Author Topic: English Words for "Foreign" Concepts  (Read 38094 times)

ClintMemo

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Reply #25 on: June 15, 2007, 08:03:27 PM

Anyway, maybe this answers you and maybe it doesn't, I'm not sure.

I think it does - sort of....

If two languages have a similar syntax, then imposing one upon the other is easier than if they are different. Right?  So, ultimately, maybe all languages with a syntax similar to English will eventually either be taken over by a single language, (perhaps English), or some type of hybrid language will emerge from it.
If that's true, then maybe we'll end up as many languages as there are unique syntaxes, but it sounds like each language would have a mostly unique lexicon as well.

Maybe I just don't know enough about the topic to ask a proper question. :P

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eytanz

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Reply #26 on: June 15, 2007, 08:34:46 PM

If two languages have a similar syntax, then imposing one upon the other is easier than if they are different. Right?  So, ultimately, maybe all languages with a syntax similar to English will eventually either be taken over by a single language, (perhaps English), or some type of hybrid language will emerge from it.
If that's true, then maybe we'll end up as many languages as there are unique syntaxes, but it sounds like each language would have a mostly unique lexicon as well.

Abstracting away from some important issues (what is the relevant dimension of similarity? Is English more or less similar to Turkish than Japanese is to Russian?) this is potentially a possible scenario, but once the we stop asking "is this possible?", we need to ask "is this a likely result of current trends?". The question is - is there any real reason to assume that languages are coming closer together? And the answer is - no, not really. What I think the fallacy behind your reasoning is - though this is conjecture - is the underlying assumption that bilingualism isn't a steady state, and that the growing importance of English will result in a decline in other lanuages. But that's simply not true - in fact, bilingualism is the norm, both historically and currently - most people live in societies in which they need to speak at least two languages, and this usually does not lead to either language vanishing, but rather both languages exist side by side. It is only when there is an active program to supress one of the languages - say, by not teaching it in schools - that it starts losing out.

I think the only real way non-English languages - even those similar to English - will vanish is if there will be a societal shift that pushes away from nationalism and into true globalism, and as part of that there will be a deliberate program of "English only". I think this is highly unlikely given the current state of the world, where nationalism, if anything, is on the rise. My predicition is that, if the current balance of power in the world and media is retained for the next hundred years, then in 2107 most people in the world will speak English and another language. The only monolinguals will be a minority of uneducated poor people in the 3rd world who will not have access to mass media, and people in English speaking countries who will not need a second language. Sure, the Dutch of 2107 will be different than the Dutch of 2007, but to roughly the same degree that the Dutch of 2007 is different than the Dutch of 1907, not because it will become English.



slic

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Reply #27 on: June 16, 2007, 03:03:09 AM
I think a good example of the exception to your idea, eytanz is metropolitan India.  For various reasons, English is the predominant language of business, and politics.  As such, ancedotally anyway, people are finding that the younger people continue to communicate in English outside of work and that their mother tongue is getting corruptted.  It is similar to what Candians call "franglais", in reference to some French communities over exposure to English and their adoption of whole English words and phrases in daily conversation.



eytanz

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Reply #28 on: June 16, 2007, 03:41:54 AM
First, the notion of language corruption is a political/socilogical one, not a linguistic one. Linguists do not assign value to language change.

Second, the situation you describe - at least, to the degree you describe it - is probably not a counter-example to what I'm saying. I don't know much about India, so I'm not talking about the specific case, but you hear about things like this a lot in the media, and 9 times out of 10 (at least) they are misinterpreted. A bilingual individual living in a non-bilingual community will only use one language at a time. When the community is bilingual as well, however, what people do is mix languages. That is not the same as creating a new hybrid language; rather, it is switching back and forth between two languages continually, sometimes within the same sentence (the technical term for this is code switching). The way you can tell code switching apart from a merged language is that the bilingual speakers are perfectly capable of understanding and using "pure" Hindi (or whatever their mother tongue is) when they go back to their families and other people who are not in full command of English.

Now, there is an interesting question here of what happens over several generations - once children grow up in a community where everyone mixes Hindi and English, do these children know they are listening to two languages or do they think they are hearing a hybrid? I don't know the answer to this, so I don't want to conjecture.

