TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby dEhiN » 2017-01-29, 7:09

vijayjohn wrote:"With a movie title like that, it isn't possible :P (I don't have a good idea of what the rope means in sexual actions, but...)."

Well rope is used in BDSM play, specifically B&D play to tie up the other person. So Koko is right; a title like "5 Girls and a Rope" could definitely connote a kinky or even explicitly pornographic movie. In fact, when I first saw your initial post, that's what I thought of: a kinky movie. But then I figured it probably wasn't that, and thought maybe the rope reference was some sort of metaphor. That kinda sucks actually that it's a real rope and it refers to suicide.

vijayjohn wrote:(Pretty sure he means 'sex(ual) acts': atti sessuali. 'Sexual actions' would actually be azzioni sessuale).

Grazie. E proprio? È come "propre" in francese?
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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-29, 7:14

dEhiN wrote:Grazie. E proprio? È come "propre" in francese?

Not really. :P I think here, it just means 'really', so like "I don't really have an idea..." which is pretty much the same as "I don't have a good idea..."

I'm mostly thinking of watching that movie because I already watched a famous Chinese movie called Raise the Red Lantern, which is set in the 1920s and has a tragic ending as well (though not suicide), and I'm kind of disappointed with it since Dai Qing said it was completely inaccurate and accused it of having been made mainly for western tastes. :P
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2017-01-29, 7:20, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby Koko » 2017-01-29, 7:17

vijayjohn wrote:"With a movie title like that, it isn't possible :P (I don't have a good idea of what the rope means in sexual actions, but...)." (Pretty sure he means 'sex(ual) acts': atti sessuali. 'Sexual actions' would actually be azzioni sessuale).

Thanks for translating for me! Also sorry dEhiN, i figured with your knowledge of other romance languages you wouldn't have much trouble :oops:

What i had in my mind: "I don't have an idea what exactly the rope means in sexual acts, but..." But there's a few ways it could be translated.

I did mean atti sessuali. WR gave me azzione for actions and atto was said to be theatre acts. I thought atto could be used almost exactly act, but decided not to argue with a quick dictionary search.

vijayjohn wrote:Yes, and it can only be used for conjoining nouns AFAIK.
It looks like a weird character for a conjunction, but i also have zero knowledge of Chinese to have a good opinion on it.

It's used to mean various things. I think its use as a conjunction is inspired by the rebus principle or "punning"; i.e. at some point, the word for 'and' (between nouns) presumably sounded like some other word that was written with 和, and 和 came to be used to mean 'and' as well.

I love the rebus principle. The idea of it just tickles my fancy. I love puns, and that speakers of languages written with logographies made them an everyday part of the written language just rivets me.[/quote]

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby dEhiN » 2017-01-29, 7:30

Koko wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:"With a movie title like that, it isn't possible :P (I don't have a good idea of what the rope means in sexual actions, but...)." (Pretty sure he means 'sex(ual) acts': atti sessuali. 'Sexual actions' would actually be azzioni sessuale).

Thanks for translating for me!
...
What i had in my mind: "I don't have an idea what exactly the rope means in sexual acts, but..." But there's a few ways it could be translated.

Oh hahaha! I just now got that Vijay translated what you said in Italian into English! (I was wondering why he put that in quotation marks! :hmm: ) That's why I replied what I did; I thought Vijay was actually saying he himself didn't have an idea of the rope in sex. :rotfl:

Koko wrote:Also sorry dEhiN, i figured with your knowledge of other romance languages you wouldn't have much trouble :oops:

No worries, and you figured correctly. I definitely can read Italian much better than I can write it, since with writing I have to actually know what form of the word to use (and what word). There are times when reading (Italian) where i don't know what the word means and I'm not even sure what its cognates would be in the other Romance languages; those times I just assume a cognate if it looks similar enough to a word I know, or the odd time I'll look it up.
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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby Leopejo » 2017-01-29, 8:49

Just to greet Vijay,

'azione/azioni' is with one 'z'. 'proprio' does have both the 'self' meaning as the 'really' one. It is probably on the list of the words most frequently spelled wrong: many Italians write (and pronounce) 'propio'.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-29, 13:06

Leopejo wrote:Just to greet Vijay,

Hey there, Leo! :D
'azione/azioni' is with one 'z'.

Thanks!
'proprio' does have both the 'self' meaning as the 'really' one.

Yeah, although even with the 'self' meaning, it seems slightly different from French; you do have to use the pronoun with it in French with that meaning AFAIK, whereas this doesn't seem to be the case in Italian.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby dEhiN » 2017-01-29, 13:57

vijayjohn wrote:
Leopejo wrote:Just to greet Vijay,

Hey there, Leo! :D

Hey there as well Leo! If you keep replying to TACs, you'll soon become a UL regular! :twisted:


vijayjohn wrote:
Leopejo wrote:'proprio' does have both the 'self' meaning as the 'really' one.

Yeah, although even with the 'self' meaning, it seems slightly different from French; you do have to use the pronoun with it in French with that meaning AFAIK, whereas this doesn't seem to be the case in Italian.

Well, in French you could write something like C'est ma propre tasse to mean "That's my own cup". (Actually in English that sounds a bit odd to me, and I would use something like "That's my cup", but to create the emphasis in French, I would use propre.)
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Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-30, 4:46

dEhiN wrote:Well, in French you could write something like C'est ma propre tasse to mean "That's my own cup".

I know, and that's true of Italian, too, I think. However, in Italian, proprio can also be used to mean things like 'one's own', which doesn't really seem to be possible in French. Maybe that only happens in some fixed expressions in Italian, though; I'm not sure.
Actually in English that sounds a bit odd to me, and I would use something like "That's my cup", but to create the emphasis in French, I would use propre.

