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?

Hej

Vi är sex studenter som läser Kultur, samhälle och mediegestaltning vid Linköpings universitet.

Under hösten ska vi göra en bok med bilder och berättelser från och om Sverige. Bakgrunden till vår idé kommer av att vi vill skildra vardagslivet i Sverige, till skillnad från informationsmaterial där man lyfter fram det unika och exklusiva med landet, t.ex. traditioner som sker en gång om året och slott som ingen bor i. Meningen med berättelserna i boken är att ge läsaren inblick i vardagslivet i Sverige ur olika perspektiv. Fotografier kommer sedan att illustrera berättelserna på ett fritt och konstnärligt sätt.

För att samla in berättelser till boken behöver vi din hjälp. Vi skulle vilja att du fritt berättar vad du tänker på när du ser dessa ord:

Sverige – Vardag – Dig själv

Din berättelse kan vara en rolig anekdot, något du iakttagit, en händelse ur ditt liv, etc.
Skriv ner din berättelse (max 1 A4 sida, tack) och skicka den till oss. Texten kan komma att publiceras i vår fotobok, men enbart ditt förnamn kommer att stå som avsändare. Vi välkomnar berättelser på alla språk, skriv gärna vilket språk det är så att vi kan identifiera det. De utvalda texterna kommer att publiceras på originalspråket.

Besök vår blogg http://vardagssverige.wordpress.com där du kan läsa författarnas egna vardagsberättelser och inspireras!

Skicka din berättelse till:
vardagssverige@gmail.com

Vill du använda den gamla hederliga snigelposten går det också bra:
VardagsSverige
c/o Ulrika Sund
Linköpings universitet
ISAK/KSM
601 74 Norrköping

Dessutom kan du gå med i Facebookgruppen VardagsSverige.

( Read more... )

A little OT, but related... I promise!
I'm looking for respondents for a survey on language perceptions of bilingual Hispanics and Latinos in the United States.... if any of you have time, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FILL THIS OUT.
Here are the links...
Part 1: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LSGBPPJ
Part 2: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LTMXVS2

I really appreciate your help! Thanks!

And there's also this video (from the same podcast series) on the topic of Gaelic and the dying out of languages. It's also really awesome. :)

I'm working to translate "Erdbeben" by Fettes Brot for my German class, and I was having trouble making sense of this line:

"Vom Haus mit Pool in der besten Lage
bis zum sozialen Brennunkt. "

I have tried to look up Brennunkt on some online dictionaries, but i can't find it anywhere. I also checked other versions of the lyrics, and they all have it spelled that way. What does this mean, if anything?

eta: Okay, Brennpunkt makes a lot more sense.

I'm also having issues translating the following line:

"Ich mach dick hier ein auf Player."

Is this another typo in the lyrics, or does this make sense?

My French dictionary translates "le libéralisme" unhelpfully as "liberalism", however, according to my professor, the word actually means something closer to "free market". This sounds to me more like what we'd call "classical liberalism" in English, which is actually rather conservative by modern standards.

My question is, does "le libéralisme" have the same dual meaning in French that "liberalism" does in English, or is it used exclusively to refer to classical liberalism? If so, what would one call modern liberalism? Also, could some one who supports a free market be referred to as "libéral"?

So, I just encountered the word "canæt", used seemingly instead of "cannot". Can anybody tell me where this word is used, or anything else about it?

Добрый день, дорогие русскоязычные сообщники!

Появилась насущная необходимость разграничить три термина, которые, на русский в 99% случаев переводятся как "болото"

Вот что говорит Лонгман по этому поводу:

Marsh - area of low flat ground that is always wet and soft
Bog - area of low wet muddy ground, sometimes containing bushes or grasses
Swamp - land that is always very flat or covered with a layer of water

Помогите, пожалуйста, найти адекватные русские эквиваленты!

This man is aggressively articulate. He speaks with authority. For some reason I still think he has a terrible point, though.

