New CBB

But you gotta' agree that the Spanish one, "taxi" has some sort of sexiness to it. -_^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUEkOVdUjHc :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT86iWiH2mI&feature=related D:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpikUEIaLI&feature=related XD

I can't agree. Spanish <taxi> is really horrible to me. Even then orthography is terrible when compared to, say, the Hungarian <taxi>.

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♀♥♀
Dotjen
Kotanese

Heh, I just finished reading "Is that a fish in your ear?", and it also covers the eskimo-snow-words-myth, and counter exemplifies it with "How many words do we have for coffee?". Because if you walk into a StarBucks and ask for a "coffee", the teller won't have any idea what you want

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My name is Christian Munk, and I may be a chipmunk afterall.

Native: | Fluent: | Less than fluent: , , | Beginner: , Volapük | To do list: , Lojban
Creating: Mhmmz

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

That's nice.

The Wiktionary entry on Schadenfreude gives this:

Descendants:

schadenfreude (English)
skadefryd (Norwegian)
skadeglädje (Swedish)

Funny.

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Proto-Hyảlim | Bjarmish

Ón gráti sem jett barn kvéner jag syggji jett lag um deiðan...
[oʊ̯n ˈgɾaːtɪ sɛmː jɛtː baɾn ˈkʰʋɛːnɛɾ jaː ˈsʏd͡ʑːɪ jɛtː laː ʊmː ˈdɛɪ̯an]

The very best thing with it is how they actually provide *translations* ... *into* .... *ENGLISH* what the fuck is wrong here?

They don't give translations, rather explanations.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

No, those are translations. A translation need not be word for word, in fact shouldn't be word-for-word. It should be words strung together to convey the same idea.

Well then, the definition of translation they have in mind is different from yours. They mean words which don't have an English equivalent.

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I am a conlanger, a guitarist, a liar, a songwriter, a marijuana smoker, and a reader. Who are you?

But that's stupid. If we're going to be really strict about it, the German word for, say, towel is probably not translatable by one word, as the English and German words include slightly different things, and the various synonyms for them might have slightly different connotations. Same goes for the German word for tower, town, toxin, toy, ... or WHICHEVER FUCKING WORD YOU EVER PICK with remarkably few exceptions. For any two languages that aren't only just a few centuries diverged.

Now, again we run into problems like: we don't have any useful cross-linguistic metric for "the same word". If we made one, we'd probably be able to adjust it so we can exclude trivial examples like the ones above, but who's to decide when a word is a direct translation or not? What's needed to make them not be trivial translations? Is it just enough that some kinds of towels are excluded? Or some kind of napkin included? Etc. (And please, don't just think of that particular example and try and find flaws with what I am saying regarding that one, try getting the point. You know, the important nugget of understanding at the bottom of this).

Indeed, if "translation" means "word-to-word equivalence," then every translation is a lie.

I've posted before about that great study of English, Spanish, and Mandarin word boundaries for container-objects. The typical English translation you see for Mandarin píng is bottle, but that's really a lie. There are bottles that are not píngs, and there are píngs that are not bottles. Obviously, English still has words that it can use to talk about the píngs that are not bottles, just like it has words to talk about "the urge to squeeze a really cute thing."

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

Somehow, I suspect people assume some kind of platonism here as well.
(There'll be a slight detour into religion here, but it's relevant due to the impact of platonism; I don't want theological arguments here at all, I am trying to illustrate how both a lot of atheists and theists are being inconsistent when it comes to understanding language and how it works, and platonism is at the root of this misunderstanding.)

People probably do think categories like napkin, towel, bottle, bird, etc are eternal and absolute and universal. Almost as if God has descended on a mountain and made declarations like "bottles are containers with these properties {...}, towels are pieces of fabric with these properties {...}, birds are animals with these properties {...}, ...", although somehow, it's even more silly as those who believe something with this effect tend to leave gods out of it (either by not believing at all, or by actually thinking he's not omnipotent-omnipresent etc and thus being inconsistent in their beliefs, etc. I favor the atheist stance, but I think a lot of atheists have remnants in their thinking of concepts that basically can't work without a god, but these remnants generally are misunderstandings of how the world works so that's no argument for the existence of a god). So basically, no one came down and made these declarations, yet these declarations have been made. And are absolute and unchanging.

And speaking English gives us vision in the dark cave, to see the shapes of the platonic ur-types of everything that has a name. But sometimes there's gaps in English - ur-types that have no corresponding word, except in some dialect of so-and-so language somewhere. Wake up, this isn't the case, platonic ur-types don't exist, no eternal arbiter has decided what our categories are, etc.

You do realise that this video is merely for entertainment purpose?

(This is what happens when linguo-freaks gather up... )

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Sure, but mistaken notions about language that are fairly common even among conlangers should be pointed out and properly dealt with even if they appeared in entertainment. Entertainment is a dangerous source of mistaken notions today, there's lots of people in all earnestness quoting something they've heard as the puncline or set up of a fucking joke.

Sure, the joke might've been fun - and I enjoy lots of jokes based on flawed understandings of things. But I only tell these jokes in context where it's pretty clear it's based on a misunderstanding.

Forgettabout diachronic transitoriness, try synchronic transitoriness of meaning!

Across the sea in Merry Old England, what friends use to describe as "napkin" is NOT what I put on my table for my guests and I to wipe our mouths after a meal at my house.

don't EVEN get me started

Even though people realize this - that the same phonological surface form, <napkin> can mean different things in different varieties of the same language, it's like they still fail to realize the point I was making.

What word the meaning of "napkin" is associated with isn't the relevant thing here, the relevant thing is the idea that the very meaning unit is somehow eternal and unchanging

I know man. All I told them was the definition the entertainers used for translation and FLAMES

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I am a conlanger, a guitarist, a liar, a songwriter, a marijuana smoker, and a reader. Who are you?

Yyyyeah, nothing on this page qualifies as a flame.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

It's just funny how such a silly video can lead to such a serious discussion.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS