What are the next lost lanuages?

[warpus]

No, but the point is that that's just incidental, it's not because Norwegian has some inherent inability to grasp the concept of "summer". If Norway had summers, Norwegian would be able to describe them thoroughly.

In a different way, though.

It's hard to explain the nuances and quirks of languages, but they exist, and aren't easily transferrable when you translate something.

There's also body language, when you speak, not to mention inflection.. it's hard to translate the meaning behind these things too.

 

[cubsfan6506]

Today, how resticted is someone who only speaks Slovak as far as internet usage? This site is a case in point, truely international boards/website are going to use an international language just like this one, and people who want access to them are going to have to learn one of those languages.

Every year the influence of things like the internet will grow, and our need for common communication methods for more and more basic needs will grow with it.

There is kind of a wild card though in some kind of free instant translation software coming around.

 

[scherbchen]

No, but the point is that that's just incidental, it's not because Norwegian has some inherent inability to grasp the concept of "summer". If Norway had summers, Norwegian would be able to describe them thoroughly.

I don't quite agree and there is the example that inevitably has to pop up at his time: Germans have a concept of loneliness, they have a concept of solitude. yet they only have one word to cover both of these (which is 'Einsamkeit'). if you want to make a disctinction between those it has to be understood via the context or explained.

this, I believe, is what was being hinted at. now, of course, English and German have a very special relationship and English is bound to have more words through the heavy Romance influence who have subsequently acquired new, more specific and eventually unique meanings. but this is not something that is restricted to English-German and it is not restricted to word pairs. it is very difficult to translate idioms and concepts at times (which fits nicely with the lens metaphor we had earlier in this thread). while "covering all your bases" is not that difficult something like "playing hardball" or "coming out of left field" are phrases and concepts that can not be literally be understood by a German speaker that does not have the background. just as most anglophiles would not understand the term 'Gretchen-question' while many Germans would know what a 'Gretchen Frage' is.

 

[Winner]

Better for you, a native Czech speaker. English has her share of wordplay and expression.

Never said it hadn't. Actually, I said that this impression is entirely subjective and that it might be caused by bad knowledge of English.

You can't very well quantify those things. If Czech needed to express those science, military, and business things, y'all would grow words for 'em.

We do have words for them, it's just that these expressions are clumsy compared to the English ones. I am sometimes translating captions and I can tell you, sometimes it's nearly impossible to translate some short English phrase without using two long sentences in Czech to fully catch the meaning. And sometimes I can easily translate a long English sentence and get a much shorter Czech one, which has exactly the same meaning.

As I said, it's just my subjective opinion.

of course winner was a bit naive about english's (?) ability to express casual things, but i think there is indeed a qualitative difference between languages when it comes to expressing special topics.
( i dont think you can have the same conversation about snow in mayan languages as in norwegian for example.)

I'll paraphrase Jan Werich: Czech has a lot of words for ordinary things.

He gave an example, so follow me and tell me if I am doing something wrong in English.

Round little apple

In Czech, the literal translation would be "malé kulaté jablko". Alternatively, you can say "kulaté jablíčko". Though "jablíčko" could mean "small apple" (it's a diminutive form), this word has an emotional charge attached to it. "Jablíčko" implies that you like the apple, that it is nice; it doesn't have to be physically small.

Then you can also alter the word "kulatý" (round) and say "kulaťoučké jablíčko". Now you're in trouble. "Kulaťoučký" also means "round", but it once again has an emotional charge attached. When something is "kulaťoučké", it's not only round but it is nicely rounded and you like the way it is rounded. You find it cute and when you use this adjective to describe the word "jablíčko", what you get are two words loaded with emotion. Therefore, "kulaťoučké jablíčko" is a small or very nice and very nicely rounded apple that you like. I could add another word: "maličké kulaťoučké jablíčko". Compare it to the "malé kulaté jablko" from the beginning. It means the same, but the deminutive forms I used add a cumulative emotional effect to it. I can't translate it into English without losing it.

This whole example is based just on the use of diminutive forms in Czech. They exist in English too, so perhaps you can find a pretty way how to translate it.

I do believe that Czech is a more colorful language in many respects compared to English, which I think is a bit too sharp. On the other hand, English is more exact which is an advantage in many situations.

 

[Truronian]

I don't quite agree and there is the example that inevitably has to pop up at his time: Germans have a concept of loneliness, they have a concept of solitude. yet they only have one word to cover both of these (which is 'Einsamkeit'). if you want to make a disctinction between those it has to be understood via the context or explained.

However, the concepts of loneliness and solitude can be understood in both languages... so it kind of is incidental.

Inuit may have umpteen words for snow, but that doesn't make it a better language for talking about all things arctic.

 

[holy king]

of course such differences are "incidental". i think noone here argued that they are due to some inherent ethnic inferiority or something.

also, why such differences exist doesnt really change anything about the fact that they exist.

 

[gangleri2001]

Holy king is right. And I'm gonna give a example of this.

