Random language thread 6

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Saim
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Saim » 2019-02-17, 16:40

Ciarán12 wrote:može li itko objasniti na što je mislio?


This is Croatian. :shock:

And I like how "Serbian speakers" becomes something more like "domestic lecturers" :lol:


It's because domaći can mean domestic, native, local... generally we'd say izvorni govornici ('source' speakers, original speakers).

** just... what? Where the hell did Germany come from?


I think it can get pretty confused when it tries to translate two languages at once.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Luís » 2019-02-19, 9:39

Suddenly all Netflix shows in Portugal now have Brazilian Portuguese, French and European Spanish subtitles/dubbing available in addition to European Portuguese, English and the original language.
I'm not complaining, since I'm focused on those languages anyway, but I wonder why they don't just make all languages available to everyone.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-19, 14:20

This has been one of my pet peeves for years. When I watched Hong Kong films on videotape, they always had both English and Chinese subtitles. This was great for my Chinese. Now that they’re on disc, Zone 1 copies only have English, French, and Spanish. As if we didn’t have millions of Chinese speakers living here!
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Lur » 2019-02-19, 14:27

Platform for the Reintroduction of the Potential and Optative into Modern Finnish just for Fun Brigade.
Geurea dena lapurtzen uzteagatik, geure izaerari uko egiteagatik.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Yasna » 2019-02-20, 0:07

Apparently Karl Lagerfeld was a fan of hangul.

한글을 사랑한 ‘샤넬의 아이콘’ 떠나다

"라거펠트는 “한국 사람들의 글 쓰는 방식을 사랑한다. 입체파 미술 작품과 비슷한 느낌을 받았다”고 말했다. 지난해 10월 프랑스를 방문한 문재인 대통령 부인 김정숙 여사는 ‘한국’ ‘서울’ ‘코코’ ‘샤넬’ 등 한글이 새겨진 라거펠트의 샤넬 재킷을 입고 공식 석상에 나타나 눈길을 끌었다."
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-21, 17:51

linguoboy wrote:By contrast, “dopping” isn’t listed in Wiktionary or the AHD. (I don’t currently have access to the OED.)

"Dopping" isn't listed in the OED either, so I'm calling shenanigans.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-02-21, 18:37

linguoboy wrote:
linguoboy wrote:By contrast, “dopping” isn’t listed in Wiktionary or the AHD. (I don’t currently have access to the OED.)

"Dopping" isn't listed in the OED either, so I'm calling shenanigans.

But it is listed here in the online "living" version of the OED. That is for shelducks, but as for goosanders, the phrase seems to be at least occassionally used.
"A dopping of sheldrakes" is apparently mentioned in the Book of Saint Albans from 1486 and a book called Rural Sports from 1812... but in both cases, it was in a list of terms for groups of birds much like the one that was posted here. So it seems that both the term "dopping" and the fascination with those lists have been around a while, but perhaps mostly just for linguistic fun even 500 years ago. :mrgreen:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-25, 17:32

I didn't watch the Oscars so I'm just finding out that Trevor Noah dropped some Xhosa when presenting one of the awards:
Growing up as a young boy in Wakanda, I would see T’Challa flying over our village, and he would remind me of a great Xhosa phrase. He says: ‘Abelungu abazi ubu ndiyaxoka’, which means: ‘In times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart."

According to the Beeb, the actual translation of "Abelungu abazi ubu ndiyaxoka" is "White people don't know I'm lying."
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-28, 16:21

One of my colleagues was pained at the thought of having to get rid of some books so I told her to imagine them "frolicking on a farm upstate". Our Cuban student worker was in the room and asked, "'Frolic'? What is that?" When we explained her reaction was, "You have a word for that? Every language is a different kind of crazy."
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-28, 17:57

Just came across a Russification of the Irish placename Fobhar as Фобхар, that is, as if pronounced /ˈfopxər/. The actual Modern Irish pronunciation is /ˈfəur/.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Saim » 2019-02-28, 19:27

Apparently the Portuguese Wikcionário is reintegrationist, who knew. Unless there's also a Galicia somewhere in Brazil or something.

Image

linguoboy wrote:Just came across a Russification of the Irish placename Fobhar as Фобхар, that is, as if pronounced /ˈfopxər/. The actual Modern Irish pronunciation is /ˈfəur/.


I see that sort of stuff all the time. I remember some Serbian media gave Кашогги instead of Хашукжи for Khashoggi. :roll:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-28, 20:49

Saim wrote:I see that sort of stuff all the time. I remember some Serbian media gave Кашогги instead of Хашукжи for Khashoggi. :roll:

Maybe they were influenced by American broadcasts? Because that's the way most people over here have been saying it.

The Wikipedia entries are a mess:
Српски/srpski: Кашогџи
Srpskohrvatski/српскохрватски: Kašogi
Беларуская: Хашогі
Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎: Хашогжы
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2019-02-28, 21:07

Spelling pronunciations like that are so common they are not really surprising any more.
In Greek language media, Κασόγκι outnumbered Χασόγκι 43 to 1. Espen Barth Eide's surname was rendered with three vowel combinations during his tenure in Cyprus, all equally popular.

I think that the Latin alphabet's loose grapheme-phoneme correspondence simply obscures how people actually pronounce those proper names when they encounter them in, say, English.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby voron » 2019-02-28, 22:03

In Turkish media, his name was completely turkified: Cemal Kaşıkçı (and that's actually the original form of his name, as his grandfather was Turkish).