Do you guys, like, maybe have any thoughts about it or anything?

while watching the music video for "Inis Mona" song by Eluveitie i noticed an ogham inscription [it's at 2:50]:



( screenshot )

is it "alattocelibac"? at least that's what i've deciphered. :) what does the inscription mean anyway?
thanks in advance!

I am just trying to transcribe a sentence from this clip in Italian (0:34). Is this correct?
"Siate prudente voi, quando verrete a arrestare me."
I'm also curious what the Russian translation for this sentence would be.

Does anyone still call a boy Knabe, or is it only Junge now?

Poll #1485397 About Russian
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 19

How fast can a foreigner learn Russian? (months)

German is my mother tongue, but somehow, this one's a real puzzler for me right now.

I'm looking for the right preposition. I'm not sure which of the following is correct:

1. Wer in einem Trollfaden kommentiert, verlängert unser Leiden.


2. Wer auf einem Trollfaden kommentiert, verlängert unser Leiden.


3. Wer auf einen Trollfaden kommentiert, verlängert unser Leiden.


4. Wer einen Trollfaden kommentiert, verlängert unser Leiden.

Foreigners
I would like to know if Russian linguist Michail Zadornov is known to foreigners
He is a popular TV superstar in Russia and recently he invented a very interesting linguistics theory which is liked by many millions of Russian people and according to some rumours his theory is popular in Kremlin also.
He proves that the Russian language is the first language among human languages and all words have sacred meaning which is understandable if you apply his linguistic analysis
For example,

American. Who is American? American is a cowboy. What is a cow? Cow is говядина. ГОВядина is related by common root to ГОВно (shit). So "American" is a "shit-man".

see many other examples here
http://nostradamys.ru/Rus.html

How would you get conversation practice in a language with limited access to other speakers?

I need to have my French evaluated by January for a program I'm applying to, and while I have been practicing my grammar with workbooks and my listening with podcasts, I need to get my skills in shape for actual conversation. I'm sure it'll all come back to me, but my skills are very rusty as I haven't been in a French class in years.

The problem is that I can't find any sort of class or conversation group. I've checked meetup.com, craigslist, google, local university websites, etc. All I have found so far is one Alliance Francaise class that conflicts with my schedule and a tutor that charges $50/hr. My school doesn't have any regular French table or anything, either (I believe there are only a couple of French majors). I don't know any native speakers and we don't have any francophone exchange students. Even on livemocha.com I haven't found many French speakers that want to chat. It shouldn't be that hard to find places where I can practice a very common language but I'm running out of ideas!

Anyone have suggestions for me? I might hire the tutor but I can't afford more than a couple of hours.

In English, the word "play" has several unrelated meanings. For example, you can play a game, or you can play a musical instrument. German also uses the same word for both of those meanings of "play", even though it's not a cognate. Is there a word for this phenomenon?

The post below (from this blog last year) about Basque mythology sounds like it could be a cultural recollection of Neanderthals.

The very last site where Neanderthals are known to have survived is in Spain, although it was in southern Spain rather than the north where the Basques live now.

A genetic analysis done in the past year or so concluded that the Neanderthal individual that the material came from had red hair.

Basque is said to be mysteriously unrelated to any other language. I have long wondered if Basque might carry some remnants of a Neanderthal language. It is an interesting coincidence that the "Basque" called these people "Basajaun."

I'm sure many of you have heard of this before but the specifics were news to me when I ran across them this evening. Thought it was cool in a linguistic sense so I'm posting it here. Anybody know any further details about this and how it might relate to the Basque language?

Below I am quoting the post that I found interesting ...
------------
In Basque mythology, the basajaun (plural: basajaunak) were an ancient human race of stout, hairy wild men who were megalith builders.

Basajaun means "Lord of the Woods", they once dwelled in the mountains of the Basque Pyrenees of northern Spain and southern France and had knowledge of magic. The Basajaun was heavily built and about 2 to 3 meters tall. Dark reddish hair reached their knees. They were very agile, strong, hairy beings with animal characteristics.