I always thought that maths texts in English and any other language but Catalan sound ********. Why? Because all the other languages I know lack the concepts of "xifra", "número" and "nombre".

"Xifra" (or "xifres") is used to describe the symbol which is used to represent a number. So the "xifra" of the number 100 could be 100, C or even FFFGGGLI. "Nombre" (and "nombres") is used to talk about the number itself, isolated from the infinite succession of numbers, while "número" (and its plural "números") is used to talk about a value or group of them inside the infinite succession of values.

As you may suppose, the lack of this three concepts in Englsih (everything is called number in English) make texts about maths sound completely ******** to me.

 

[holy king]

we have "ziffer" (the symbol), "zahl" (like numero) and "nummer" (like nombre) in german too.

 

[gangleri2001]

we have "ziffer" (the symbol), "zahl" (like numero) and "nummer" (like nombre) in german too.

Is not exactly the same. Zahl can be used as Ziffer and I've seen that Nummer is used to cover the three words. Anyways, German is the only language which has similar concepts.

 

[holy king]

nummer can cover all concepts in everyday speech, but not in the context of a math textbook.

 

[gangleri2001]

Just like Catalan número? Ok then. BTW, another thing that shows this difference of concepts is the translation of the expression "deutsch-deutsche Frage" into other languages. They just lack the background to make it understandable.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

The language of ... aaaarghhhh....

 

[El Koeno]

Is not exactly the same. Zahl can be used as Ziffer and I've seen that Nummer is used to cover the three words. Anyways, German is the only language which has similar concepts.

I didn't really understand the whole explanation, but dutch has the words "aantal", "cijfer" and "nummer" which are the same as the german "zahl", "ziffer" and "nummer" respectively. I imagine other germanic languages having the same distinction. I wouldn't be surprised if asian languages had something similar as well.

 

[holy king]

dutch is a german dialect anyway.

 

[El Koeno]

dutch is a german dialect anyway.

That's not the best way to make friend you know...

 

[Truronian]

"Xifra" (or "xifres") is used to describe the symbol which is used to represent a number. So the "xifra" of the number 100 could be 100, C or even FFFGGGLI. "Nombre" (and "nombres") is used to talk about the number itself, isolated from the infinite succession of numbers, while "número" (and its plural "números") is used to talk about a value or group of them inside the infinite succession of values.

As far as I can tell:

Xifra = Representation/Form (eg. binary representation, hexidecimal form)

Nombre = Number (eg. the number 3)

Numero = Value(s)/Set/Subset (eg. x takes a value in [1,...10]∩&#8469

When it matters there are distinctions.

 

[scherbchen]

That's not the best way to make friend you know...

he's right, though. he merely mistyped "was" as "is"

 

[Perfection]

With these new hip-hoppers and teen-texters, English is in deep peril.

 

[Arwon]

As far as I can tell:

Xifra = Representation/Form (eg. binary representation, hexidecimal form)

Nombre = Number (eg. the number 3)

Numero = Value(s)/Set/Subset (eg. x takes a value in [1,...10]∩&#8469

When it matters there are distinctions.

Not quite, xifra would be "numeral" or "character". If you want to refer specifically to the characters 0-9, they're called numerals. The second usage is the number three, as in, something you can describe as "odd" and "a prime number" and "two less than five". The third usage I don't understand. Since we use "number" commonly for both, I think it's fair to say we don't make as automatic a linguistic delineation between the abstract symbol and the concept it represents.

Both parties have an element of truth to what they're saying. All languages can express all thoughts, that's why we're able to discuss these three meanings of "number" and distinguish them. We're aware of the difference between the numeral and the concept it represents, we just don't usually make it in casual speech.

However, it's true that some stuff is easier in some languages compared to others. There's a lot of these little mismatches in word meanings because there's no one-to-one mapping between languages. It follows from this that some thoughts will be more briefly and simply expressable in one language and some in the other: due to how a language distributes meanings amongst its words, some concepts can be more briefly and elegantly expressed, and some distinctions can be more simply made in some languages.

For example, Spanish doesn't distinguish "in" from "on" but uses "en" for both, which makes certain spatial relationships more difficult to explain briefly. "En el agua" is potentially ambiguous... is something on the water or in it? More words or different words are needed. But conversely, Spanish has two words where we use "to be", which makes some other stuff easier to express. The difference between being momentarily angry and being somebody with chronic anger management problems is easily and clearly made by whether you say someone "es enfadado" or "esta enfadado".

Does this mean that Spaniards have worse spatial awareness skills or English-speakers can't tell a short-term mood from a serious psychological problem? Of course not, it just means that some languages force a distinction between certain meanings that are combined in other languages - eg, you can't say "xifra" or "nombre" in Catalan without automatically distinguishing symbol from concept, the languages forces that distinction, whilst in English the language doesn't force it.

 

[Volum]

No, but the point is that that's just incidental, it's not because Norwegian has some inherent inability to grasp the concept of "summer". If Norway had summers, Norwegian would be able to describe them thoroughly.

Ey! Not fair, we do too have summers