Random language thread 6

This is our main forum. Here, anything related to languages and linguistics can be discussed.

Moderator:Forum Administrators

Linguaphile
Posts:5358
Joined:2016-09-17, 5:06
Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-05-05, 17:23

Vlürch wrote:But anyway, that's a hilarious coincidence. It'd be even funnier if his house used to be there but is now somewhere else... like, you know, if the house literally got up and left because it didn't want to be on a street with that name. Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks it's funny to imagine a house physically moving on its own.

vijayjohn wrote:Nah, that's pretty funny. Although somehow it doesn't make me laugh, as if it's an old joke or something. :hmm:

Have either of you maybe seen some version of this tale? The link is the Estonian version of a Russian animation called О том, как гном покинул дом (Estonian: Lugu sellest, kuidas päkapikk kodunt lahkus ja mis pärast juhtus; "story of how the gnome left home and what happened after that"). I don't know if it's an animated adaptation of an internationally-known tale or was just created for this particular Russian animation, so I have no idea how well-known it is. The comments from both of you above made me think of it though. :D You're certainly not the first to think of it, and it literally is an old joke (the animation is from the 70's).
Summary: after the gnome leaves, the house gets frightened of being left alone in its forest and runs away at around 4:03 in the video; the gnome returns home to find the house missing at around 4:30 ("maja pole kodus" "the house is not home"!); at around 5:10 the gnome imagines how difficult it would be for the house to move to the city and decides it must still be in the forest somewhere; the house and the gnome spend a whole year wandering around the forest looking for each other with no success; and then the house returns home at 7:30 where the gnome finally finds it.
https://youtu.be/L8HizgtWq-Q?t=243

User avatar
Saim
Posts:5740
Joined:2011-01-22, 5:44
Location:Brisbane
Country:DEGermany (Deutschland)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Saim » 2019-05-05, 18:16

md0 wrote:http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42665
On modifier-head order developments in French.
It's a phenomenon that also bothered me in Greek tech journalism (and generally the kind of journalism which is secretly just translating articles from English outlets and passing it as one's own work). Things like "SSD δίσκος", "Android κινητά" and so on.

It's apparently much more common in French though, while in Greek it still comes across as Translationese.


Sorbonne Université. :shock:

vijayjohn
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:27056
Joined:2013-01-10, 8:49
Real Name:Vijay John
Gender:male
Location:Austin, Texas, USA
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-05, 18:45

Linguaphile wrote:Have either of you maybe seen some version of this tale?

Nah, I think I'm just used to cartoons and shit that have to do with things moving when they normally wouldn't, like trees.

User avatar
OldBoring
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:6152
Joined:2012-12-08, 7:19
Real Name:Francesco
Gender:male
Location:Milan
Country:ITItaly (Italia)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby OldBoring » 2019-05-05, 22:49

Saim wrote:
md0 wrote:http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42665
On modifier-head order developments in French.
It's a phenomenon that also bothered me in Greek tech journalism (and generally the kind of journalism which is secretly just translating articles from English outlets and passing it as one's own work). Things like "SSD δίσκος", "Android κινητά" and so on.

It's apparently much more common in French though, while in Greek it still comes across as Translationese.


Sorbonne Université. :shock:

Sapienza Università di Roma

User avatar
Lur
Posts:3072
Joined:2012-04-15, 23:22
Location:Madrid
Country:ESSpain (España)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Lur » 2019-05-06, 12:16

vijayjohn wrote:
Lur wrote:We need a decent orthography for Nahuatl.

Why, what's wrong with the current one?

It doesn't mark vowel length or glottals. It uses j for h that comes from glottals, although I would prefer having h and then read that as a glotal, an h or nothing depending on the case. It at least uses k...

Something nice, given the use of x, would be to mirror Basque and use tx instead of ch, although maybe the language looks less pleasing on the page that way...
Geurea dena lapurtzen uzteagatik, geure izaerari uko egiteagatik.

