Moderator:Forum Administrators
Osias wrote:Someone commenting in the series The Boy said one character maybe couldn't be sued/prosecuted by murder but by manslaughter. I think that's what we mean in Portuguese by crime culposo. Ours being Direito Romano (Roman law system) maybe the distinction between culposo and doloso doesn't exist in the USA system. And English uses different terms for each crime.
Osias wrote:maybe the distinction between culposo and doloso doesn't exist in the USA system.
Vlürch wrote:On Wiktionary, when Chinese terms are marked as (literary) but don't have Old or Middle Chinese pronunciations listed, does that mean they weren't yet used in Middle Chinese, let alone Old Chinese, but only in the modern Standard Chinese? For example, 次子 or 天馬? I mean, logically it would suggest that, but it could also be that they just haven't been added, or...?
linguoboy wrote:I don't recall seeing MC or OC pronunciations given for compounds, only for single characters. Presumably, if you wanted to know the earlier pronunciations, you'd just check the entries for each component.
Osias wrote:Come to think about it, my language is the only I know when weekdays have nome (given name) and sobrenome (family name). I mean, we can say quinta-feira but when we are more intimate with the day we can just say quinta.
linguoboy wrote:So on the theme of "English words having very different connotations from their Romance cognates", I checked to see how the title of Die unendliche Geschichte is translated into Spanish and found it's La historia interminable. In English, The Interminable Story sounds like a story you can't for to be over. (Quoth the OED entry for interminable "(In modern use frequently exaggerative, implying impatience or disgust at the length of something.)".) Even unending and endless have a whiff of this implication, which is probably why the English translation has the title The Neverending Story. This evokes the phrase "I never want(ed) it to end!", which is praise for something highly enjoyable.
OldBoring wrote:linguoboy wrote:So on the theme of "English words having very different connotations from their Romance cognates", I checked to see how the title of Die unendliche Geschichte is translated into Spanish and found it's La historia interminable. In English, The Interminable Story sounds like a story you can't for to be over. (Quoth the OED entry for interminable "(In modern use frequently exaggerative, implying impatience or disgust at the length of something.)".) Even unending and endless have a whiff of this implication, which is probably why the English translation has the title The Neverending Story. This evokes the phrase "I never want(ed) it to end!", which is praise for something highly enjoyable.
In Italian i wouldn't translate "the never-ending story" as "La storia interminabile", but "La storia senza fine".
vijayjohn wrote:A couple of Indian folks were joking on Twitter about how popular Punjabi bhangra songs recycle certain words a lot, like [mʊɳˈɖa] 'boy' and [kʊˈɽi] 'girl'. A South Indian (I think from Karnataka, or perhaps a heritage speaker of Kannada) joked, "Can you really blame South Indians for getting drunk whenever Punjabi songs come on? They keep going [kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi]!" because [kuˈɖi] in some Dravidian languages means 'drink!'.
Then this guy I follow talked about the possibly Dravidian etymology of [kʊˈɽi] in Punjabi, but I got confused and thought he was talking about the etymology of [kuˈɖi]. He also said it could alternatively be of Munda origin, and I was like "you mentioned [mʊɳˈɖa] in response to a joke about Punjabi songs? Well played. "
vijayjohn wrote:I think you might be right that those first two terms you listed (次子 and 天馬) are relatively new in Chinese literature and didn't exist in Middle Chinese whereas the last two (舉人 and 霏霏) are attested in older varieties of Chinese, too.
vijayjohn wrote:A couple of Indian folks were joking on Twitter about how popular Punjabi bhangra songs recycle certain words a lot, like [mʊɳˈɖa] 'boy' and [kʊˈɽi] 'girl'. A South Indian (I think from Karnataka, or perhaps a heritage speaker of Kannada) joked, "Can you really blame South Indians for getting drunk whenever Punjabi songs come on? They keep going [kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi kʊˈɽi]!" because [kuˈɖi] in some Dravidian languages means 'drink!'.
Return to “General Language Forum”
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests