Random language thread 6

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Bubulus
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Bubulus » 2018-11-13, 20:07

linguoboy wrote:Midwesterners would have called lighter-skinned Spanish-speaking people "Spanish".

As I said, the usage of "Spanish" for people of Spanish American origin was widespread in my parents' generation. It's now generally considered "incorrect", but it was a part of the language for at least a century or more.

Calling a Spanish speaker "Spanish" is still a thing among some young people in Vancouver...

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Naava » 2018-11-13, 20:19

Ser wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Midwesterners would have called lighter-skinned Spanish-speaking people "Spanish".

As I said, the usage of "Spanish" for people of Spanish American origin was widespread in my parents' generation. It's now generally considered "incorrect", but it was a part of the language for at least a century or more.

Calling a Spanish speaker "Spanish" is still a thing among some young people in Vancouver...

This reminds me of how Swedish speaking Finns are sometimes called Swedes where I'm from. (It could be a thing elsewhere in Finland, too, I don't know.)

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2018-11-13, 20:30

Naava wrote:This reminds me of how Swedish speaking Finns are sometimes called Swedes where I'm from. (It could be a thing elsewhere in Finland, too, I don't know.)

Would the fuller term be the equivalent of "Finland Swedes"?
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Naava » 2018-11-13, 20:41

Finland's Swedes, if you want a very literal translation. That's a common way of naming anyone who has moved abroad or whose (great-great-....-great-grand-) parents are from somewhere else, like the Americans who have Finnish ancestry are called America's Finns.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2018-11-13, 20:51

Naava wrote:Finland's Swedes, if you want a very literal translation. That's a common way of naming anyone who has moved abroad or whose (great-great-....-great-grand-) parents are from somewhere else, like the Americans who have Finnish ancestry are called America's Finns.

So it's an exact parallel to, e.g. Swedish-American being reduced to Swedish only with the order of the constituents reversed in the compound form.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Naava » 2018-11-13, 20:56

I guess so. Does that happen?

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2018-11-13, 21:28

Naava wrote:I guess so. Does that happen?

As I said above, it happens regularly in American English. If it's understood that someone is born in America, then you would simply say "She's Swedish" (or "She's mostly Swedish but with some Polish on her mom's side", etc.). In fact, it's often in order to emphasise that someone is foreign-born that you add a qualifier, e.g. "She's Swedish from Sweden" or "She's Swedish Swedish".
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby razlem » 2018-11-15, 8:32

linguoboy wrote:As I said above, it happens regularly in American English. If it's understood that someone is born in America, then you would simply say "She's Swedish" (or "She's mostly Swedish but with some Polish on her mom's side", etc.). In fact, it's often in order to emphasise that someone is foreign-born that you add a qualifier, e.g. "She's Swedish from Sweden" or "She's Swedish Swedish".


I'm not sure I agree. Everywhere I've been (the South and Pacific Coast), "She's Swedish" means that she was born in Sweden. But I also would not say "Swedish-American" (it makes sense, just not my first choice). I have most often heard, and would most likely say myself, "Her family is from Sweden" if she's first/second generation, or "her ethnicity/family background is Swedish". "Swedish from Sweden" sounds a little over-redundant :P
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-11-15, 22:40

Saim wrote:
In Hebrew, the word "אפל" (Afel) means "dark" or "tainted". The English adjective "fell" means "cruel" or "savage"[1]. The word "fel" can also mean "bile", and according to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition (2000), it is related to a number of words of Indo-European origin: yellow, gold, gall, cholera, and felon, to mention a few. The same source indicates that the Indo-European root from which it is derived, ghel, meant "to shine". It may also find it's origin in the Old-English word "fūl" which means "foul" and is the origin of the word "defile". Fel also is a Swedish word for "Wrong" or "Incorrect", it is however pronounced differently (the E is pronounced as the first E of "Error" which make the word sound like "fEl").


Erm, what? What pronunciation is this supposed to represent?

linguoboy wrote:[e:]?

Saim wrote:But what does that have to do with the pronunciation of error?

It's tha TAYUXN way o' pernounsn' ayerrr. Or th' Southern Yew Ayuss [wəj]. ;)

(I'm kind of kidding, of course. But I'm pretty sure some Southerners would use [eː] or [e] there).
Vlürch wrote:Is there any site with "comprehensive" lists of given names and surnames from various languages/countries with etymologies that isn't a baby-naming site?

