Words that only exist in some languages (Philological Room) Language Learning Forum

Words that only exist in some languages
Tags: Meaning of words \| Vocabulary learning
Share with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon
Language Learning Forum : Philological Room

97 messages over 13 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 8 ... 12 13 Next >>

Doitsujin
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5321 days ago
1256 posts - 2363 votes

Speaks: German*, English

Message 57 of 97

22 May 2010 at 6:37pm | IP Logged

Tally wrote:

In Hebrew there is a word called 'fraier', which means someone who lets other people
get ahead of him, or he waits patiently while other people go etc. :)

That would be a sucker in English. I.e. a person easily cheated, deceived, or imposed upon.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sucker
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/thou-shalt-not- be-a-freier-1.211247

Being afraid of being taken for a freier might be unique Israeli idea, but the word itself is not that unique.

1 person has voted this message useful

JanKG
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Belgium
Joined 5768 days ago
245 posts - 280 votes

Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French
Studies: Italian, Finnish

Message 58 of 97

23 May 2010 at 3:26pm | IP Logged

Tally wrote:

chucknorrisman wrote:

예닐곱 means "six or seven" in Korean.

There is a word for that? why? :)

Could it just mean 'about' ? Was the counting system based on 5-folds ? Just guessing...

1 person has voted this message useful

Felidae
Diglot
Newbie
BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5408 days ago
28 posts - 34 votes
Speaks: Portuguese*, English
Studies: French

Message 59 of 97

23 May 2010 at 5:54pm | IP Logged

i think "saudade" is much stronger than "miss". I would say "I miss..." as "Sinto falta...", while "Sinto/Tenho saudade..." would be something extremely painful, continuous, which never gets out of my head.
1 person has voted this message useful

irrationale
Tetraglot
Senior Member
China
Joined 6051 days ago
669 posts - 1023 votes

2 sounds
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog
Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese

Message 60 of 97

23 May 2010 at 9:28pm | IP Logged

I read somewhere that the word "fair" in English is unique to English. For example "a fair deal", "a fair price", "a fair matchup", etc.
1 person has voted this message useful

Moogiechan
Newbie
United States
Joined 5299 days ago
3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

Message 61 of 97

24 May 2010 at 12:51am | IP Logged

ellasevia wrote:

To my knowledge Japanese doesn't make this distinction either:

それを知りませんでした。sore-o shirimasen deshita. (I didn't know that.)
彼女を知っています。 kanojo-o shitteimasu. (I know her.)

(Please correct my Japanese if it's wrong.)

Japanese has 知る(shiru) and 分かる (wakaru) , which are "know" and "understand". But 分かる is used in some places where an English speaker would use "know", e.g.:　木曜までには結果が分かるはずだ。　( We should know the results by Thursday.)

It's also interesting that you don't use 知ります(shirimasu) for "I know" as you would expect, but　知っていま (shitte imasu), which is literally "I am knowing".

Edited by Moogiechan on 24 May 2010 at 12:58am
1 person has voted this message useful

ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6143 days ago
2150 posts - 3229 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian

Message 62 of 97

24 May 2010 at 2:08am | IP Logged

Moogiechan wrote:

[QUOTE=ellasevia]It's also interesting that you don't use 知ります(shirimasu) for "I know" as you would expect, but　知っていま (shitte imasu), which is literally "I am knowing".

Yes, in the affirmative you use the -ている form, but in the negative you use the normal form:
知っています。I know.
知りません。I don't know.
1 person has voted this message useful

Enki
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5834 days ago
54 posts - 133 votes

Speaks: Arabic (Written), English*, French, Korean
Studies: Japanese

Message 63 of 97

24 May 2010 at 8:37am | IP Logged

답답하다
It's that feeling of oppressive, claustrophobic frustration when someone/something is being veeeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooooooow or beating around the bush. I've been using that word a lot :)

Another interesting thing is that Korean is the only language I've studied so far that has a separate word for "not knowing". 알다-> to know 모르다-> to not know. All other languages I know (admittedly not many) just use the negative form of "knowing".
1 person has voted this message useful

Warp3
Senior Member
United States
forum_posts.asp?TID=
Joined 5536 days ago
1419 posts - 1766 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

Message 64 of 97

24 May 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged

Enki wrote:

That just helped me with some Korean words I was having trouble looking up from a song (as I didn't realize the first syllable block was doubled like that)...thanks. :)

Quote:

Another interesting thing is that Korean is the only language I've studied so far that has a separate word for "not knowing". 알다-> to know 모르다-> to not know. All other languages I know (admittedly not many) just use the negative form of "knowing".

Good point, I hadn't really thought of that. Korean also has separate verbs for "to not be" (아니다) and "to not have / to not exist" (없다). (Granted, the verb for "to not be" is *almost* spelled like the negative form of "to be" (이다), but not quite. Plus, it conjugates very differently compared to the positive form.)

1 person has voted this message useful

This discussion contains 97 messages over 13 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next >>

Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum

This page was generated in 0.3594 seconds.