What I do know, however, is that in situations like the one you describe above, the most common result is either a stable bilingual community (if people in it have reason to use both languages), or, over time, the less useful language will mostly disappear, and the communities will become English speaking. The latter is certainly a possibility - but all I was saying above is that this will not happen on a global scale. There will be a lot fewer languages spoken in this world in 50 years than there are now, but there will still be many of them.



wherethewild

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Reply #29 on: June 16, 2007, 09:34:41 AM
Disclaimer: I am no linguist. At all. Not a bit.

Isn´t Singlish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish) a good example of a merged language? From my understanding, many who speak Singlish can´t speak correct English and they may also have no other common language, so then I guess it doesn´t come under the definition of just mixed bilingualism (is that a word?). By the wikipedia definition there, I guess by merged languages we´re talking about creole languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language).

Whether there will be a single world-wide creole at some point in the future- no idea. I find it unlikely, if only because differing language (even only vocab) seems to be a strong social "creation" - it helps create an internal identity, a sense of belonging and to define "us" from "them". I could imagine that even with a world creole there will always be local dialects/languages, although these will probably also evolve over time from what we know now (with perhaps the exception of French, which seems to be kept well under control :) )

Hmm, not sure if I´ve added anything useful here, but there goes.

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eytanz

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Reply #30 on: June 16, 2007, 02:14:55 PM
Ok, I'm drifting more and more from things I understand here, so let me backtrack a bit. I didn't mean to say - though I agree that it looks like I did - that creole languages don't develop. But - as far as I understand - they arise in particular circumstances, such as the ones described in the Singlish article - which either involve immigrants, conquest or colonization - basically, environments where people speaking one language find themselves in a society where their daily life requires them to use another language, *and* there is no strong social force pushing for the continuation of their mother tongue. Now, I don't know the situation in India, but in most of the Western world, at least, this is not the situation.

Importantly, creoles are not formed by people importing the new, dominant tongue (English) into their native language. Rather, the reverse is true - they are trying to speak English but they don't really know it well, so they fill in parts from their mother tongue. People who are educated and can speak both languages well don't normally form creoles.

Anyway, I don't really have much new to add here, so let me just summarize my overall point -

- The number of languages in the world is decreasing. Globalization is a large factor in this.
- It is quite likely that in some areas of the world, where the social factors are suited for it, new creole languages will arise.
- However, this is not going to happen on a global scale.
- Cross-language borrowing is not a symptom of creole formation, nor does it lead to it.



Michael

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Reply #31 on: June 18, 2007, 11:46:16 AM
In a Darwinian sense certain of the myriad ways in which we can record thoughts are less well suited to a modern technological era and they will decline in popuarity, as they have become "overcome by events". 

I think this will be hardest on the pictographic languages--alphabets seem to work better on a keyboard. 

English has by far the largest vocabulary because it is officially omniverous, which is a Darwinian advantage. No one is trying to keep English "pure" by keeping foreign words out, so it is allowed to adapt and evolve.  English is just "Romanticized" German, but as such it is a good bridge between those two classes of language.     


Planish

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Reply #32 on: June 20, 2007, 05:37:59 AM


nichevo - it can't be helped


Inevitable?

Yes, technically.  However, when I first heard about nichevo, it wasn't just the phrase "it can't be helped" but also conveyed a sense of helplessness and despair with the fact that no one can help it and no one ever will.
The Inuit have a saying "Ayornamat" or "Ayungnakto" (or any nuimber of regional variations) that means the same thing. It could be used for a death in the family, or accidently spilling a cup of tea.

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wakela

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Reply #33 on: June 22, 2007, 01:35:28 AM
Quote
In a Darwinian sense certain of the myriad ways in which we can record thoughts are less well suited to a modern technological era and they will decline in popuarity, as they have become "overcome by events".

I think this will be hardest on the pictographic languages--alphabets seem to work better on a keyboard.
You would think, but the Japanese do fine with keyboards.  More amazingly, they are demons with entering text on a cell phone.  They type the pronunciation using roman characters.  Then the computer displays a list of matching words, and the cycle through them with the space bar.  It sounds cumbersome, but they seem to do OK.

Regarding the effects of technology, I could see our written language becoming infused with l33tspeak once the young whippersnappers who are growing up in chat rooms come of age. 