User avatar
Vlürch
Posts:943
Joined:2014-05-06, 8:42
Gender:male
Location:Roihuvuori, Helsinki
Country:FIFinland (Suomi)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Vlürch » 2019-05-08, 13:09

Prowler wrote:People from smaller countries with less commonly spoken languages: do your countrymen often overstate their language skills? A lot of Portuguese people think Portuguese are some of the biggest polyglots in the world. But, from my experience, the only foreign language I see Portuguese people actually speaking fluently is English. Some middle aged people will speak French fluently but that's it. A lot of Portuguese people also overrate their English skills as well.

A lot of Finns do the opposite, being fluent in English and at least more or less capable of understanding Swedish but only saying they speak Finnish. Then again, in Finland being "fluent in English" doesn't really take into consideration pronunciation. I mean, I consider myself fluent in English but my pronunciation is still pretty Finnish-ish especially with certain vowels and /h/ being all over the place... and sometimes I make no sense, but the same happens with Finnish too and tends to be connected to my mental state (like, I make less sense when I'm depressed or whatever).

But of course there are probably also Finns who actually don't speak anything except Finnish, yet claim to speak English, Swedish, Russian, German, French, etc. Such people almost certainly wouldn't know that any languages other than those even exist, so I doubt they'd claim to be able to speak Archi or Warlpiri or whatever. :lol: I've never come across any people like that myself at all, though.
vijayjohn wrote:Maybe in a Scottish or northern English accent or something? :P

Yeah, probably, or maybe it's just my Finnishness making me hear things. :mrgreen:
vijayjohn wrote:I have no idea, but I can't really complain when I myself live on a street called "Del Mesa Lane..."

Hmm, "of the table"? I don't get how that's weird or anything, but then my Spanish (assuming it's from Spanish) is pretty bad, so if there's some slang meaning or something that I don't know...
vijayjohn wrote:Oh, sorry, I forgot to delete that after writing it in an earlier draft of that post! :lol:

:?:
vijayjohn wrote:Probably because it's a hell of a lot easier to find information on that sort of thing in Russian than in Kazakh and possibly also because Russian is co-official with Kazakh in Kazakhstan, in addition to surely being by far the most widely spoken language in the region for which such information is readily available.

But the results are about Russian, not in Russian. It's practically all about how Russian adjectives work, with only a few results about Kazakh. However, googling the same "comparative and superlative adjectives in [X language]" about at least any other language of Central Asia will at least try to show results about that language. Kazakh is the only one that will show results about Russian, so it can't be that it's a "regional language" or whatever.

What it seems like is that Google doesn't want people to learn Kazakh, or even suggests that the only language spoken in Kazakhstan is Russian (and/or that the Kazakh language doesn't exist and "Kazakh" is just another name for Russian), which is exactly what Russia wants (presumably especially now since Kazakhstan has announced the beginning of de-Russification of the Kazakh language) and as such seems like a political move in support of Russia. Or maybe I'm just paranoid, but... :para:

I mean, of course googling "Kazakh language" will get results about Kazakh; same with "Kazakh adverbs", "Kazakh colour terminology", etc. However, "epistemic modality in Kazakh" will show results about both Kazakh and Russian, with "Russian" bold in the results about Russian as if the search had been "epistemic modality in Russian". So I'm not sure what to think, but I do have a feeling that there could be some pro-Russian manipulation at play. :para:
Linguaphile wrote:Have either of you maybe seen some version of this tale?

I haven't either, but also like Vijay said, I've seen similar things before in cartoons and stuff and probably read (or as a kid been read to) some weird ass stories, etc. And well, there's also at least Howl's Moving Castle, so yeah. But hahaha, that video was hilarious even though I could only understand a couple of words here and there; tons of obvious false friends, etc. and gnomes are always funny. :D

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-08, 15:03

Vlürch wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I have no idea, but I can't really complain when I myself live on a street called "Del Mesa Lane..."

Hmm, "of the table"? I don't get how that's weird or anything, but then my Spanish (assuming it's from Spanish) is pretty bad, so if there's some slang meaning or something that I don't know...

Mesa is feminine in Spanish, so it should be De La Mesa. (I'm assuming it was coined by analogy with Del Mar, which is common in street names throughout the USA.)
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

User avatar
Vlürch
Posts:943
Joined:2014-05-06, 8:42
Gender:male
Location:Roihuvuori, Helsinki
Country:FIFinland (Suomi)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Vlürch » 2019-05-08, 15:26

linguoboy wrote:Mesa is feminine in Spanish, so it should be De La Mesa.

