I was reading a Wikipedia article today on the Mayurakshi River, which flows through West Bengal. Here's the clip from the article that I'm curious about:

Mayurakshi literally means the eye of a peacock (mayur/mor=peacock, akshi=eye).

That's cool, but it doesn't mention which language the translation comes from. Is it Bengali? I tried to use the Google detect-language option, but that told me it was English, so...fail language detection is fail. =P Does anyone here know?

Is there any appreciation for the American accent in other languages? I love to listen to non-native speakers speak English and I'm wondering if anyone loves hearing native American English speakers speak other languages. I hope I wrote that clearly.

I always feel pressure to mimic a language and try to have no influence whatsoever from my American accent. It's to the point that I become more focused on sounding "right" than actually speaking.

Here's a cropped still from a Bones episode:



This is definitely not French. Is it some other Romance language or should it go to FailBlog? :)

UPD: Middle French. Thanks everyone.

Two passages from Samuel Beckett's Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce, 1929:

1. Vico

Giambattista Vico was a practical roundheaded Neapolitan. It pleases Croce to consider him a mystic, essentially speculative, 'disdegnoso dell' empirismo'. It is a surprising interpretation, seeing that more than three-fifths of his Scienza Nuova is concerned with empirical investigation. Croce opposes him to the reformative materialistic school of Ugo Grozio, and absolves him from the utilitarian preoccupations of Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle and Machiavelli. All this cannot be swallowed without protest. Vico defines Providence as: 'una mente spesso diversa ed alle volte tutta contraria e sempre superiore ad essi fini particolari che essi uomini si avevano proposti; dei quali fini ristretti fatti mezzi per servire a fini più ampi, gli ha sempre adoperati per conservare l'umana generazione in questa terra'. What could be more definitely utilitarianism? His treatment of the origin and functions of poetry, language and myth, as will appear later, is as far removed from the mystical as it is possible to imagine.

[I can guess that "disdegnoso dell' empirismo" means that Vico (according to Croce) disdained empirism, but I cannot divine the meaning of the bolded lines in the same way. Help?]

2. Dante

I find two well made caps in the 'Convivio', one to fit the collective noodle of the monodialectical arcadians whose fury is precipitated by a failure to discover "innocefree" in the Concise Oxford Dictionary and who qualify as the 'ravings of a Bedlamite' the formal structure raised by Mr. Joyce after years of patient and inspired labour: 'Questi sono da chiamare pecore e non uomini; chè se una pecora si gittasse da una ripa di mille passi, tutte l'altre le andrebbono dietro: e se una pecora per alcuna cagione al passare d'una strada salta, tutte le altre saltano, eziando nulla veggendo da saltare. E io ne vidi già molte in un pozzo saltare, per una che dentro vi salto, forse credendo di saltare un muro'. And the other for Mr. Joyce, biologist in words: 'Questo (formal innovation) sarà luce nuova, sole nuovo, il quale sorgerà ore l'usato tramonterà e darà luce a coloro che sono in tenebre e in oscurità per lo usato sole che a loro non luce.' And, lest he should pull it down over his eyes and laugh behind the peak, I translate 'in tenebre e in oscurità' by 'bored to extinction.'

Thanks in advance!

What are your opinions on the Voynich manuscript? I always wait for a news story saying it's been (at least partially) decoded, but it never comes...

I was listening to a British reporter on the radio today, who was in South Africa. He said he had learned an interesting thing about Afrikaans, i.e.that it was the only language in the world that had no English words. There was a special committee, and they decided on an Afrikaans equivalent for any English words they needed.

At first I was thinking, I don't believe that. The reporter doesn't speak Afrikaans and it sounds like an urban myth.

But as he spoke, it turned out he was talking only about Cricket. All the sports commentators apparantly have to use Afrikaans words for all the cricket terms, so a committee works out Afrikaans equivalents for things like 'follow on', 'maiden over', 'Night Watchman', etc. etc. etc.

That seems plausible, (think of L'Académie française! ... think of how TV news stations work out standards so all their news readers pronounce names in the same way) and if it's true it's very interesting.

Cambridgeshire, approx. 1570:

"Dr Tye was a peevish and humoursome man, especially in his latter dayes, and sometimes playing on ye Organ in ye chapel of qu. Elizabeth wh. contained much musick, but little of delight to the ear, she would send ye verger to tell him yt he play'd out of Tune: whereupon he sent word yt her ears were out of Tune"

Can anybody tell me what is meant by "yt"?