Wikipedia?
linguoboy wrote:I get confused between rutabagas and kohlrabi because both can be referred to in German as Kohlrübe and there are variant names for the rutabaga which incorporate "Kohlrabi", e.g. Erdkohlrabi ("earth-kohlrabi"), Unterkohlrabi ("under-kohlrabi"), and Bodenkohlrabi ("ground-kohlrabi"). Plus we never had either growing up, so they're both still slightly exotic vegetables to me.

I don't think I've ever seen either kind of vegetable in my life.
OldBoring wrote:How dare you not mention the main ideology of the People's Republic of China?

社会主义好!社会主义好!

Aren't you so glad I taught you that song? :lol:
IpseDixit wrote:Also, I'm appalled by the way many dictionaries define destra (right) as the hand on the same side as the liver and sinistra (left) as the hand on the same side as the heart. Dafuq guys, never heard of situs inversus?

...no...? :P
Vlürch wrote:Imagine if someone didn't know which direction is which for some reason and just saw that in a dictionary, then decided to cut their own torso open to determine which side is right and which is left?

Then they'd die.
Saim wrote:In Spanish on the other hand it's torpe.

Every time I see the word torpe now, I think of this Paraguayan comedy clip in Jopará (Guarani + Spanish) where the host uses it.
Antea wrote:But where is Sindhi? :hmm:

Sindhi is spoken by the Sindhi diaspora in various parts of India, not in any one part. (That being said, of course, it's also indigenous to Sindh in Pakistan).
Saim wrote:Hindi isn't one of the languages mentioned for Sikkim, and English is given a higher (in practice probably meaning real official status rather than a symbolic one) official status than Nepali, Bhutia, Limbu or Lepcha.

Sikkim is also a popular tourist destination in a way that no other Indian state is especially because of Kangchenjunga, though, so maybe Hindi is more widely spoken in Sikkim (non-natively) than the census figures show.
I guess they wanted to show the most widely spoken language in each state, and just took a very wide definition of Hindi so that it would include all Bihari (Bhojpuri, Maithili), Rajasthani (Marwari), Western Hindi (Hindi proper, Haryanvi), Eastern Hindi (Awadhi, Chhattisgarhi) and Central/Western Pahari (Kumaoni, Garhwali, Kangri) languages.

That is generally how most people define "Hindi." Awadhi even used to be the literary standard for Hindi.
Salajane wrote:Is anybody interested in a Thai study group?

Of course!
linguoboy wrote:It is bizarre to me how people's prejudices about languages can warp their perception of reality. A friend posted the word áilleánach on his wall and someone replied to say that he knew it was "Gaelic" because of the "ridiculous number of consonants".

Áilleánach has five vowels and five consonants. That's not at all unusual for an English word. Consonant itself has three vowels and six consonants.

I think what he's trying to say it "I could tell by looking at the word that it was Irish" but he doesn't know how to analyse what gives him that impression.

Maybe he meant the number of consonants in a row?
Luís wrote:Next step: replace io by me

That's pretty much the same process that gave most of the modern Indo-Aryan languages their first person subject (or nominative case) pronouns.
linguoboy wrote:
Luís wrote:
Prowler wrote: Referring to Mexicans, Guatemalas and Cubans as "Spanish people".

Are you sure they're using "Spanish" and not "Hispanic"?

It's an older usage in US English, but I still hear it.

I do, too. It confuses the hell out of a lot of immigrants who don't understand as a result that "Spanish, "Mexican," etc. are all very different from each other.
Vlürch wrote:Since I mentioned the Finnish cringiness when it comes to language-related stuff in another thread, here's a perfect example that's even more outrageous than the demystification of ancient languages and language isolates: this guy claims that nasal consonants can only be voiced. :roll:

It's like he's never heard of Welsh, Burmese, etc. Even at least one of the Sami languages has them! Makes me kinda ashamed to be Finnish, but thankfully I have no education beyond primary school so at least I don't have to live with the shame of being lumped together with proudly ignorant academics and whatnot. :P

Well, to be fair, they are still far less common than voiced nasal consonants. Maybe he uses another term for voiceless nasals.
razlem wrote:I'm not sure I agree. Everywhere I've been (the South and Pacific Coast), "She's Swedish" means that she was born in Sweden.

I'm from the South, too, and I have heard this sort of usage to refer to someone who was not actually born there. I even use it myself. I've said many times that I'm Indian even though I've never even been in India for as long as three weeks at a time and the last time I visited was almost fifteen years ago.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby aaakknu » 2018-11-15, 22:52

vijayjohn wrote:
Salajane wrote:Is anybody interested in a Thai study group?

Of course!