Ohhh, right. :oops: It did feel somehow wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it, which now makes me want to facepalm so hard. But tbh I still don't get why it'd be funny.

I really need to get back into Spanish somehow, but it's hard to get motivated when there's so little music to listen to in it. I mean, there's probably factually more music in Spanish out there than in all the Turkic languages combined, but "diving into it" is harder; like, it's usually good but getting a "grip" on it is hard because there are so many countries. At least I think that's the main reason, anyway...
linguoboy wrote:(I'm assuming it was coined by analogy with Del Mar, which is common in street names throughout the USA.)

Interesting. Is it common even in places with no water within a thousand kilometres?

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-08, 15:30

Vlürch wrote:
linguoboy wrote:(I'm assuming it was coined by analogy with Del Mar, which is common in street names throughout the USA.)

Interesting. Is it common even in places with no water within a thousand kilometres?

What inhabited place in America is that far from water?
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

vijayjohn
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:27056
Joined:2013-01-10, 8:49
Real Name:Vijay John
Gender:male
Location:Austin, Texas, USA
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-08, 16:11

Vlürch wrote:Hmm, "of the table"?

I think they mean 'of the mesa'. Mesas are pretty common in this part of the world, and I'm pretty sure there's one very close to my house. (But I've never been absolutely sure because people don't talk about them much IME and so I'm actually not 100% certain wtf a mesa is :silly:).
vijayjohn wrote:Oh, sorry, I forgot to delete that after writing it in an earlier draft of that post! :lol:

:?:

I think I was wrong when I said there are some Hindi-speakers who pronounce it [məˈhal] (but before submitting that post, I wrote that part in without realizing I was probably wrong (I think before mōdgethanc pointed out the Hindi form), clicked on "Save draft," and then forgot to delete it before posting it).
But the results are about Russian, not in Russian.

I know; that's exactly what I mean. It's easier to find results about "comparative adjectives in Russian" than "comparative adjectives in Kazakh," in English. (Or probably in any language).
Or maybe I'm just paranoid, but... :para:

Yeah kind of :P
linguoboy wrote:I'm assuming it was coined by analogy with Del Mar, which is common in street names throughout the USA.

Maybe. It seems to be a pretty common street name around these parts (southwestern US, I guess?).

The next little street just behind this one is "Del Carmen Cove." I mean, I guess that's grammatically correct, but just :?:. Street names here seem pretty random.

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-08, 16:29

vijayjohn wrote:The next little street just behind this one is "Del Carmen Cove." I mean, I guess that's grammatically correct, but just :?:. Street names here seem pretty random.

I went to school with someone who had the surname "Del Carmen".

"Delmar" is a major street in my hometown of St Louis, but it has nothing to do with the sea; it's a portmanteau of "Delaware" and "Maryland" just like in the name of the Delmarva Peninsula. (So I guess it has something to do with the sea insofar as both those states are coastal.)
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-08, 16:45

ObRandom: My friend Tony is a local DJ and today he played a track from Kompromat, a French electroclash project. For some reason, it was sung in German and I couldn't tell from Tony's pronunciation whether the title was "Einfach Dasein" ("Simple Existence") or "Einfach Da Sein" ("Simply Being There").
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

vijayjohn
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:27056
Joined:2013-01-10, 8:49
Real Name:Vijay John
Gender:male
Location:Austin, Texas, USA
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-08, 18:45

So it isn't einfaches Dasein?
linguoboy wrote:I went to school with someone who had the surname "Del Carmen".

Oh OK. Maybe that street was named after someone with that surname. (I have a vague feeling my brother may have explained this to me before).
"Delmar" is a major street in my hometown of St Louis, but it has nothing to do with the sea; it's a portmanteau of "Delaware" and "Maryland" just like in the name of the Delmarva Peninsula. (So I guess it has something to do with the sea insofar as both those states are coastal.)

Any particular reason why a portmanteau of Delaware and Maryland is the name of a street in St. Louis?

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-08, 19:59

vijayjohn wrote:So it isn't einfaches Dasein?

