Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 v7 ucbtopaz-1.8; site ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucbtopaz!gbergman From: gbergman@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: natural language deficiencies? (Vocabulary) Message-ID: <598@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> Date: Sat, 3-Nov-84 01:33:23 EST Article-I.D.: ucbtopaz.598 Posted: Sat Nov 3 01:33:23 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 3-Nov-84 22:49:32 EST References: <12582@sri-arpa.UUCP> Organization: Univ. of Calif., Berkeley CA USA Lines: 95 Without trying to play "Your language more deficient than my language!", it is nonetheless interesting to list some ways that languages differ in what they can easily express. Here are some examples I have noted: Vocabulary: The English word "quaint" does not seem to have an equivalent in any language I have encountered. Most English/foreign-language dictionaries mistranslate it as "queer, old-fashioned". The one nearly acceptable translation I found was in an English-French dictionary: "pittoresque a l'ancienne mode". (This is the situation in which it is most commonly used, but I think that the "ancienne mode" is not necessary; most anything that we both enjoy and can look at in a patronizing way can be called "quaint".) I once asked a German-English bilingual friend for a translation. He thought for a moment and said "The quaint old street -- Das entzu"ckende Ga"sschen"; so the same feel can be achieved without reproducing the exact meaning of the word. "Quaint" is often used sarcastically or euphemistically to mean "old-fashioned" in a negative sense. But the speaker of English (unlike the writers of the dictionaries referred to above) is generally aware that this usage IS sarcastic or euphemistic. The history of the word is interesting: It comes from Old French "coint", a past participle which in modern French is replaced by "connu", and it went through a series of meanings including "cunningly contrived". So I guess that what was cunningly contrived to one generation was quaint to the next.... English does not have a word to render the combination of meanings shared by French "bonneheure", German "Glu"ck", Russian "shchastye" etc., which includes "well-being", "happiness" and "luck". It is not clear to me to what extent the word expresses a unified concept in those languages, nor whether each of those words translates the others perfectly. (The varied meaning of "happy", "happen" and "perhaps" in English suggest that the root "hap-" may have expressed a similarly broad collection of concepts.) The English word "privacy" seems hard to translate into most languages (not to be confused with "private property" which of course EVERY modern language can render.) However, I'm told that in (South American?) Spanish "intimidad" means "privacy" as well as "intimacy"; and a German said that "Privatspha"re" ("private sphere", with "private" in the sense of "private property" contributing the modifier) does it reasonably well. Some French colleagues who had invited me to speak and arranged reservations in a small hotel asked me the next day whether the people who ran it were "kind people". I realized that they were translating French "gentils" ("nice") and explained that one couldn't tell whether someone was kind without observing them in a situation where another person needed help, etc.. After some discussion of the English word, they were unable to come up with any French equivalent. (I mentioned this some time later to a French Canadian whose comment was that the French had no use for the concept.) I've been told that "lonely" is very hard to translate into Italian; maybe other languages as well. One has words meaning "alone", "solitary", which can *imply* loneliness, but not a word that explicitly expresses the discomfort coming from lack of contact with others. As a speaker of English, I've had more opportunity to observe English words that are hard to render into other languages than vice versa. Occasionally I've asked speakers of other languages for words in their language that are hard to translate. The one answer I recall was from a Rumanian: "dor" (I assume from Latin "dolor" "pain") means "anguished longing for things of one's past". Finally, for deficiency in the most extreme sense that participants in this discussion have referred to -- I generally find myself completely at a loss for words when trying to describe a person's personality! The words that our language gives us describe stereotypes, moral judgements, pet theories -- but not the very rich nature that I perceive when I observe a person. Actually, I have no idea whether the ways I perceive people's personalities are the same as the ways others do. Perhaps to try to create a general vocabulary for personality would be like having someone who is red-green color-blind and someone who is blue-yellow color-blind trying to create a vocabulary for color.... But maybe it is possible, and the deficiency of our language prevents us from organizing our perceptions in this area. (Of course, every theory, from the astrological to the Freudian to the personality-testing approach will have a vocabulary for the categories it posits; but I am skeptical of the validity of such theories.) "Vocabulary" is just the first of three or four categories I meant to include, but it could take me forever to finish this if I tried to get them all in. Maybe I'll get to some of the others another time. Re "gezelig" -- I suppose it is from the same root as German "Gesellschaft", which suggests that "friendly" or "companionable" might be reasonable translations -- in many contexts, at least? George Bergman Math, UC Berkeley 94720 USA ...!ucbvax!gbergman%cartan