ETA: Problem solved, thanks all.

In movies, when surprised or perplexed with a hint at being in trouble, a character, especially a young one (often a kid), would utter an interjection that might be transcribed as [ɒ'əʊ] with the tone falling down towards the second syllable (hope I made myself clear enough).

How can it be spelt?

A while ago, we were talking in French class about some pictures in our text book ("who are these people? what are they doing?", etc...), and we were doing this in couples while the teacher was walking around in the classroom, listening to everyone.

I said: "blah blah blah... ils sont pleins d'espérance... blah blah...", and then the teacher said something like: "Oui, je crois que tu as raison; ils sont pleins d'espoir...". And then my classmate said something, and I replied, and it wasn't until the teacher walked away from us that I realized that she had corrected me! I was going to ask her about it, but I forgot.

So, what's the difference between "espérance" och "espoir"? I know that I pick up a lot of my vocabulary from Mireille Mathieu songs (in this case, the song "Un peu d'espérance"), and I realize that words from song lyrics are not always the best choice in every other context..... but in my French to Swedish dictinary they both translate as "hopp" = hope, and no other explanation. (The picture we were talking about was a group of smiling doctors from "Médecins sans frontières".)

A long time ago, I took a single semester of Hungarian on a scholarship, and being apparently masochistic I've recently gotten pretty interested in restarting/picking up my studies. Would you helpful people happen to know of any (preferably free) online resources I could use, at least until I can get back home to my books?

Secondly, though not exactly relatedly, what would be some believable Hungarian diminutives/nicknames for three triplets named Arisztid, Sándor and Zoltán? Preferably ones that could be used when they're little as well as ones for when they're older, if there's a difference, as I'm looking for them for a continuation of my NaNo story.

Thanks! :D

Current Mood: bored

A question to native English speakers.

"If you’ll just wait here, I will go get help" - does this phrase sound natural? If yes what does this trick? The word "just"?

Would "If you just wait here" sound natural and correct?

My question is primarily for native speakers of German ('standard' or dialects).

Are Hakenkreuz and Swastika synonymous, do they share the same connotation or not? What are the differences (in meaning and connotation)? Are these both used for the Nazi symbol or just one of them, and does this usage vary from dialect to dialect? Is there a difference between (spoken) dialects and Hochdeutsch (and generally between spoken German and 'standard'/bookish/scholarly German) in this respect?

Thanks in advance.

I saw a question posed in a magazine from someone writing in (theoretically) that talked about how she "itches her dry skin" and the complications that arise thereafter.

Doesn't the dry skin itch, and then she scratches it? Is this usage unique to a particular geographic area, or is it incorrect no matter where you go?

Thanks.

Current Mood: confused

I find myself using the above expressions, when I'm genuinely touched by someone being very noble, sweet or naive. Mostly preceded by "Awww..." (I emphatically do not mean it in a religious way. And I'm not talking about someone sneezing either.)

Is that just a weird solecism of mine?
In what situations would you expect to hear these expressions?
What kind of person would use them?

Maybe I'm about to find out that I'm talking like a schoolmarm here, but I'd rather blush and learn than stay ignorant. So don't spare me!

I've Googled this phrase and different things have come up, so I'm not sure what the right answer is. I'm putting it under the cut because it's mild profanity.

( Read more... )

I know that este/isto means "this" and esse/isso means "that", but what are the differences between este/esse and isto/isso? When is it appropriate to use the e demonstrative, and when do you use the i demonstrative? My family speaks European Portuguese, so if there's a difference, I'd prefer the European Portuguese distinction. Thanks!

From the LA Times: USC professor creates an entire alien language for 'Avatar'

Paul R. Frommer has created a new language for the upcoming James Cameron film Avatar: Na'vi. The vocabulary is about 1,000 words at this point. The article tells of Frommer's journey through making the language for the film.

The most amusing part to me was when he was disappointed about having to fit the language to human throats and voices.

Current Mood: thoughtful

...I run into this expression a few times, e.g.

"Donc par depis, je suis venu ici pour ..." ou bien "je fais une mise a jour windows par depis" ou "Je tente par depis de me connecter", ou "quelqu'un qui oublie par depis", etc.

however, I am not sure about the translation - sounds like "in spite of", "nevertheless", "despite"... ? Is this right? I cannot really be sure about what it means...

help, quelqu'un?