Bdoomed

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Reply #34 on: July 08, 2007, 01:21:35 AM
Regarding the effects of technology, I could see our written language becoming infused with l33tspeak once the young whippersnappers who are growing up in chat rooms come of age. 
erm... no... i dont think so... Having grown up with all this, I can assure you it is not used that often.  Its beaten into our heads in school to write correctly, and we (most of us, to be exact) know when to write normally and when it is okay to use 13375p34k.  P1U5 13375p34k !5 h4r|) 70 Un|)3r574n|)... ! W01|) h473 70 r34|) !7 f0r 7h!5 10nG!!!1!!!!!1111!!!!!!1111!!1111111!!!!!!

p34r my 1337 h4x

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


Russell Nash

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Reply #35 on: July 08, 2007, 07:59:53 PM
Regarding the effects of technology, I could see our written language becoming infused with l33tspeak once the young whippersnappers who are growing up in chat rooms come of age. 
erm... no... i dont think so... Having grown up with all this, I can assure you it is not used that often.  Its beaten into our heads in school to write correctly, and we (most of us, to be exact) know when to write normally and when it is okay to use 13375p34k.  P1U5 13375p34k !5 h4r|) 70 Un|)3r574n|)... ! W01|) h473 70 r34|) !7 f0r 7h!5 10nG!!!1!!!!!1111!!!!!!1111!!1111111!!!!!!

p34r my 1337 h4x

I'm so old.  Does that really translate into something?



wakela

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Reply #36 on: July 08, 2007, 11:29:27 PM
Quote
Quote
Regarding the effects of technology, I could see our written language becoming infused with l33tspeak once the young whippersnappers who are growing up in chat rooms come of age.
erm... no... i dont think so... Having grown up with all this, I can assure you it is not used that often.  Its beaten into our heads in school to write correctly, and we (most of us, to be exact) know when to write normally and when it is okay to use 13375p34k.  P1U5 13375p34k !5 h4r|) 70 Un|)3r574n|)... ! W01|) h473 70 r34|) !7 f0r 7h!5 10nG!!!1!!!!!1111!!!!!!1111!!1111111!!!!!!

Yeah, that's a good point.  I agree that it's too much of a stretch for English to start looking like that cat-on-a-keyboard stuff that you typed in.  Still, I wouldn't be surprised if informal written English becomes peppered with l33t words.  In Japanese young people sometimes toss English words in their speech to be clever.  They say stuff like "Let's go", "OK", and my favorite, "cho belly ba."*  "Bye Bye" has become as normal as "gesundheit" in English. 

The l33t you used looks like it is mostly spelled correctly (what I could decipher), just using different characters to represent letters.  You're right, it would be much easier just to write regular English.  I was thinking of l33t abbreviations like rtard, teh, LOL, cul8r, that kind of thing.

*cho belly ba:  cho - a Japanese slang word for "very"
                     belly - "very"
                     ba - "bad"
Note that although this comes from English, it is completely incomprehensible to English speakers.  Now I'm wondering if the l33t that comes into common usage will have mutated from "standard" l33t. 
 



slic

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Reply #37 on: July 09, 2007, 01:55:35 AM
There's an ad that's been running here that has a Mom talk to her daughter and the daughter speaks in nothing but text abbreviations.

It goes something like:
Mom:  Bethany (or whatever) who are you texting all the time?
Grl: wu? (what's up)
Mom who are you texting all the time?
Grl: idk, my bff Jill?

It had subtitles so we could understand.  The ending is funny to.  I found it on Utube

Like wakela, I suspect this is more what slang will become, already my kids use it sometime.

Here's the translation - mostly it is character substituion - 7=t, 1= l, !=i, 5=S, 4=A :

P1U5 - Plus
13375p34k - leetspeak (short for elite speak - it's a very old hacker term, as in elite code language
!5 - is
h4r|) -hard
70 - to
Un|)3r574n|) - understand, the |) is a D
...
!  - I
W01|) - wold = would
h473 - hate
70 - to
r34|) - read
!7 - it
f0r - for
7h!5 - this
10nG - long
!!!1!!!!!1111!!!!!!1111!!1111111!!!!!! - ???

p34r - pear?  This is new to me.
my - my (who'd have guessed)
1337 - leet
h4x - hax = hacks




Bdoomed

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Reply #38 on: July 09, 2007, 06:04:03 AM
LMAO
slic you got it!  tho i missed the 'h' in ph34r... as in phear, as in fear.  my bad.
the !!!1!!!1111!!! is a joke among the "community" i guess you can call it... its when a noob (begginner, newcomer, person who thinks he's leet) types really fast and stupidly and uses shift 1 for exclamation points.  he types so fast and stupidly that he releases the shift key in some spots and doesnt bother to correct himself... heh.