The Basajaun watch over the forests and all wild creatures. They are rural genies, also called the Wild Lords, also considered to be the protector of flocks. When comes a storm a Basajaun will shout warnings to the shepherds; and they prevent wolves from approaching flocks. They are the first to have cultivated the earth.

Human beings obtained the right to cultivate the earth when a man won a bet with a Basajaun. He stole the seeds that the Basajun was sowing and he came back to his peoples to teach them how to produce food.

A fascinating article in Danwei.

US President Barack Obama will make his first visit to China from November 15-18. To mark the occasion, he's changing his name.

"Obama" is transliterated in the Chinese press as 奥巴马 (àobāmǎ), but a promotional poster distributed yesterday by the US Embassy uses 欧巴马 (ōubāmǎ)... "according to Susan Stevenson, press spokesperson for the US Embassy, the US government was standardizing the Chinese translation of the president's name to clear up the current confusion between the two transliterations, and from now on it would use ōubāmǎ exclusively."

The Xinhua News Agency keeps an archive of transliterations, and the Mirror confirmed that, like media organizations across the mainland and in Hong Kong, Xinhua has always rendered Obama as àobāmǎ. But a former polling station volunteer told the newspaper that on Chinese versions of last year's presidential ballot in New York, Obama's name was transliterated as ōubāmǎ.

A Mirror reporter spoke to noted ambassador and translator Guo Jiading (current vice-president of the Translators Association of China, former director of the foreign ministry's translation office, and a translator who worked with Zhou Enlai and Dengxiaoping). Guo said that Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, should be pronounced bə'rɑ:k hu:'seɪn oʊ'bɑ:mə. If he were to transliterate it, he would render it as bèilākè hóusàiyīn àobāmǎ (贝拉克·侯赛因·奥巴马). "Xinhua is right. There's no problem there," Guo said.

Guo Jiading said that according to standard practice, a name transliteration that has been in use for a while cannot be casually changed; unless Xinhua changes its rendering, the Foreign Ministry will not agree to switch àobāmǎ for ōubāmǎ. He said that the transliteration of Kissinger's name was incorrect — it ought to be 基辛杰 (jīxīnjié) instead of 基辛格 (jīxīngé), but once the mistake was made, it continued to be used.

Current Mood: curious

Hi there!

In the HBO series Carnivale there is a Russian character named Lucius Belyakov, and I'm curious about the form of his daughter's and son's patronymic, since Lucius is not a traditional Russian name. I've googled Луциусович and Люциусович (and Луциусовна / Люциусовна), but got no results for any of those.

I understand that the Russian form of Lucius is most likely Lukian (лукиан or лукян) and there are 1000+ results for лукианович / лукянович (fewer for the female form), and since this is just for fun -- I'm teaching myself Cyrillic script handwriting and I want to practice -- I could always go with that. I just wanted to be as correct as possible. :)

Thanks!

A friend of mine found This Image and was curious about the content. I don't speak any Korean, but I thought you clever folks might be able to lend a hand?

Synopsis is OK, but a full translation would be nice, esp if it says anything interesting.

Thanks in Advance!

Hello, hello.

I'm looking for help with the correct pronounciation of a couple of Welsh words. A recording would be perfect, but I might be able to get by with phonetic script. Neither I nor anyone else in my class speak Welsh, which is why I could easily make something up, but nah. :D I'd rather not.

Here you go:

- Cenhinen
- Cenhinen Pedr
- Y Ddraig Goch
- Llewelyn
- Owain Glyndwr
- Eisteddfod
- Gwlwm Celtaidd
- Eryr
- Llyn Llydaw

Thank you very much in advance. I hope the spelling's correct.

A friend and I are wondering what the equivalent phrase of "come as you are" is in French. Thanks!

How do you say "I am so over that" in other languages?

Current Mood: curious