कल(kal) - yesterday; tomorrow.

1. Wait, what?

2. Can you think of the last time you learned something in a foreign language that had an immediate effect on your perception of something?

Maybe I'm not imaginative enough, but I never would have dreamed up a language that used the same word for "yesterday" and "tomorrow." I grasped quickly enough that verb tense would clear up the ambiguity, but still. It was enough to throw off my Hindi studies for the rest of the night due to philosophical musings.

Via pennyarcaderss

( Read more... )

Current Mood: amused

Hello all,

I'm writing a postcard to a friend in Japan. I studied Chinese in Uni myself so I know how to read (understand) and write the kanji in his address, but I would like to add a tiny little bit of Japanese to the card. I have in a very, VERY distant past been able to write all the katakana and hiragana as well, but I've forgotten so much of my basic Japanese that it seems like I never studied it at all!

So, the first question is : how do I address him properly in Japanese? Do I add -san to the kanji of his name? Or something else? The man in question is about 20 years older than me (I'm 27) but I consider him as a friend. I've been penpalling with him for almost a year and we talk about all kinds of stuff in our e-mails.

Then I would love it if someone could give me the kanji/hiragana of something like : "how are you?" and then "best wishes" or a similar form of closing the postcard.

Thanks in advance!

Hi, new here. Apologies for any missteps.

When I was growing up, my father had a phrase he'd say when he was particularly frustrated or exasperated at something. Phonetically, it sounds like:

Muh-go dee-ay-so dee-ah-lo

I use the phrase myself, as it became synonomous with "throwing up one's hands in frustration" for me, but dad doesn't know what it means (or it's something obscene that he won't admit to). He just knows he picked up from the "Greek kids" at school - early 60's, U.S.A., blue-collar steel mill town. (The town also had a heavy Eastern European population, so I haven't ruled out that it's actually Slovak or Croatian or something along those lines.)

Anyone have any idea what that phrase might be? I've always been curious about it. :)

As an English, or at least in my dialect (Mid-atlantic American), there is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. I'm a decently proficient Spanish speaker and I can't think of a parallel, so I was wondering is there is such a thing in Spanish, or other languages for that matter.

For me, loving someone is a deep-set affection - I love my parents, close friends, family members, etc. Being in love is only romantic and only used for someone who you could call a soulmate or something along those lines (I'm ignoring the colloquialisms of loving inanimate objects and other things, where love is used as an 'like a lot'). I say that I love my boyfriend, but I'm not in love with him. I feel like that is something that comes with time - I would expect a married couple to say they're in love, for example.

I do know Ancient Greek had this distinction with all those different types of love - eros, philia, etc. But I'm more interested in modern languages, essentially, words and phrases used NOW.

Any help?

Quick question:

Which language is this?



It's supposed to be the name of the language itself.

Excuse my ignorance, unfortunately I have absolutely no idea about Slavic languages, and I just copied the Cyrillic characters from wikipedia that looked like the ones on the piece of paper in front of me.

Thanks very much in advance!

Mystery solved, thanks!

Thought you lot might like this article from the BBC, promoting a Radio 4 documentary on political interpretation (which can be listened to online round the world, it's only the online tv that's limited to the UK)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3426257.stm

Translation trouble at top-level talks

By James Robbins
BBC diplomatic correspondent

What does it take to translate for a president or a prime minister? Can an interpreter's slip change the course of history? In Breaking The Language Barrier, some of the great interpreters talk of their experiences with US, UK and Soviet leaders - and confess that they sometimes tone down the language of their political masters.

Welcome to the world of interpreters - of linguistic high-wire acts and rapid-fire translation raised to an art form.

Interpreters are those almost invisible but quite indispensable people squeezed between two rival presidents, neither of whom speaks the other's language.

( continue reading )

So I'm citing a French source for an English paper in a French school (so the Prof will really nail me if I'm wrong), and I'm having some troubles translating a specific term.

My sentence is "Le souvenir de la tragédie des années 1940-1944 est devenue un enjeu de mémoire et de pensée contours diffus et aux visées incertaines."

So my problem is with the term "enjeu de mémoire". I guess the literal translation would be "stake of memory", but writing that "such and such was a stake of memory" sounds rather... odd (or is it just me?).

I know that in this particular course (on historical memory), the translations are really specific (for example, "Lieux de mémoire" = "realms of memory" and not "places of memory"), so there's probably a specific English equivalent.