But you already know some Thai, and I will start from the alphabet. Wouldn't it be boring for you?
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2018-11-15, 22:54

vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:It is bizarre to me how people's prejudices about languages can warp their perception of reality. A friend posted the word áilleánach on his wall and someone replied to say that he knew it was "Gaelic" because of the "ridiculous number of consonants".

Áilleánach has five vowels and five consonants. That's not at all unusual for an English word. Consonant itself has three vowels and six consonants.

I think what he's trying to say it "I could tell by looking at the word that it was Irish" but he doesn't know how to analyse what gives him that impression.

Maybe he meant the number of consonants in a row?

Two?
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-11-15, 23:43

Sure. How often do you get two or more sequences of consonants within the same word in Irish compared to other languages?
Salajane wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
Salajane wrote:Is anybody interested in a Thai study group?

Of course!

But you already know some Thai, and I will start from the alphabet. Wouldn't it be boring for you?

No, I don't get bored all that easily. :P I mean, I'm also in study groups for French, German, and Tamil that are all way below my level for any of those languages. If anything, helping you with the alphabet will just make it easier for me to keep up with a bunch of my other study groups!

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby aaakknu » 2018-11-16, 7:37

vijayjohn wrote:No, I don't get bored all that easily. :P I mean, I'm also in study groups for French, German, and Tamil that are all way below my level for any of those languages. If anything, helping you with the alphabet will just make it easier for me to keep up with a bunch of my other study groups!

Then I'll start the group in the beginning of April, if you don't mind.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby OldBoring » 2018-11-16, 8:11

vijayjohn wrote:
OldBoring wrote:How dare you not mention the main ideology of the People's Republic of China?

社会主义好!社会主义好!

Aren't you so glad I taught you that song? :lol:

Last time I wrote 法轮大法万岁 this forum got banned in China. let's see if I can save it by writing that.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Prowler » 2018-11-17, 14:59

OldBoring wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
OldBoring wrote:How dare you not mention the main ideology of the People's Republic of China?

社会主义好!社会主义好!

Aren't you so glad I taught you that song? :lol:

Last time I wrote 法轮大法万岁 this forum got banned in China. let's see if I can save it by writing that.

Wut. What does it mean?

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Bubulus » 2018-11-17, 16:25

"Long live Falun Gong." (Look it up if you don't know what that is.)

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Vlürch » 2018-11-19, 17:10

A part of me wanted to post this in the false friend thread, but I feel like it doesn't exactly belong there since it's kind of a stretch and only for a joke:

Sanskrit (sa) कन्ये (kanye) - virgin (vocative)
Latin (la) Vesta, from which English (en) vestal is derived
So, what does that make Kanye West...? :mrgreen:

Disclaimer: I like Kanye West more than I dislike him (as in I get that he's done some stupid shit and can't say I like all of his music), and I'd never use "virgin" as an insult anyway. It's just a joke on how his name could be a false friend, which is hopefully ok to post.

~

Then a random question about Japanese: I thought にを wouldn't be grammatically correct? For example, 猫にを or whatever. However, I've randomly stumbled upon sentences with にを at least a couple of times and there are results on Google for stuff like that, and in some film I watched a while ago where "[some first-person pronoun]にを" was said as a surprised response (which was IIRC subtitled as "to me!?" or something); or at least that's what I thought/think it was, which struck me as odd since I remember being told grammatical case particles can't be "stacked" like that.

Unfortunately I don't even remember what film it was or anything. I really should've posted here to ask about it immediately... and tbh it could be that the subtitles influenced my hearing, too?

Also, what does that construction even mean? I mean, I can't make sense of a combined dative and accusative like that. Maybe I'm having severe brain farts and/or missing something obvious, but it just doesn't make sense to me logically? :para:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2018-11-19, 17:13

vijayjohn wrote:Sure. How often do you get two or more sequences of consonants within the same word in Irish compared to other languages?

Like literally all the time?

I don't get why you're working overtime to try to wring some sense out of such a clearly nonsensical statement. (He went back and deleted it for a reason.)
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2018-11-19, 23:09

I tried to translate "free game" into German just now and--to my surprise--I checked three different lexicographical sources (LEO, dict.cc, Wiktionary) and none of them listed it, not even on the discussion pages. This phrase is an ordinary part of my speech. I probably use it on a weekly basis and I don't have a synonymous alternative.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Yasna » 2018-11-19, 23:23

linguoboy wrote:I tried to translate "free game" into German just now and--to my surprise--I checked three different lexicographical sources (LEO, dict.cc, Wiktionary) and none of them listed it, not even on the discussion pages. This phrase is an ordinary part of my speech. I probably use it on a weekly basis and I don't have a synonymous alternative.

Like a free mobile game?
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