Normatively, yes. But dialectally and poetically, the ending can be dropped in this particular instance. Here's a 19th-century poetic example:
Einfach Wesen, einfach Können
Einfach Wollen, einfach Kennen
Alles einfach wie das Sein
Größer nicht die Macht in dreien
Als in einer, noch in zweien
Minder wirksam als in drei'en


vijayjohn wrote:Any particular reason why a portmanteau of Delaware and Maryland is the name of a street in St. Louis?

The traditional explanation is that the original landowners came from Delaware and Maryland.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

vijayjohn
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:27056
Joined:2013-01-10, 8:49
Real Name:Vijay John
Gender:male
Location:Austin, Texas, USA
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-08, 21:44

Seien as a noun isn't a word, is it? (If it isn't, then I literally just realized that).

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-08, 21:52

vijayjohn wrote:Seien as a noun isn't a word, is it? (If it isn't, then I literally just realized that).

So weit ich weiss it isn't.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

User avatar
Car
Forum Administrator
Posts:10953
Joined:2002-06-21, 19:24
Real Name:Silvia
Gender:female
Country:DEGermany (Deutschland)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Car » 2019-05-08, 22:00

linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Seien as a noun isn't a word, is it? (If it isn't, then I literally just realized that).

So weit ich weiss it isn't.

Nope.
Please correct my mistakes!

kevin
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:2134
Joined:2012-03-29, 11:07
Gender:male
Country:DEGermany (Deutschland)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby kevin » 2019-05-09, 7:20

linguoboy wrote:ObRandom: My friend Tony is a local DJ and today he played a track from Kompromat, a French electroclash project. For some reason, it was sung in German and I couldn't tell from Tony's pronunciation whether the title was "Einfach Dasein" ("Simple Existence") or "Einfach Da Sein" ("Simply Being There").

What difference in pronunciation would you have expected? Shouldn't they sound the same?

Before the spelling reform, they were even written the same, as a single word. (And I had to look that up, I would have expected that it can still optionally be written like that now, but apparently it can't.)

linguoboy wrote:Normatively, yes. But dialectally and poetically, the ending can be dropped in this particular instance. Here's a 19th-century poetic example:

I don't think I would expect 19th century poetic language in this context, though. ;)

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-09, 14:16

kevin wrote:
linguoboy wrote:ObRandom: My friend Tony is a local DJ and today he played a track from Kompromat, a French electroclash project. For some reason, it was sung in German and I couldn't tell from Tony's pronunciation whether the title was "Einfach Dasein" ("Simple Existence") or "Einfach Da Sein" ("Simply Being There").

What difference in pronunciation would you have expected? Shouldn't they sound the same? Before the spelling reform, they were even written the same, as a single word.

IME, phrasal verbs with separable prefixes don't get the same stress as compound nouns. Perhaps it's different in your speech?

kevin wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Normatively, yes. But dialectally and poetically, the ending can be dropped in this particular instance. Here's a 19th-century poetic example:

I don't think I would expect 19th century poetic language in this context, though. ;)

YMMV, but I've heard an awful lot of poetic language in popular music. Particularly with German and particularly when the singers are non-native.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

User avatar
Car
Forum Administrator
Posts:10953
Joined:2002-06-21, 19:24
Real Name:Silvia
Gender:female
Country:DEGermany (Deutschland)
Contact:

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Car » 2019-05-09, 15:10

linguoboy wrote:
kevin wrote:
linguoboy wrote:ObRandom: My friend Tony is a local DJ and today he played a track from Kompromat, a French electroclash project. For some reason, it was sung in German and I couldn't tell from Tony's pronunciation whether the title was "Einfach Dasein" ("Simple Existence") or "Einfach Da Sein" ("Simply Being There").

What difference in pronunciation would you have expected? Shouldn't they sound the same? Before the spelling reform, they were even written the same, as a single word.

IME, phrasal verbs with separable prefixes don't get the same stress as compound nouns. Perhaps it's different in your speech?

I'd have to think of some examples, but in this case, I don't see a difference in stress, I'd stress "Da" in both cases.
Please correct my mistakes!


Return to “General Language Forum”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests