DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Even Greener Pastures
HTML https://evengreener.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Questions about the Use of Language
*****************************************************
#Post#: 13254--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Aliph Date: March 13, 2019, 7:01 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Kseniia link=topic=901.msg13243#msg13243
date=1552500960]
SuKi, well I'm not the one to blame! I picked this word in the
article Aliph mentioned -
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
. Why do you
monoglot anglophones use it in Wikipedia then?
(...)
I don't like the word "slur", it sounds weird.
[/quote]
I don’t like this word either. Looked it up on the dictionary
before posting the link. It sounds so much like another
derogatory word used to define a woman who has several sexual
partners.
#Post#: 13257--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Kseniia Date: March 14, 2019, 1:37 am
---------------------------------------------------------
@Gef, OK, OK, you've won. Does anyone know how to edit text in
epub books? I think I have to change "Christian eschatological
views" into "Christian worries about the end of the world". Oh
those anglophones adding these words into books just so they can
laugh at us later! "Ha, gotcha! No one really expects you to
know that, lol!"
@Sofia, interesting that we both don't like this word because in
my case it has nothing to do with any other words and meanings.
I just find it phonologically distasteful for some reason.
#Post#: 13258--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Kseniia Date: March 14, 2019, 1:47 am
---------------------------------------------------------
@Nikola, oh, my first reaction was to answer "magic!", but it's
even more interesting: "Christianity" + "something lost — or,
rather, acquired — in translation"
Just to be clear, this is how it works in Russian today (we use
different suffixes but the original meaning is easy to guess):
Monday:
понедельн&
#1080;к
(ponedél'nik) ~ after
"недели" + suffix
Tuesday: вторник
(vtórnik) ~ second + suffix
Wednesday: среда (sredá) ~ (cf.
середина,
средина = middle)
Thursday: четверг
(četvérg) ~ fourth + suffix
Friday: пятница
(p'átnica) ~ five (or fifth, it's not clear) + suffix
Saturday: суббота
(subbóta) ~ Sabbath
Sunday:
воскресен&
#1100;е
(voskresén'je) ~ (cf.
воскресен&
#1080;е
= resurrection)
Week: неделя (nedél'a) ~
"not doing anything"
[I think apart from
воскресен&
#1100;е
and неделя it's all quite
similar in Czech, isn't it?]
Now, it's pretty clear who is responsible for
воскресен&
#1100;е:
there were not too many institutions that could introduce the
word with the meaning "resurrection (of Christ)". As for
неделя, there is some
evidence that in Russian the word had had both meanings ("week"
and "Sunday") from the very beginning, i.e. since it was coined.
Knowing that in Macedonian and Bulgarian — which is important
because Saints Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius who are
credited with inventing the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets
and who translated the Bible into the language now known as Old
Church Slavonic were either Macedonians or Bulgarians —
неделя used to have both
these meanings, too. Some explain it by the fact that in Greek
(and Cyril and Methodius used the Greek version of the Bible, of
course) there was the same story with
σάββατα
(σάμβατον): it was used
both for "Sabbath" and for "week". So, when someone decided it
was a good idea to make the name of Sunday more Christian in
Russian, the other meaning of
неделя just died. RIP.
By the way, there is in fact a term for "week" that makes a
little more sense:
седмица (sedmítsa; ~
seven (more like a collective numeral) + suffix). Do we use it
in Russian? No, not really, but it's part of relatively "modern"
Church Slavonic so you can hear this word during religious
services in some Orthodox Churches.
#Post#: 13259--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Nikola Date: March 14, 2019, 3:35 am
---------------------------------------------------------
@Sofia
I think the concept of other nations/tribes (than yours) being a
bit silly or uncivilised used to be very common across the
world. Some people might still feel this way nowadays. I guess
it's one of the many skeletons in a nation's closet. What
puzzles me, though, is that people would choose one country
that's "muter" than others.
