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Words that only exist in some languages | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 41 of 97 06 May 2010 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||
I usually start off by explaining that 'a' evolved from the word 'one', and 'the' evolved from 'that'. Even most learners of English will intuitively understand the difference between 'one man' and 'that man', I believe; namely, that 'a' refers to something of that category which hasn't been brought up in the conversation yet, so the listener is not expected to be familiar with the man yet. On the other hand, if we say 'the man' ('that man'), it indicates that the listener should already know specifically which man we're talking about - we've either already been talking about him, he's right in front of us, or we're talking about someone whom everyone is expected to know already (e.g. the president, the sun, or The Man, who is always trying to bring us down). Or it can be an implied part of something that was mentioned ('There was this couple, and the man was being so annoying...') For whatever reason, there is only one specific man we could possibly be referring to, and this is a shared understanding between the speaker and listener. If this understanding is not shared (i.e. if 'the man' is used with no reference or context), the listener will invariably ask for clarification ('WHAT man?'), further demonstrating that this two-way understanding is an implied part of using the word 'the'. Actually, I usually teach this over two or three lessons, but that's the gist of it. Speaking of 'a' and 'the', I often use Japanese は and が (topic marker and subject marker, respectively) to draw comparisions when teaching 'a' and 'the'. However, they aren't equivalent at all. Beginners always struggle to understand the difference between these particles, and I'm no Japanese teacher, so I'll just give some examples and explain the difference as best I can: 赤ちゃんは泣いていた。 akachan ha naite ita. The baby was crying. Here, the emphasis is on 'crying', the verb. This topic marker は sounds something like, 'as for ---, I'll tell you something about it'. It's an answer to the unspoken question, 'How about the baby? What became of him?' So, like English 'the', は is only used in cases where the preceding noun is understood by both speakers. 赤ちゃんが泣いていた。 akachan ga naite ita. A baby was crying. Here, the emphasis is on the subject, 'baby'. It's an answer to the unspoken question 'WHO was crying?' - 'some BABY is the one who was crying.) Thus, it often introduces something for the first time. I can't explain it much better than that, but for an excellent explanation that never left me wondering about the difference again (among other Japanese grammatical peculiarities), I couldn't recommend Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You highly enough! 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Przemek Hexaglot Senior Member Poland multigato.blogspot.c Joined 6476 days ago 107 posts - 174 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, SpanishC2, Italian, Portuguese, French Studies: Turkish, Hindi, Arabic (Written) | Message 42 of 97 06 May 2010 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
In Polish we also have a word "frajer" (read: fraier). The meaning is the same. Now I know where it comes from. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Frieza Triglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5354 days ago 102 posts - 137 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German | Message 43 of 97 06 May 2010 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is partially correct. It is used to convey that you miss somebody or something, not just people. The phrase is 'ter saudades de...' or a bit less common 'sentir saudades de...' Examples: Tenho saudades da Sofia (I miss Sofia) Tenho saudades de viver em Coimbra. (I miss living in Coimbra.) Sinto saudades da minha casa, das minhas coisas. (I miss my home, my own things.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5554 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 44 of 97 06 May 2010 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, also, I don't study Chinese or Japanese (although I find myself being drawn to Mandarin.. mostly for the writing system; if mainland China still used traditional, I'd probably be studying the language by now). But I love these two characters from both languages:
Chinese - 龘 (tà in Mandarin, dahp in Cantonese) - the appearance of a dragon walking Japanese -  (taito, daito or otodo) - the appearance of a dragon in flight
They're both super rare characters but I love them! :) It must be great to be fluent in either language and sit down over tea and read a nice ancient poem talking about walking dragons. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 45 of 97 06 May 2010 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's funny. In Slovak, frajer and frajerka are colloquial terms meaning "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" respectively. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5856 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 46 of 97 06 May 2010 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't even know such characters existed! I think it will take many years even for me(a native speaker) to know all the Chinese characters that exists ......... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| misinterpreter Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5307 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, Bengali* Studies: Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese | Message 47 of 97 19 May 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned some English words or phrases. I mean to
include these words in the most serious way. I know these are slang words, but slang is still an important part of the spoken language. I'm sure most of you know these already. I particularly like the word AWOL. It originated in the military as an abbreviation for Absence Without Leave, a term used when someone has deserted the military. In colloquial usage someone who has "gone AWOL" means "he has left intentionally and no one knows where he is (and has possibly eluded efforts to find him)." The succinct and rapid pronunciation of this word, in my opinion, furthers the sense of urgency and/or the futility of the efforts to find the person. I found "ausente sin permiso" in a Spanish dictionary, but it sounds more like the military usage and not the colloquial term. I think the word bromance is quite hilarious. It's a very, very close and affectionate friendship between males that is non-sexual. Their relationship is closer than that of many people who are brothers by birth. They are non-romantic soulmates, for lack of a better word. To my surprise, Wikipedia has a short article on it, and there is only ONE translation to another language, Thai, which seems to be just that, a translation of the English article. The word has been borrowed and nothing relevant to Thai culture has been added. Autotune and its derivatives. I'm sure you've heard the unnatural sound of some singers these days. It's thanks to pitch-correction software. "Autotuned" describes the distinctly unnatural and robotic sound of audio with pitch-correction. I don't know of any purpose-built word for this in any language. We didn't have one in English either before the creation of the Auto-Tune software. C***block: Someone who interferes with another's attempts to seduce a woman. (Sorry if this crosses the line but I saw a post by the administrator saying that offensive slang would be okay to discuss in a context like this.) Pimp: Someone with a likeable personality. Spanish's translation might be used the same way because of Latin-American immigration to the US, but I don't know. facepalm: An expression used by people for ages to express embarrassment, disbelief, frustration, lapses in logic, etc., but it became a unique word in its own right around the middle of this decade thanks to the internet. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5410 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes | Message 48 of 97 19 May 2010 at 11:12am | IP Logged | |||||
The articles are one of the hardest part of English for Japanese. It is not too much to say that it is impossible to "explain" these things. I learned articles by memorising all the exapmle sentences on the page for "a" and "the" in a dictionary. From the exapmles I derived an understanding fo those articles. I understand "a X" is a real thing in which X is realized. A Japanese is a person who is a real Japanese person, A traffic accident is a real accident, concrete and realized event which we see is a accident, etc ... In the same way "the" is for common understanding: "The president" is something like "you know, a person we call president", the Sun is the sun we know and see everyday in the sky, that sun, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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