language

[rhowaldt]

'you can walk the walk, but can you talk the talk?'

let's speak about language, and compare languages, and explain how shit works in your native language, or whatever. language is fun. let's talk about it!

i'll start with the piece of the post that inspired this thread, so we at least got an idea of what the fuck we do here.

the usage of 'brother' or 'sister' for good friends is, of course, not limited to Chinese. in fact, it is present in English as well, and also in Dutch. in my language we do have a slight difference in the word that is commonly used for this though. a regular brother (related by blood) is called 'broer', while a friend-brother is called 'broeder'. as you can probably guess, 'broer' is simply a shortened form of 'broeder' (which is really an older term and slightly out of use, which is why it has been freed to use for this purpose), and when you'd translate back to English you'd get 'bro' and 'brother'. oh, we got 'zus' and 'zuster' for sisters, which you could do in English with 'sis' and 'sister'.

[wuxmedia]

yeah bro'

8)
ok a question how do possessions present in dutch? in english there is only one (mostly) article no fem/masc. so it's 'it's my sisters beer - her beer'.
In french 'c'est le biere a ma soeur - c'est son biere
that always fuck me up.

[4eyes]

As an Englishman living in Wales, I get constant amusement from listening to my Satnav try to pronounce the town names.

eg.
Llanymynech
Yr Wyddgrug
Cwmfelinfach
Ynysddu
Ystrad Mynach

.. and of course
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
(a real place, but the name was created in Victorian times to attract tourists)

As someone once said, it looks like someone took a scrabble set, removed most of the vowels, and then drove roung wales throwing the peices at road signs.

[wuxmedia]

I like the Welsh accent, i spent 2 years at college in Carmarthen, near Swansea, never learnt any, apart from dioch.
funniest memory was a mad Chinese guy called Yuk. (as in book) he wandered around with his practice nunchuks - who had a totally Swansea Jack accent, me being a little ole' country bor' my first ethnic mate and first Welshie.
oh and a guy from chesire Ellesmere port way, who introduced me to ah deydoododondeydo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3NqLjPG ... re=related)

[machinebacon]

Interesting, in German I don't really see the wide-spread use of Brueder and Schwestern (except in religious circles and of course in the family) as like in other indo-german(ic) languages. Especially if we consider that the usage of 'bro' and 'sis' is quite modern, the Germans went into another direction and use "Alter" (colloquial term for something like "buddy", literally meaning "the Old") but only for males. It would be considered quite rude to use "Alte" for females - it's more a der. term for "wife", so the one you don't really love as much anymore ;)

In Chinese language - and that's maybe the point which is confusing me most, and also the wrong usage of sister/brother when Chinese speak English - the family members have different declarations. So, if we Europeans say "my uncle", it could mean my father's younger brother, or his older brother, or my mother's younger or older brother, and of course also Uncle Joe (not DebianJoe) who is maybe the neighbour we know for so many years. In Chinese each of these people has his own label, so there are 4 possible uncles plus the 4 husbands of our paternal/maternal aunts, and of course add the same for the wives of the maternal/paternal uncles. Not enough yet, because your mother's father's younger brother's wife (!) has her own name/tag/label/decalration, too. Fun times in China.

[rhowaldt]

damn China does indeed sounds like great fun :D

@wux: 'my sister's beer - it is her beer' would be 'het bier van mijn zus - het is haar bier' (her = haar)... to be even more literal in the translation, i could say 'mijn zuster's bier', which is proper Dutch but not used in practice much. i like how the Dutch language is quite versatile in these things. when it comes to word-order and such, it is possible to follow either English or German.

[machinebacon]

See, in Germany it would be improper to use the Dativ instead of the Genetiv ("das Bier von meiner Schwester" vs "meiner Schwester Bier"), though funny enough many people say that Genetiv sounds arrogant.

[hinto]

I really, really, really (did I say really?) think it's funny how folks think it's non-PC to speak English using a masculine in definite pronoun. They'll say something like "It is raining outside. Everyone will need his or her umbrella." or worse, "It is raining outside. Everyone will need their umbrella." (which is totally incorrect) instead of "It is raining outside. Everyone will need his umbrella."

