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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4569 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes  Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 9 of 35 12 December 2013 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Edited by vonPeterhof on 12 December 2013 at 9:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5757 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 10 of 35 12 December 2013 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | ||
I have this issue with some of the long words that people come up with for this topic. But when a language has a really concise way of expressing a concept where other languages require a long-winded phrase, then I take my hat off to that language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5144 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 11 of 35 12 December 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry to be another spoilsport, but I hope that the examples in the other languages are more “real” than the Italian one!
I admit that having a word to express that concept would be nice, but even though I’m a well-read university-educated native Italian I’ve never heard or read the word “cualacino” before. I’ve looked it up in a decent-size dictionary (Dizionario Garzanti, published in 2003 with more than 200,000 lemmas) and I couldn’t find it. If it’s either too regional or too antiquated not to belong in a modern dictionary, I guess you can hardly say that Italian has such a word. Are we sure it wasn’t made up? A quick search online mainly offers posts and articles where Italians confess that they’ve never heard of such a word. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4569 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 12 of 35 12 December 2013 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can vouch for the authenticity of 木漏れ日 and почемучка, although I'd argue that the definition ascribed to the latter is a bit too broad. More often than not it is used to refer to a child who asks grown-ups lots of questions (most commonly why-questions, since the word is derived from the Russian word for "why"), either out of genuine curiosity or as a way of avoiding doing something they don't want to do ("Why do I have to go to sleep?" "Because it's late" "Why do people need to sleep when it's late?" "Because we get tired" "Why do we get tired?", etc.). It's sometimes used with a positive connotation of a childlike sense of wonder (there's a famous children's encyclopedia with that name), but more often it's used to express mild annoyance at the constant questioning. It's also seen as a bit of a puerile word, so using it to refer to an adult, unless it's tongue-in-cheek, is about as weird as an adult calling another adult a "meanie" or a "tattletale" in English.
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| wber Groupie United States Joined 4098 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 13 of 35 13 December 2013 at 6:27am | IP Logged | ||
I agree with you about the fact that if a language uses one or more words, it doesn't mean they lack the ability to express a multitude of different ideas. I disagree with your latter part of that statement. I don't think it's strictly dependent on orthography. I think it's more of a cultural affair. Where one language uses one word while another uses two, it may be possible to say that the former places more emphasis on certain concepts than the latter.( Not all the time though) Edited by wber on 14 December 2013 at 1:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4436 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 14 of 35 13 December 2013 at 9:02am | IP Logged | ||
I don't know where they got "cualacino" from, but I can confirm that "sobremesa" in Spanish is very much in use. In my wife's family it typically denotes the time after lunch (which in Spain is rather late, at 2.30 or so) when you move from the dining table to the armchairs and sofa, drink your coffee, watch TV and comment on whatever programme you are seeing with the others around you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4462 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 15 of 35 14 December 2013 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
I've never heard of it either. I've heard my dad use CULACCINO but that's the residue left in the bottom of a bottle of (home made) wine. Glad it's not just me then :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anethara Diglot Newbie England Joined 4039 days ago 25 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Sign Language | Message 16 of 35 15 December 2013 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not sure which is my favourite, but I do wonder if there's anything 'untranslatable'
in English? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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