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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| null Groupie China Joined 5938 days ago 76 posts - 82 votes  Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 33 of 48 07 February 2011 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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奥特莱斯 is a REGISTRED American trade mark in China.
Any other outlets are called '直销店' in China. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6516 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 34 of 48 07 February 2011 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Latin (incl.late 'scientific' Latin), Danish, German Sn stannum, tin, Zinn Pb plumbum, bly, Blei Au aurum, guld, Gold Ag argentum, sølv, Silber Cu aes, kobber. Kupfer Fe ferrum, jern, Eisen H hydrogenium (late!), brint, Wasserstoff O oxygenium (late!), ilt, Sauerstoff C carboneum, kulstof, Kohlenstoff S sulphur, svovl, Schwefel Na natrium (late!), natrium, Natrium K kalium (late), kalium, Kalium Hg hydrargyrum (from Greek)/argentum vivum, kviksølv, Quecksilber 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6516 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 48 07 February 2011 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It is clear that you CAN write about science in most languages representing societies with higher education, but sometimes the use of the native language for such purposes is somewhat restricted. For instance I had to give up my search for books and magazines in Bahasa Malaysia about science and technology during my recent visit to Malaysia - everything of that kind was in English. My search included the big bookstore in the shopping center attached to the Petronas Towers, so I did not just check out small shops. Ironically, in the same complex the exhibition Petrosains (sains = science) had bilingual signs in Bahasa and English, so the relevant words do exist. This can also be seen in the corresponding version of Wikipedia or the closely related one in Bahasa Indonesian.
A 'small' language like Danish more or less covers everything in science, and you can get several scientific magazines and lots of books - but we often use terms which we got through English. DNA is one case, but it is pronounced using Danish sounds. And in Danish the full version is Deoxyribonukleinsyre, not deoxyribonucleotic acid. Like we speak about PCer (not PCs) with a Danish ending - a loanword that is altered in this way is no longer just a foreign element, and that's how it should be. However I guess most Danes would use the plural "Notebooks" with the English ending, so even the core of Danish grammar is slowly being corroded because English words are so common here. There are of course also things which don't have a Danish name (or at least not a commonly accepted one) - like a number of African LGBs ("little grey birds"). But if we some day have to discuss African birds we'll get a word for each and every one, either by borrowing and adapting foreign words or from someone who wrote 'the' book in Danish about the subject. Actually that's how we got "ilt" and "brint", inventions by the physicist H.C. Ørsted. Latin is a special case. All scientific phenomena known up to around 1600-1700 have a Latin name for the simple reason that textbooks in Latin abounded back then. Some contemporary persons have wanted to write about scientific subjects which weren't known to our whig wearing forebears not to Medieval monks, and we have had to be inventive. For some it is important to find an authentic Roman word which can be appropriated for the purpose, and if they succeed everyone is normally happy. If they can't find one then they may steel from Greek (following in the footsteps of the ancient Romans), but else they try to introduce a cumbersome circumlocution. For me that's silly. If you want to make Latin a living language then you should treat it like one, and this includes adapting words from the languages which currently are in vogue, like English. So instead of borrowing "taenia" for 'tape, film' from Greek I prefer "video" from English, even though the substantive collides with a Latin verb. And I prefer the simple "computor" (or maybe "cmputator") the the long "computralis" proposed by some Neolatin sources. In some cases even Late Latin words should be rejected because they give the wrong associations, due to changes in our conception of the world. But all this is ultimately a struggle for survival: some neologisms will survive, other perish. And words that give the wrong kind of associations haven't got many chances. Edited by Iversen on 07 February 2011 at 4:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| CS Groupie United States Joined 4941 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French | Message 36 of 48 07 February 2011 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, another example is that there's not much demand for technical works in Irish since the usually English originals are accessible to basically all Irish speakers. Unfortunately, sometimes languages are dismissed as primitive without a consideration of social and historical factors.
Whereas in English itself a tremendous proportion of the technical vocabulary is of Greek or Latin origin. For many technical areas, it would be strange for English speakers to use Old English roots or old borrowings from languages like Norse or French rather than pseudo-classical terms.
It's a matter of taste I suppose. For the case of Latin, I find a puristic approach similar to that taken by Icelandic somewhat appealing 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5579 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 37 of 48 07 February 2011 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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By the way, most of the Japanese words for chemical elements are loanwords from German. (They got imported with German chemists when Japan decided to learn quickly how to make modern weapons after it opened its borders.)
I've heard that here in Germany, even though often there is a German term as well as the Graeco-Latin one that often reaches us via English, people do not use the German term outside of school or university (where those terms have to be taught). That's because any scientist will read publications in English and few are care about keeping their German pure so they will end up using the English loan word when it's more convenient - or the one they remember first. 15 years ago, when I first got interested in genetics Desoxyribonukleinsäure was still abbreviated as DNS, nowadays it's DNA (but still Desoxyribonukleinsäure, thankfully!) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5847 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 38 of 48 08 February 2011 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The abbreviation is ADN in French :-). And also the EU is "UE", ain't that cool ^_^'. p.s. ДНК /De-N-Ka/ in Bulgarian. Edited by Sennin on 08 February 2011 at 9:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5579 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 39 of 48 08 February 2011 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Same in Spanish, I know. I actually mentioned that to illustrate the shift in German usage. Still, reading pupular scientific publications in Romance and Germanic language is wonderfully easy thanks to the tendency to match the scientific vocabulary of one language to what is perceived as international standard. (My French book tries to kill me by inducing uncontrollable laughter - it tells me die Bundesländer are les Länder. Why, oh why.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5824 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 40 of 48 09 February 2011 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'd actually prefer something derived from the French/Spanish ordinateur/ordenador, personally. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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