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symbolipoint
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Should someone tell us what is the meaning of "language"?PeroK said:I guess not. What about three words: "yes", "no" and "maybe"?
Should someone tell us what is the meaning of "language"?PeroK said:I guess not. What about three words: "yes", "no" and "maybe"?
You see this is why we should have an emoticon indicating "Interesting!".green slime said:Still no. Here's a hint: words are not the sole component of a language.
There is a lot of speculation around this in Linguistic circles.fluidistic said:That sucks.
What about Neanderthalians? Wikipedia states, with references, that we do not know the complexity of their languages, if they had any.
In any case, I do not think homo sapiens is different from all other creatures if we consider the now extinct other modern humans.
I did not anticipate a purple cow on pf, spherical? Yes. Purple. No.Rive said:Sure
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Ps.: to avoid confusion: I don't know if that cow on the picture is 'real' (I hope not), but I did hear childcare staff complaining about children knowing cows to be purple (due the chocolate, yes: since that's the only form of cow they have seen that age).
Word for particular colors is a verbal description of the internally observed mental sensation.symbolipoint said:Colors should usually for the most part be translatable. What do people in different places recognize depends on what colors they have seen or experienced. Best is, one person show a sample to someone else; and as long as neither these people are color-blind, the person shown can learn that color and name of color.
Clearly, you guys need to dye a cow purple, or use photoshop.There were a few brief posts somewhere in Physicsforums telling of Purple Cow as something the author and Mathematician Spivak created idea for. Something which is unlikely, or ridiculously impossible can be called a "Purple Cow". "So you want this, this, and this too? That just won't happen; you're asking for a purple cow."
Well, on one side I'm glad that the issue with translating colours got such a good example.symbolipoint said:There were a few brief posts somewhere in Physicsforums telling of Purple Cow as something the author and Mathematician Spivak created idea for.
I don't have a calibrated screen and presumably we are all using different devices to view the image. On my tablet it's purple on the cow and a pale dull purple round the outsideRive said:Well, on one side I'm glad that the issue with translating colours got such a good example.
On the other side this feels like quite a failure, so please tell me what word would you use to describe this colour:
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PeroK said:Someone told me once that one way to understand Finnegan's Wake was to get a translation and what the translator had done gave a big clue to what it all meant. I recall he had a French translation, rather than Chinese.
I should say I've never tried to read it myself.
Hornbein said:John V. Kelleher, one of my professors at Harvard, was a prominent Joyce scholar. He had grown up in Dublin so he could understand it. But he thought FWake was just a mishmosh of in jokes so he didn't like it at all.
I personally couldn't get past the first page. I think Dubliners is one of the greatest works of fiction, but it was all downhill from there. I guess that was too easy for him so he got bored with it. Kelleher's favorite was Portrait of the Artist.
John Coltrane was like that too. I don't know that anyone listens much to his late stuff. Respect yes, listen not.
Rive said:Sure
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Ps.: to avoid confusion: I don't know if that cow on the picture is 'real' (I hope not), but I did hear childcare staff complaining about children knowing cows to be purple (due the chocolate, yes: since that's the only form of cow they have seen that age).
Robert Sapolsky has some interesting things to say about the connection between the FOX2P gene and language. Appearently pidgin languages all have similar grammar. I can't remember which lecture I heard it in but this would probably be a good start (this one and "Schizophrenia"):symbolipoint said:Should someone tell us what is the meaning of "language"?
Yeh. I realized after watching most of it myself (I actually fell asleep at the end! ) swear I heatd that guy talk at length about language. Funny it's not the one marked "Language". I guess he talk *a lot*!symbolipoint said:post #119 from @sbrothy
A little hard to follow and seems to cover too many topics, and that is just up to about 18 minutes through the video timeline. I hope we do not have a quiz afterwards.
I asked for it; hoped a linguist would give us some answers about things been discussed. I wished they could be simpler. In that video, Dr. Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinologist, not a linguist. At least we should be aware, Linguistics is multidisciplinary.
About 30 minutes in, Sapolsky talks about brain damage and strokes and aphasia but I am stopping now; can not keep up...
The name Hotchkiss was brought to England in the great wave of migration following the Norman Conquest of 1066. It comes from the Norman personal name Roger. Hotchkis was a baptismal name which means Roger.Hornbein said:A popular song from Japan is entitled 'My Love Is A Stapler'. I think this is because the Japanese word for a stapler is hotchkiss. Hotchkiss was the first brand to make it there. I'd guess it is a bilingual pun on hot kiss.
That site cracks me up - is there any surname that does not have an exalted noble lineage?Keith_McClary said:
BWV said:That site cracks me up - is there any surname that does not have an exalted noble lineage?
found this surprising - no one I ever met with the surname Patel looked like a Viking:
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The roots of the Patel surname reach back to the language of the Viking settlers who populated the rugged shores of Scotlandin the Medieval era. The Patel surname comes from someone having lived any of several place names in England, such as Battle in Sussex. Contrary to what one would expect, the name is not a nicknameor occupational name derived from the word battle.