I can see a situation where "that's my own cup" would work for me but "that's my cup" seems odd, i.e. something like:

A: Did your cousin buy you this cup?
B: No, that's my own cup. I bought it for myself.
(If B had instead said "that's my cup," I imagine B would just be sounding weirdly defensive and possessive :lol:).

Anyway, now I'm thinking of moving on to the French forum. :whistle:

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby Koko » 2017-01-30, 4:54

vijayjohn wrote:
dEhiN wrote:Well, in French you could write something like C'est ma propre tasse to mean "That's my own cup".

I know, and that's true of Italian, too, I think. However, in Italian, proprio can also be used to mean things like 'one's own', which doesn't really seem to be possible in French. Maybe that only happens in some fixed expressions in Italian, though; I'm not sure.

As far as i know, you can't use proprio in conjunction with personal/possessive pronouns. Mio/mia IS "my (own)." And a sentence like "He has his own jacket." is Ha la propria giacca.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-30, 5:03

I get 85,700 Google search results for "mio proprio" in quotes. :P

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby Koko » 2017-01-30, 5:09

vijayjohn wrote:I get 85,700 Google search results for "mio proprio" in quotes. :P

I wonder if that's like, more "il mio proprio" rather than "il mio proprio [qualsiasi]"

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-30, 5:13

Koko wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I get 85,700 Google search results for "mio proprio" in quotes. :P

I wonder if that's like, more "il mio proprio" rather than "il mio proprio [qualsiasi]"

It's both (maybe more that one than the other, but still). See here for instance (this is the first search result I got for it).

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby Koko » 2017-01-30, 5:21

:shock:

Weird, i remember trying to use mio proprio though, and being told that it wasn't right (not only in the case i used it, but in general). Maybe it depends on where you're speaking? or i'm just not remembering right

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby Leopejo » 2017-01-30, 8:28

Generally speaking you won't use "mio proprio" etc.

One exception are those kind of fixed expressions: "con i miei propri occhi", "con le mie proprie orecchie", when you want to underline that something really happened or was said and you were a witness to it.

You'd never use "il proprio mio".

Of course you can use 'proprio' in the other meaning of 'really' in conjunction with 'mio'. For instance, "questo gatto e' proprio mio", "(yeah,) this cat is really mine".

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-31, 6:04

Grazie, Leopejo!

So I think instead of Bunak, I'd probably do something that (IIUC) is within Trans-New Guinea proper. Of the languages that are listed on the Wikipedia page for "Trans-New Guinea languages" as "accepted," the one that is spoken furthest to the west is Kamberau.

I've also started posting in the French forum, even if I've only posted in English so far. :P

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-02-02, 4:50

I'm also thinking of attempting (this is part of those long-term ideas I was talking about before) to learn one African language from each family, or something like that. This is assuming that neither "Nilo-Saharan" nor "Niger-Congo" is really a valid grouping (and also assuming that "Kordofanian" isn't, I guess, though good luck trying to find resources on those...). I might learn Dyula since it's the most widespread Mande language I can think of and Yoruba since it's the most widespread Niger-Congo language I can think of.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby eskandar » 2017-02-02, 8:24

vijayjohn wrote:I might learn Dyula since it's the most widespread Mande language I can think of and Yoruba since it's the most widespread Niger-Congo language I can think of.

Widespread in what way? Geographically, maybe? I would think there would be more resources for Soninke or Bambara (the latter of which I've long wanted to learn, though probably never will). For Niger-Congo languages, is Yoruba really more widespread than Swahili? Maybe if you're only looking at number of native speakers. Hausa and Somali, which you've mentioned earlier, have long been temptations of mine as well (both of which I briefly flirted with in the past).
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby dEhiN » 2017-02-02, 9:18

eskandar wrote:Hausa and Somali, which you've mentioned earlier, have long been temptations of mine as well (both of which I briefly flirted with in the past).

What is Somali like?
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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby eskandar » 2017-02-02, 9:44

dEhiN wrote:What is Somali like?

Too tough for me: not well standardized, tonal, large vowel inventory, and dramatically different from any language with which I'm familiar. This, combined with the dearth of good resources for the language, kept me from getting very far with it.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-02-02, 13:36

eskandar wrote:Widespread in what way? Geographically, maybe?

That and number of speakers (native + L2) according to Wikipedia, at least, since it's a trade language.
I would think there would be more resources for Soninke or Bambara (the latter of which I've long wanted to learn, though probably never will).

I remember when I took French in middle school, our textbook actually had a few phrases in Dyula in it because it had a unit on Côte d'Ivoire and it's one of the main languages there. That's the only language I've ever seen being taught at all in a French textbook other than Flemish (in my brother's second-year textbook) and, of course, French. That gives me some hope with Dyula, I guess, although Bambara wouldn't be a bad alternative, either, since all the Manding languages are supposed to be mutually intelligible anyway. :)
For Niger-Congo languages, is Yoruba really more widespread than Swahili?

No, but I'm ignoring Swahili since I've been learning it anyway. ;)
Hausa and Somali, which you've mentioned earlier, have long been temptations of mine as well (both of which I briefly flirted with in the past).

A lot of my relatives on my mom's side of the family used to live in Nigeria. One of my mom's first cousins lives in Houston now but used to be an English teacher in a village where everyone spoke only Hausa. When I was growing up, every time we visited him, he would suddenly start talking to me in Hausa as if he expected me to have learned it already. He tried to teach me the numbers in Hausa and went through "one," "two," and "three," then said, "'Four' I don't remember because I'd never pay more than three naira for a chicken." :lol: However, he openly admitted that he refused to vote for Barack Obama just because he's black. :?


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