by the way after i typed that stuff up, i put it through a leet translator (available on google heh) just to see how far off i was, and it was surprisingly accurate!

wakela, as for your intention (using lol, teh, etc.) again, no one writes that way in any formal situation.  it is reserved to the internet, and to more carefree websites at that.  at these forums i tend to deviate between the two.  I type correctly, but i sometimes do not bother to capitalize I, and sometimes i do.  also i sometimes dont capitalize the beginnings of sentences.... i dont go all out tho and start typin lik i would on a chat room, bein all gramatically incorrect and typin so fast and not correctin speling mistaks n stuff yo.

generally us kids know when to use chat english and when to use correct english.   and i use generally because i dont have facts, just experiance.

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


Russell Nash

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Reply #39 on: July 09, 2007, 07:48:21 AM
LMAO
slic you got it!  tho i missed the 'h' in ph34r... as in phear, as in fear.  my bad.
the !!!1!!!1111!!! is a joke among the "community" i guess you can call it... its when a noob (begginner, newcomer, person who thinks he's leet) types really fast and stupidly and uses shift 1 for exclamation points.  he types so fast and stupidly that he releases the shift key in some spots and doesnt bother to correct himself... heh.

by the way after i typed that stuff up, i put it through a leet translator (available on google heh) just to see how far off i was, and it was surprisingly accurate!

wakela, as for your intention (using lol, teh, etc.) again, no one writes that way in any formal situation.  it is reserved to the internet, and to more carefree websites at that.  at these forums i tend to deviate between the two.  I type correctly, but i sometimes do not bother to capitalize I, and sometimes i do.  also i sometimes dont capitalize the beginnings of sentences.... i dont go all out tho and start typin lik i would on a chat room, bein all gramatically incorrect and typin so fast and not correctin speling mistaks n stuff yo.

generally us kids know when to use chat english and when to use correct english.   and i use generally because i dont have facts, just experiance.

The sad thing is I'd say you intelligent kids know when to use it.  I have heard at least 5 stories on NPR where teachers were saying that many kids don't understnad that the language you use for your friend is different from the language you would use writing to your grandmother or your boss.



slic

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Reply #40 on: July 09, 2007, 11:28:54 AM
LMAO
slic you got it! 
Thx, can't say that helped invent this stuff, but I've been around long enough to have seen my share of pr0n, make my share of art, and pass around some .nfo

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSLL
  SS                     LL
    SS                 LL
      SS             LL
        SS         LL
          SS     LL               
SSSSSSSSSLLLLLLLLLLL



wakela

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Reply #41 on: July 10, 2007, 11:51:46 PM
Quote
wakela, as for your intention (using lol, teh, etc.) again, no one writes that way in any formal situation.  it is reserved to the internet, and to more carefree websites at that.  at these forums i tend to deviate between the two.  I type correctly, but i sometimes do not bother to capitalize I, and sometimes i do.  also i sometimes dont capitalize the beginnings of sentences.... i dont go all out tho and start typin lik i would on a chat room, bein all gramatically incorrect and typin so fast and not correctin speling mistaks n stuff yo.

generally us kids know when to use chat english and when to use correct english.   and i use generally because i dont have facts, just experiance.
I hope you don't think that my impression of your generation is a bunch of zit-faced hackers who don't know how to communicate with real people.  I have more faith in you guys than NPR does, apparently.  In fact I feel weird referring to you as "you guys," because it implies you are a separate group from me.  I didn't know you were a high school student until you mentioned it.

At one time using words like "OK", "thanks", "no prob", "cool" were inappropriate in all but the most informal settings.  But now I feel I could use them in an email to my boss or to a customer (usually).  Already instant messenger changed the way I write, but I can't go all l33ty because I don't get it and the people I'm writing to don't get it.  But once you guys enter the workforce there will be a generation of people who do get it.  And again, I'm only talking about the l33t abbreviations that make it easier to type, not the example you used that is harder.  Then again, I'm clueless enough that what I'm talking about may not be l33t at all.

Then you could have non-l33t people pick up the lingo and use it incorrectly enough that the incorrect use becomes standard.  People say "quantum leap" when they mean a big jump or change, but really the word refers to a tiny jump of an electron in a random direction.  I could see a word like n00b being used as a general insult and not a comment on inexperience. 