There's probably a really simple answer and I just can't think of it.

Or does "such and such was a stake of memory" make sense and I'm just psyching myself out?

Help...

(Edited for html-fail)

hello all, i just received a ring for my birthday in sanskrit, i believe. i do not speak it though and i would like to get it translated. is there anyone who could do this for me if i took pictures of it? thank you!!

Any Thai or Tibetan speakers out there? I need help with translating some sentences. ( Read more... )

Any help is much appreciated!!

hello, i am a spanish speaker, and i am thinking about studying abroad in portugal. i don't think that i will have much trouble as spanish and portuguese are very similar, right?

do you know of any way to speak to native luso-portuguese speakers over the internet?

if you reply, please include your country of origin and your experience in romance

I'm battling with some quotes by Delacroix that I need for a presentation on Monday, and my French (even with the help of a dictionary) utterly fails me when it comes to these two. I'd be very very grateful if someone could help me translate them into English or German. Doesn't need to be perfect, I just need to get a sense of his attitude :)

"Le simple promeneur comme moi avait la chance d'attraper une balle ni plus ni mois que les héros improvisés qui marchaient à l'ennemi avec de morceaux de fer emmanchés(?) dans des manches à balai. Jusqu'isi tout va le mieux du monde. Tout ce qu'il y a de gens de bon sens espère que le feseurs de république consentiront à se tenir au repos."
(... sometimes I can't read my own handwriting ::headdesk:: I'm fairly certain about the first m in emmanché, afterwards it could be any combination of e/n/u/v. And there might have been a (sp) I didn't copy somewhere else)

"...et si je n'ai pas vaincu pour la patrie, au moins peindrai-je pour elle"

I was commenting on a post in another community I'm watching, and I used the phrase "the cart is pulling the horse" to describe someone with a mixed-up set of priorities. But then I looked up the phrase out of curiosity, and all the pages I could find said that it actually meant "putting something in the wrong order". Which would mean that I used it wrong.

I'm a native English speaker, but I'm still having trouble with this. Is anyone else familiar with this expression? Did I use it incorrectly? How do you use it, if you do?

And, for the love of god, I swear there was an expression or saying you could use to describe a situation where someone has their priorities backwards, but I can't remember what it was. Can anyone think of something like that?

Hi,

My boyfriend has to make a personal website for one of his classes, and he wants to include the phrase "Life is good, but (the/a) good life is better" in several languages. You can translate it however it makes sense to you since the meaning is kind of ambiguous to both of us anyway. It's more of an inside joke, I guess. We already have it in Arabic and Georgian but would like to make a list of the phrase in more languages. Thanks in advance : )

Hello,

I am currently undertaking a project about particular issues relating to Japanese-English translation such as composition techniques, compensating for translating into Kanji from Roman characters and any other matters unique to this particular language pair.

Any advice or links to sites would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I'm not sure it this is the right place to post this.
Anyway, I need an article written in German about a new medical discovery.
Maybe the cure of a new disease of the discovery of a new disease.
It'd be great if the language wasn't too complicated, and somewhat scientific (not too much).
But don't go searching for it (I'll do that myself). If you have an article lying around somewhere, or if you ever accidentally come across something, please let me know.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.

Hi everyone,

For various reasons I find it necessary that I learn Urdu. However, I haven't found many resources. I've checked the memories and not found much that's helpful. Do you guys have any thoughts?

Thank you!

To make a long story short, we were talking about Bosco sticks (bread sticks with cheese inside) in my German class today... But we couldn't decide if the proper term was "cheese-filled bread" or "bread-filled cheese".

So, what's the official verdict?

So I've been studying Portuguese at university for the last three semesters, where the dialect is pretty much strictly Brazilian and all of the instructors are Brazilian or only speak Brazilian Portuguese. However, my family is from Portugal, and that's where I'd be going when I go abroad to use my Portuguese more often. I know that the second person is virtually unused in Brazilian Portuguese, being largely replaced with você and vocês, but what I'd like to know is: what does European Portuguese do about the second person plural? Our textbook has the second person singular in all of its verb charts, but there is nothing about what European Portuguese does about the second person plural, and I can't seem to find a definitive answer on my own. I've been told by my Portuguese instructors here that the second person plural is archaic and no longer used; is this true in Portugal as well? I'm so confused!

