Japanese "Ryokou" (travel). It always comes out as "Rr-yokou" or "Ri-yokou". "Ryo" as a single syllable is impossible.

Any words that people with other native languages can't pronounce?
In Germany, we have great fun with making people say anything with "ü". French and Turks have no problem, almost everyone else does. :smallbiggrin:

[dehro]

the dutch have the sch sound (which actually is the same as the dutch g sound) which most of my italian friends insist can only be accomplished with the help of a handy spitoon.

[WalkingTarget]

Any words that people with other native languages can't pronounce?
In Germany, we have great fun with making people say anything with "ü". French and Turks have no problem, almost everyone else does. :smallbiggrin:

I can handle ü and ö fairly well. I get tripped up on other languages' versions of r. French, German, and trilled rr in Spanish. Can't get them right.

Then again, English has [p], [b], [f], [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z], [ ʃ], and [ʒ] which seems to be a set that isn't covered completely by other languages (at least, of the native speakers of other languages I've encountered, many have difficulties with one or more of these - most often [θ] and [ð]; your anecdotal evidence may vary).

[Sallera]

The Japanese ry- diphthongs are a classic. They're not outright impossible for an English speaker, but I hear the results of people trying to pronounce them without practice frequently at my karate classes. The teacher occasionally holds little sessions after class in an attempt to correct the students' pronunciation; success is rare. :smalltongue:

Another one I've heard mentioned a fair bit (for native English speakers, at least) is the initial ng (such as in the Vietnamese Nguyễn). Awkward if you're not used to putting the sound at the beginning of a word; add the rest of the name and things get interesting.

[Yora]

Does anyone know the origin of the english word fiend? And is it perhaps related to the german Feind (enemy, pronounced find)?

[Goosefeather]

Does anyone know the origin of the english word fiend? And is it perhaps related to the german Feind (enemy, pronounced find)?

My handy bookmarked etymology website says:


fiend
O.E. feond "enemy, foe," originally prp. of feogan "to hate," from P.Gmc. *fijæjan (cf. O.Fris. fiand "enemy," O.S. fiond, M.D. viant, Du. vijand "enemy," O.N. fjandi, O.H.G. fiant, Goth. fijands), from PIE root *pe(i)- "to blame, revile" (cf. Goth. faian "to blame;" see passion).

As spelling suggests, it was originally the opposite of friend, but the word began to be used in O.E. for "Satan" (as the "enemy of mankind"), which shifted its sense to "diabolical person" (early 13c.). The old sense of the word devolved to foe, then to the imported word enemy. For spelling with -ie- see field. Meaning "devotee (of whatever is indicated)," e.g. dope fiend, is from 1865.

[Yora]

I see. I didn't guess that the connection would lie in Satan. :smallbiggrin:

[Eldan]

Any words that people with other native languages can't pronounce?
In Germany, we have great fun with making people say anything with "ü". French and Turks have no problem, almost everyone else does. :smallbiggrin:

We have great fun getting Germans to say certain Swiss German words, like Chuchichäschtli* or anything containing the double vowels you don't have, like üä, uä or ue.


*Different "ch" sound from any used in German. Much deeper in the throat, more rasping.

[Rawhide]

Does anyone know the origin of the english word fiend? And is it perhaps related to the german Feind (enemy, pronounced find)?

Also chech out dictionary.com. Has a handy etymology section for most words.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Fiend

Scroll down to Origin, I won't copy and paste as it would lose the formatting.

[SaintRidley]

I prefer to use etymonline (www.etymonline.com), though if I am not at my computer I make use of my paperback etymological dictionary.

[Inglenook]

^ Etymonline is aces.

[Yora]

We have great fun getting Germans to say certain Swiss German words, like Chuchichäschtli* or anything containing the double vowels you don't have, like üä, uä or ue.


*Different "ch" sound from any used in German. Much deeper in the throat, more rasping.
It's pronounced Kr-kr-kr-li. :smalltongue:

[Devils_Advocate]

What is it with the word "squirrel"? I've even seen english people and americans having a good laugh with German visitors and guests by asking them to say that word.

And of course, it's very funny. :smallbiggrin: There's no way to say it correctly.
Like Massachusetts.
"Skwerl" or maybe "skwerrel". Where the "e" is pronounced like it is in "er" (as in "tinker", "blubber", "faster", etc).

"Mass a chew, sis." (A grammatically valid command, though not one that makes any sense. Also, the "sis" is a lot more abrupt when actually saying the state name.)

At least those are the pronunciations I'm familiar with.

[factotum]

"Skwerl" or maybe "skwerrel". Where the "e" is pronounced like it is in "er" (as in "tinker", "blubber", "faster", etc).

That's not how I pronounce it--I've always pronounced the word "skwirrel".

[Devils_Advocate]

Heh. I'm not sure that you're not joking, but in case you're not, obvious question: How do you pronounce "skwirrel"? How are you saying the "i" and "e" there?

(Another way to put the first pronunciation I mentioned is that it rhymes with "whirl", "twirl", "girl", "hurl", and so on.)