Except people speaking English use the word "Schadenfreude." I heard it yesterday in a BBC podcast. IOW it is on its way to being adopted into the language. Just as Smorgasbord, ombudsman, and a whole host of other words have been.pinball1970 said:I don't think there ever could be an untranslatable word into English (speaking for my people) . There are enough words in the language to capture whatever that word is. What is lost is a nuance that I as the non native speaker of the UTW have not encountered. The History, literature, religion, culture behind it. That's been pointed out by previous posters reading a book in one language then the original language.
Laughing at someone's misfortune hits the spot I think. Schadenfreude.
Comedy is based on it, the English had well attended public executions in the past so we should have had a word for it.
The fact we don't and the Germans do is an example of that nuance , in my opinion.
@fresh_42 has discussed this word previously.
Jonathan Scott said:While living in Sweden, I tried to say something about a "chicken leg bone" on my plate. The problem was that the word for "leg" and the word for "bone" are both "ben". I never did solve that one.
I also had difficulty translating "grandparents" or even "grandmother" to Swedish because (as in some other languages) there are different terms for father's parents or mother's parents, and similarly for father's father, father's mother, mother's father and mother's mother.
Thanks for helping to refresh my Swedish (it was about 35 years ago that I was living in Göteborg).green slime said:Kycklinglårben? Usually you are eating the thigh of the hen. Generally, they are sold as "kycklinglår," and not "kycklingben." :)
"mor- och farföräldrar" or "far- och morföräldrar" is the common construction.
Many years ago I was speaking (in German) to the German Railways in connection to electronic file transfers. The German used the word die Variable-block-size.green slime said:Except people speaking English use the word "Schadenfreude." I heard it yesterday in a BBC podcast. IOW it is on its way to being adopted into the language. Just as Smorgasbord, ombudsman, and a whole host of other words have been.
Or, that there is an expression, but that it didn't come to mind, because the speaker is so imbedded with reading literature in English or that the German is so close to the English, precisely because it is not English to start with...PeroK said:Many years ago I was speaking (in German) to the German Railways in connection to electronic file transfers. The German used the word die Variable-block-size.
One interpretation of this is that German has no word for variable block size, so uses the English. And, in that sense, it's untranslatable. The other interpretation is that variable block size can be translated into German - you just adopt the English as a new German word.
Logically these are equivalent; although, of course, politically and pseudo-scientifically you can argue about it.
It is not that the word has multiple cryptic or crystal etymology it is the fact the word was taken wholesale rather than do a potato on it.green slime said:bulldoze (v.)
by 1880, "intimidate by violence," from an earlier noun, bulldose "a severe beating or lashing" (1876), said by contemporary sources to be literally "a dose fit for a bull," a slang word referring to the intimidation beating of black voters (by either blacks or whites) in the chaotic 1876 U.S. presidential election. See bull (n.1) + dose (n.). The bull element in it seems to be connected to that in bull-whip and might be directly from that word.
I say, all English native-speakers return to the use of the Anglo-Saxon language!(that is supposed to be a humorous remark.)green slime said:Or, that there is an expression, but that it didn't come to mind, because the speaker is so imbedded with reading literature in English or that the German is so close to the English, precisely because it is not English to start with...
In Swedish, it would be "Variabel blockstorlek", and that is correctly spelled and translated. I'm guessing it's something similar in German. Listeners can often hear what they expect, which is yet another fascinating aspect of human communication. How do we really manage to communicate at all?!?
Variable" comes from a Latin word, variābilis, with "vari(us)"' meaning "various" and "-ābilis"' meaning "-able", meaning "capable of changing".
"Block" is in itself a very old word from Germanic or old French ('bloc' ca 1300), feel free to argue.
"Size" is another word borrowed from French (1300s) ...
In that sense, every word is untranslatable. Take that a step further, and that just means no humans can ever really understand each other, even when attempting to do so in what appears to be the same language. Differing cultures and interpretations exist within each country.CelHolo said:I think you can explain most words of course, but that's not really the same as a practical translation and there are certainly words with complex cultural connotations that even with a long explanation one will not fully understand their scope and use. Rather you'd need long term immersion in that language. So in this sense there would be untranslatable words.
I don't see any connection between needing immersion in a second language to nail down advanced vocabulary use and "no humans can ever understand each other". The former is just a basic aspect of language learning, the latter is an unrelated overblown non-sequitur.green slime said:In that sense, every word is untranslatable. Take that a step further, and that just means no humans can ever really understand each other, even when attempting to do so in what appears to be the same language. Differing cultures and interpretations exist within each country.