Thanks in advance!

i have a few questions:

1) what's the difference between

- she has lived in new york for ten years
with
- she has been living in new york for ten years

2) what's the difference between

- i bought the book you recommended
with
- i've bought the book that you recommended

3) i (have or had?) seen that movie yesterday. because i just realized when i use "i have..." i rarely put any time in it.

further question will follow later.
thank you for your help.

Hello, friends. I have been asked to translate the phrase (from a mother to her dying son) "I will love you until the day after forever" into as many languages as possible. It is NOT for a tattoo, and I know it's a very awkward sentence to translate... which is why I'm asking here! My impression is that the literal meaning is not as important as conveying the message in a sentimentally poetic —perhaps one would even say nonsense — way.

So, here are my baseline attempts, in French and Japanese (please correct into idiomatic phrases).

Je t'aimerai jusqu'au lendemain de toujours


and actually, I'm not even going to try with Japanese.



Your help is greatly appreciated. It's for a good cause *~ *

Hi all, I've been using digital flashcards to practice my German vocabulary, but I'm thinking of better ways. Specifically, I'm wondering if there are any ways to make, so to say, three-way flashcards. Sometimes I want to add more information to the item that I want to learn, but independently from the meaning or the word itself.

Example:
Now, while trying to learn verbs and their prepositions, I use two entries:
1. warten (=word)
2. wachten (=meaning), auf+4 (=preposition)
It would be great, however, if I could store the information about the preposition in a third entry, and that with any prompt of 1 or 2, I would have to provide both other entries.

Does anyone know of a program that can do this? The only solution I'm seeing at the moment is making double sets of flashcards, and I'd like to avoid that.

1. Since I'm going to Europe at the end of the year (yay!), I'm trying to learn as much touristy French/Italian/German/Danish as possible. I've been looking up resources but there's so much and it all looks rather similar, so I was wondering if anyone has recommendations for specific books/online resources I could check out? In particular, I'm looking to learn the sort of phrases I'd need to get around (please/thank you/money and number words/left and right/where is my hotel etc.) and I'd really like to work on having a semi-decent pronounciation, so something with tapes would be great.

2. I've recently stopped taking Japanese classes but would very much like to continue learning it independently. I use the Genki textbook (wonderful, by the way) and have access to kanji dictionaries/readers etc., but I'm worried that without regular classes/consistent communication, I'll find it harder to get used to new grammatical structures and learn new vocabulary. For anyone else who's learned a language independently, have you found it comparatively harder to stay on track? How important would you say it is to find a buddy with whom to practice dialogue/motivate each other? Any tips in general?


Thanks in advance! ♥

Has anyone had a language evaluation done by Alliance Francaise? How did it go? I have one scheduled for Friday, and I wanted to know if there is anything I should to do prepare.

Thanks in advance!

I've been trying to create a phrase along the lines of déjà vu, yet not describing a feeling of experiencing a new situation previously. Instead, it would describe remembering something which never existed. The closest I've come is "souveniens le non-existant".

Any other ideas?

Hey everybody, does anyone know what the language on this page is?

Sample: "Tesabebae munnu geni choeng qu ewhisor iu gih brul fest balesuto soy thuiro. Rupesite munnu. Pishois lur mewho aet quit quit zi hidoi lanomme iano. Fasutelese sunena."

I found this page by misspelling a German word "keusche" as "kesuche" in Google. Some of the results mentioned Micmac, but I looked up a Micmac language sample and it appears to have more apostrophes than this, so I'm guessing this isn't Micmac... (/completely uneducated guess!)

What is the most common informal (or slang) term for 'police officer' in British English?

Are these French sentences okay?

"Je veux devenir comédien parce que je suis bon acteur. Je peux bien falsifier les émotions, bien articuler les mots, et bien projeter ma voix."

Merci!

Can you please recommend me some good articles about the evolution (and actually, gradual disappearance) of the declension of nouns in English. Thanks.

Are these sentences right or wrong?
If it's wrong what is the right one?

1. After dressing he watched the TV. can i not use the "the"?
2. He glanced at a radio on the other side of the room.
3. I'm good (at? on? in?) mathematics
4. (at? on? in?) television/youtube.
5. His hand is shaking from (nerves or nervousness?)
6. Too (much/many?) sounds. Why does my heart says it's many but my brain says much?
7. I started to read. What's the difference with "I started reading"

Thank you very much for your help.

edit:
which kind of sound would you think as noise?
what about when a microphone got loose and the speaker let out that screeching sound? is that noise?