@Kseniia
Thank you for the thorough explanation. So the term was
ambiguous for quite some time and the same had happened with
Saturday. It just occurred to me that the reason for having the
same word for a day of the week and the whole week could be that
weeks were once counted in Saturdays or Sundays. "It happened
three Sundays ago." This is where the ambiguity might have come
from. It's similar to the Czech "léto" (summer) and "pět
let" (five years). A year is normally "rok" but you would say
"let" if the number is over four. I have a feeling you have
something similar in Russian.
#Post#: 13262--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Alharacas Date: March 14, 2019, 4:59 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Nikola link=topic=901.msg13259#msg13259
date=1552552529]
@Sofia
I think the concept of other nations/tribes (than yours) being a
bit silly or uncivilised used to be very common across the
world. Some people might still feel this way nowadays. I guess
it's one of the many skeletons in a nation's closet. What
puzzles me, though, is that people would choose one country
that's "muter" than others.
[/quote]
The explanation I found was as follows: while there was/is a
certain degree of mutual intelligibilty among speakers of Slavic
languages, when faced with speakers of Germanic languages, this
intelligibilty completely stopped - well, stops. So, it does
make sense, doesn't it? If you can sort of communicate with all
of your neighbours to the North, East and South, but once you go
West, you get those weird people with an utterly unrecognizable
language - that must mean they're kind of mute. :)
[quote author=Nikola link=topic=901.msg13259#msg13259
date=1552552529]
@Kseniia
Thank you for the thorough explanation. So the term was
ambiguous for quite some time and the same had happened with
Saturday. It just occurred to me that the reason for having the
same word for a day of the week and the whole week could be that
weeks were once counted in Saturdays or Sundays. "It happened
three Sundays ago." This is where the ambiguity might have come
from. It's similar to the Czech "léto" (summer) and "pět
let" (five years). A year is normally "rok" but you would say
"let" if the number is over four. I have a feeling you have
something similar in Russian.
[/quote]
That makes a lot more sense than the airy "Oh, it's just that
singular and plural are different for rok" I got. Thanks! :)
BTW, here are a few bits from a discussion on duolingo (link
below):
"Originally both rok and lato have nothing to do with time
measure. The first was etymologically linked with rzec (to
speak). In old-Polish rok was understood as a lawsuit. In the
most cases it was done to postpone payment for 12 months. Hence
we get rok as time measure.
Lato [i][summer] was understood more broadly than today as a
period other than winter, when agricultural works can be done.
(Now it is one of the 4 seasons of a year.) This form later was
extended to cover all the year. With time the regular plural
form lata spread."[/i]
"Interestingly though, when I looked into Proto-Indo-European
roots for "year," I found the word "lehto." "Lehto" obviously
turned into "leto" and, further, "lata." So, everyone used some
form of "lehto" for year until something else evolved or was
borrowed, but the Slavs seem to have held on to this ancient
word."
HTML https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/20097606/rok-vs-lat
#Post#: 13264--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Coligno Date: March 14, 2019, 5:15 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Nikola link=topic=901.msg13239#msg13239
date=1552494177]
We call Germans Němci. This is not considered derogatory,
it's the standard term for a German person, although němý =
mute. Does anyone else have a name for another country or their
citizen that used to have negative connotations but has become
neutral?
[/quote]
The Irish term Gael (or rather its Old Irish form Goídel,
pronounced /gˠoi̯ðʲelˠ/), meaning "Irish
person" comes from Welsh Gwyddel (pronounced
/guɨ̯ðɛl/), meaning "wild person, savage" (from
gŵydd = "wild"). It would seem to have originally been
somewhat derogatory, but the Irish apparently liked it and
adopted it as a name for themselves. The word is still used in
Welsh too to denote and Irish person, but it's completely
neutral nowadays.
#Post#: 13266--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Coligno Date: March 14, 2019, 5:20 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Nikola link=topic=901.msg13244#msg13244
date=1552501075]
Yes, we say "Židé" when we mean the nation, and we use lower
case "ž" in "židé" when we mean the religion. I have also found
the word "Hebrejec" but I haven't really seen it used. The word
"Židé" has no negative connotations. You'd have to add a
negative-sounding suffix to it to achieve that. It comes from
the Old Italian Giudio that comes from the Latin Iudaeus (a
person from Judea). So does the Polish Źyd, apparently.