Listener

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Reply #42 on: July 11, 2007, 05:34:10 PM
Then you could have non-l33t people pick up the lingo and use it incorrectly enough that the incorrect use becomes standard.  People say "quantum leap" when they mean a big jump or change, but really the word refers to a tiny jump of an electron in a random direction.  I could see a word like n00b being used as a general insult and not a comment on inexperience. 

I think maybe that started because, on the show, it's a fairly big change even though he's just making a quantum-sized leap.  Pretty amusing to point it out to people, though, that they're misusing it.

I find myself speaking Kitty Pidgin more and more.  And when I use it to caption photos of my daughter on MySpace, people have started speaking it back to me in the comments.

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wakela

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Reply #43 on: July 11, 2007, 11:54:44 PM
Quote
I find myself speaking Kitty Pidgin more and more.
Business presentation of the future

O hai!
I has a softwares.
plz you 2 buy.
pay me 3 cheezbergers I gives softwares.
u makes more muhnees.
u buys more cheezbergers.
kthnxbye.

Oops! I ated my softwares.
Sry.
Pleez I can still has cheezbergers?



Bdoomed

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Reply #44 on: July 12, 2007, 05:19:26 PM
I could see a word like n00b being used as a general insult and not a comment on inexperience. 
Oh it already IS an insult!  Noob is in no way a friendly term.
I wouldnt consider the abbreviations you're talking about to be 'leetspeak'.  while they might be used just the same, they are more under the category of chat lingo if anything... either way that just changes the name of your point and nothing more.  It could happen, in fact it probably is already happening, and I just happen to hang out with intelligent people who DO know the difference.

I didn't know you were a high school student until you mentioned it.
:D
Business presentation of the future

O hai!
I has a softwares.
plz you 2 buy.
pay me 3 cheezbergers I gives softwares.
u makes more muhnees.
u buys more cheezbergers.
kthnxbye.

Oops! I ated my softwares.
Sry.
Pleez I can still has cheezbergers?
i likes the cheezbergurz.
pweeze a cheezbergur for mees?

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


wakela

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Reply #45 on: July 16, 2007, 01:38:51 AM
Quote
Quote
I could see a word like n00b being used as a general insult and not a comment on inexperience.
Oh it already IS an insult!  Noob is in no way a friendly term.

I'm not THAT dense.  It's usage now implies inexperience.  I was suggesting that it could shift to mean something like loser, dork, dweeb, etc.   "That guy dumped his girlfriend over World of Warcraft.  What a noob." 



stePH

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Reply #46 on: May 29, 2008, 09:41:27 PM
To drag this thread back on topic while simultaneously raising it from the dead  ;D

How about savoir faire?

Quote
Three guys were discussing the meaning of savoir faire.

The first guy said, "If you are in bed with another man's wife, and he walks in and says, 'Oops, pardon me.' That is savoir faire."

The second guy says, "No, No, if you are in bed with another man's wife, and he walks in and says, 'Oops! Pardon me, please continue.' That is savoir faire."

The third guy says, "No, No, No. If you are in bed with another man's wife, and he walks in and says, 'Oops, pardon me! Please continue...' and you CAN, that, my friends, is savoir faire."

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Windup

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Reply #47 on: May 29, 2008, 10:59:08 PM

I think you'll find that in the eventual future (perhaps not too far off) the borrowing of other languages' words and phrases will become so common that English may not be recognisable as itself anymore. I predict a future in which the common language of Earth is English-based, but takes 1/4 of its vocabulary from other languages, particularly Asian ones.


I agree, that seems like a very probable future for English. It's elasticity will both help it survive and make it unrecognizable...

Check this out from the Freakonomics blog

"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


wintermute

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Reply #48 on: May 29, 2008, 11:38:36 PM
http://www.rinkworks.com/words/funwords.shtml

Did you know that "spanghew" means "to cause a frog or toad to fly up in the air"?

Well now you do.

Science means that not all dreams can come true


wakela

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Reply #49 on: May 30, 2008, 01:16:01 AM
http://www.rinkworks.com/words/funwords.shtml

Did you know that "spanghew" means "to cause a frog or toad to fly up in the air"?

Well now you do.
Well, that makes it easier to tell my friends what my hobbies are.