Apparently most folks think that English is the only language with gender specific pronouns. What's even worse is that I *know* that many languages have gender specific nouns *and* articles, even with my low-brow public education ;)

-Hinto

"Do not attribute poor spelling or poor grammar what is the result of poor typing" ;)

[hinto]

@MB... at the sidux site they told me that the office joke was "Don't run as Ruth". Ruth was pronounced "root", and there was a person in the office named Ruth ;)
-H

[machinebacon]

Yeeees hinto I remember that too :)

Thread = Fred
Root = Ruth :)

[wuxmedia]

there was me thinking that surpriseparty was all one word...
I thought that was what hyphens did. then the hyphen gets dropped and 200 years later it's a full single word.

[rhowaldt]

nah, it is actually two separate ones. i usually google for it and see what comes up. it is "surprise party". but in Dutch (and Germans will know this, they do the same), when a term refers to a specific thing you get rid of the space, and just make it a single word. which makes more sense to me, and since i'd already written that entire thing with it as a single word, i just added the footnote because fuck the English language and its stupidities :)

[rust collector]

"theboltthatgoesupthruthebarcketthatholdsthestairsfrombelowthethirdstep"
It refers to a specific thing....

I like it

[rhowaldt]

^ or you invent a new term. thanks Rusty, you fucker, always causing a disturbance. i appreciate that (seriously i do) :D

[machinebacon]

nah, it is actually two separate ones. i usually google for it and see what comes up. it is "surprise party". but in Dutch (and Germans will know this, they do the same), when a term refers to a specific thing you get rid of the space, and just make it a single word. which makes more sense to me, and since i'd already written that entire thing with it as a single word, i just added the footnote because fuck the English language and its stupidities :)

We have a kind of Zusammengehoerigkeitsgefuehl here! :D http://theweek.com/articles/463500/8-fa ... rman-words

[rhowaldt]

and i can actually read and understand that word - in Dutch that would literally be "tezamengehorigheidsgevoel", but the "tezamen" bit has been shortened, for whatever reason, to "saam", making "saamhorigheidsgevoel".

[rust collector]

heh, even I can figure that out.

up here it would be something like... umm

tilsammenhørighetsfølelse, or oddly shortened to

samhørighetsfølelse

Don't pick it all apart, it has been a long time since I wrote a word in Norwegian

[rhowaldt]

how did you guys go from "gefuhl" to fucking "folelse"...is "-else" a common ending over there?
interesting that the odd shortening is exactly the same in Dutch.

[rust collector]

-lse would be like -ing in engrish to feel= føle feeling= følelse

This is still a young contry, we will speak some weird bastard english like language soon enough.

[rhowaldt]

cool, thanks for the info. i love language :)
the English integration in the Dutch language is insane as well, when i think about it. for example, we have no Dutch word for a show. we just use the word "show". same for "manager". and listening to some Dutch hiphop, dude goes "omringd door chicks die willen hangen voor de fame" - that's 2 English words in there. "hangen net als fokking slangen om me heen" - "fokking" is simply the Dutchified version of "fucking". we will use regular "fucking" as an interjection just like that as well (in some parts). and the title of the song is "sukkel voor de liefde", which is bad Dutch, but instead a literal translation from the English, "sucker for love". weird. i suppose it makes sense when you consider the early age at which Dutch people learn English, and i suppose it explains the high level of English in the country - the main reason why my wife never learned to speak Dutch.

which is (since we're fucking rambling anyway - feel like seabiscuit now) another strange thing: i am in an English-speaking relationship, where my wife basically doesn't understand much Dutch. this means that my mind is divided into two worlds: the English world, and the Dutch world. for native English people this is non-existent. they have, for example, every artist that has a worldfamous hit-song, singing in the language they grew up with. there is no such thing as "English music", where there IS such a thing as "Dutch music". it is a strange schism. i write 99% of my poetry and prose in Dutch. my wife will never be able to read some of my most heartfelt shit, simply because she cannot understand the language. it is a strange thing not being able to share your deepest shit with the most significant person in your life. translation only half does it justice. again, again, again: it's strange, and probably incomprehensible for native English speakers.