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-28, 22:11

voron wrote:In Turkish media, his name was completely turkified: Cemal Kaşıkçı (and that's actually the original form of his name, as his grandfather was Turkish).

Yes and no, right? AT the time that Atatürk introduced the Latin alphabet to Turkey, his grandfather was already living in Damascus. So strictly speaking خاشقجي is the original form of his name and "Kaşıkçı" is just a contemporary Turkish respelling.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-03-01, 1:27

md0 wrote:Spelling pronunciations like that are so common they are not really surprising any more.

Oh definitely. This certainly happened with names from Latin-based orthographies in the Soviet Union reaching English-speaking countries through Russian transliterations.Since the original orthography of these names is the Latin alphabet, the change to a completely different spelling in the Latin alphabet can look bizarre (and can also completely mangle the pronunciation, as with the Khashoggi and Fobhar examples that came into other languages through English). Hiiemäe becomes nearly unrecognizable as Khiyemyae (through the Russian transliteration Хийемяэ), Jõelähtme becomes Yyelyakhtme (through Russian Йыэляхтме) and so on.
One rather famous example is that supposedly the Estonian island of Hiiumaa was at one point identified as "Ostrov Khiuma" in the Encyclopedia Britannica. (It may be apocryphal in that specific form, i.e. with the Russian word "ostrov" as part of the name, but I have in fact seen the spelling "Khiuma" on old maps and elsewhere, including as an "alternate spelling" in the Encyclopedia Britannica.) The original spelling is Hiiumaa but the Soviet Russian spelling was Хиума and from that it ended up written as Khiuma in English.

linguoboy wrote:One of my colleagues was pained at the thought of having to get rid of some books so I told her to imagine them "frolicking on a farm upstate". Our Cuban student worker was in the room and asked, "'Frolic'? What is that?" When we explained her reaction was, "You have a word for that? Every language is a different kind of crazy."

I don't know how common its use is in Cuba specifically, but the Spanish word retozar is pretty close. Naturally it wouldn't normally be used to describe books, but that's true in English as well. :mrgreen: But I agree with the sentiment: language certainly can be inventive.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2019-03-01, 7:25

From this morning's newspaper headlines: the capital of Vietnam is always Ανόι, never Χανόι (because French).
And for a long time, Osaka was rendered Οζάκα, with the -s- voiced as in English etc, and not Οσάκα (let's not even think about stress placement, speaker intuitions vary).
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Saim » 2019-03-06, 19:31

md0 wrote:And for a long time, Osaka was rendered Οζάκα, with the -s- voiced as in English etc, and not Οσάκα (let's not even think about stress placement, speaker intuitions vary).


I've never heard anyone voice the "s" in Osaka.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2019-03-07, 5:46

It doesn't matter if Osaka isn't pronounced like that in other languages, s-voicing is a salient rule in the minds of Greek-speaking foreign language learners, so they apply it to new words until a lot of evidence contradicts them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ_ZqKWC1Z4
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Yasna » 2019-03-07, 23:58

Schluss mit dem Gender-Unfug!

"Der Generalirrtum: Zwischen dem natürlichen und dem grammatischen Geschlecht bestehe ein fester Zusammenhang. Er besteht absolut nicht. Der Löwe, die Giraffe, das Pferd. Und keinen stört es, dass alles Weibliche sich seit 1000 Jahren von dem Wort „das Weib“ ableitet.

Die lächerlichen Sprachgebilde: Die Radfahrenden, die Fahrzeugführenden sind schon in die Straßenverkehrsordnung vorgedrungen, die Studierenden haben die Universitäten erobert, die Arbeitnehmenden viele Betriebe. Der Große Duden treibt die Gendergerechtigkeit inzwischen so weit, dass er Luftpiratinnen als eigenes Stichwort verzeichnet und Idiotinnen auch. Und dazu kommt in jüngster Zeit als weitere Verrenkung noch der seltsame Gender-Stern.

Nicht durchzuhalten: Wie kommt der Bürgermeister dazu, sich bei den Wählerinnen und Wählern zu bedanken – ohne einzusehen, dass er sich natürlich „Bürgerinnen- und Bürger­meister“ nennen müsste? Wie lange können wir noch auf ein Einwohnerinnen- und Einwohnermeldeamt verzichten? Wie ertragen wir es, in der Fernsehwerbung täglich dutzendfach zu hören, wir sollten uns über Risiken und Nebenwirkungen bei unserm Arzt oder Apotheker informieren? Warum fehlt im Duden das Stichwort „Christinnentum“ – da er doch die Christin vom Christen unterscheidet?

Und dann tragen solche Verzerrungen der Sprache nicht einmal dazu bei, den Frauen zu mehr Rechten zu verhelfen. Auch im Grund­gesetz gibt es dafür kein Indiz: In 13 Artikeln spricht es 20mal vom Bundeskanzler, zusätzlich auch vom „Gewählten“ und vom „Vorgeschlagenen“. Den mehrfachen Aufstieg von Angela Merkel zur Bundeskanzlerin hat dies nicht behindert, und eine mögliche neue Bundeskanzlerin fühlt sich inmitten dieses Missstands offensichtlich ziemlich wohl."
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