[/quote]
Nowadays the word giudeo is considered offensive in Italian
(it's the term that was used during the Fascist era). Ebreo is
the acceptable term.
#Post#: 13267--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Coligno Date: March 14, 2019, 5:31 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Nikola link=topic=901.msg13249#msg13249
date=1552505811]
How did the word for "Sunday" and "not doing anything" end up
meaning "a week"? I can't get my head around it.
[/quote]
Another example of this is Indonesian/Malay: Minggu = "Sunday"
(from Portuguese domingo), but when not capitalised, minggu =
"week".
#Post#: 13268--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Alharacas Date: March 14, 2019, 7:23 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Coligno link=topic=901.msg13266#msg13266
date=1552558835]
[quote author=Nikola link=topic=901.msg13244#msg13244
date=1552501075]
Yes, we say "Židé" when we mean the nation, and we use lower
case "ž" in "židé" when we mean the religion. I have also found
the word "Hebrejec" but I haven't really seen it used. The word
"Židé" has no negative connotations. You'd have to add a
negative-sounding suffix to it to achieve that. It comes from
the Old Italian Giudio that comes from the Latin Iudaeus (a
person from Judea). So does the Polish Źyd, apparently.
[/quote]
Nowadays the word giudeo is considered offensive in Italian
(it's the term that was used during the Fascist era). Ebreo is
the acceptable term.
[/quote]
Coligno, SuKi (and everybody else, of course), what would it
sound like in English if somebody called a jewish person
"Hebrew" these days? I'm just wondering because it seems a bit
strange that the word Jude hasn't been replaced in German. I
mean, we tend to avoid the word by using some sort of different
construction with the adjective jüdisch instead. For instance, a
publisher would probably try to change a book's title from
"Juden in Europa heute" (if that's what had been suggested by
the author) to something like "Jüdisches Leben in Europa heute",
but it's definitely not considered taboo. And Hebräer would just
sound weird, unless you were talking about a member of a tribe
in biblical times.
I remember coming across "Hebrew" in George Eliot's "Daniel
Deronda" and being quite bewildered by it (I was a teenager at
the time). I think it took a while, or I may have had to ask my
aunt in order to understand it meant Jew/jewish.
This is what wiktionary says under
HTML https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jude#cite_note-9
"Gelegentlich wird die Bezeichnung Jude, Jüdin wegen der
Erinnerung an den nationalsozialistischen Sprachgebrauch als
diskriminierend empfunden. In diesen Fällen werden dann meist
Formulierungen wie jüdische Menschen, jüdische (Mitbürgerinnen
und) Mitbürger oder Menschen jüdischen Glaubens gewählt."
Roughly translated: Sometimes, the words Jew, Jewess (?) are
felt to be discriminatory because of their use in Nazi times. In
those cases, a different wording like jewish people, jewish
citizens or people of jewish faith is chosen instead.
#Post#: 13270--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chinamen / Chinese people
By: Nikola Date: March 14, 2019, 11:25 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Alharacas link=topic=901.msg13262#msg13262
date=1552557551]
The explanation I found was as follows: while there was/is a
certain degree of mutual intelligibilty among speakers of Slavic
languages, when faced with speakers of Germanic languages, this
intelligibilty completely stopped - well, stops. So, it does
make sense, doesn't it? If you can sort of communicate with all
of your neighbours to the North, East and South, but once you go
West, you get those weird people with an utterly unrecognizable
language - that must mean they're kind of mute. :)
[/quote]
I get why we would call you mute :) I don't get why the Arabs
decided that of all the countries, Austrians were the ones to be
called mute. Unless they decided to use it exactly how the Slavs
did - for German speakers.
What we do with the word "rok" and "léto" has something to do
with our weird way of forming plural, depending on the actual
number of items. Usually, it's just a different ending, though,
not an entirely different word.
1 pes (one dog), 2 psi, 3 psi, 4 psi, 5 psů, 6 psů, 7
psů... 100 psů.
It changes from the nominative case to genitive once it hits
five. It's like saying "five of dogs" :)
*****************************************************
DIR Previous Page
DIR Next Page