Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)

[dhok]

If I recall correctly, Inuktitut doesn't really separate transitive and intransitive verbs; all intransitive verbs have transitive meanings when they take transitive endings. So eg qiqtuq means ” to come” when it takes intransitive endings and ” to bring ” when transitive. It may be worth noting that Inuktitut is heavily ergative, though how much of this matters I don't know. It's also worth noting that many concepts that would be full verbs in European languages, like the copula, are affixes in Inuktitut.

[Corundum]

Not as far as I'm aware. There's several words for lion: ˀaryē, lāb̠īˀ, layiš, and šaħal, but I'm not aware of any difference in meaning. The first is the common word, the second's poetic, and the other two are biblical.

I found this, where ˀarye is the African lion and laviˀ the Asian lion.

[linguoboy]

Times of day would seem to be a fruitful area to look at. German Abend is generally glossed as "evening", but the distinct between "evening" and "night" is more strictly observed. That is, in English usage, "last night" can mean any time from dusk until dawn. In German, however, gestern Abend generally means only "from dusk until bedtime". If you say someone called gestern Nacht, the implication is that they woke you up. Similarly, I was taught that Spanish tarde glosses English "afternoon" and only much later realised that it includes the (early?) evening as well.

[Cedh]

Times of day would seem to be a fruitful area to look at. German Abend is generally glossed as "evening", but the distinct between "evening" and "night" is more strictly observed. That is, in English usage, "last night" can mean any time from dusk until dawn. In German, however, gestern Abend generally means only "from dusk until bedtime". If you say someone called gestern Nacht, the implication is that they woke you up.

Indeed. In the summer months, Abend can start before dusk though; also note that there's the slightly idiomatic related noun Feierabend (lit. "celebration evening") which names the time after leaving work (which may be at noon if you only work half-time). I'd personally define Abend as "from shortly before dinner until bedtime", which for myself is typically from about 17:30 to about 1:00.

[linguoboy]

Indeed. In the summer months, Abend can start before dusk though[.]

I suppose that's true in English as well. No one would bat an eye at "What are we having for dinner tonight?" even though at this time of year there's generally another couple hours of sunlight after we finish eating.

[Ser]

Similarly, I was taught that Spanish tarde glosses English "afternoon" and only much later realised that it includes the (early?) evening as well.

In my dialect it's pretty much like this: mañana = from midnight to noon, tarde = from noon to dusk (~6:00 p.m.), noche = from dusk to midnight. It helps that sunset time is very consistent throughout the year in El Salvador due to being close to the Equator.

However, there is some influence of sleep here: if an action takes place until somewhere around 4:00 a.m. and you hadn't fallen asleep yet, you can refer to that time as noche. This can also extend in contexts where it's expected for people to stay awake throughout the night (or it's simply about them staying awake), like when talking about night-shifts for hospital residents or the like. However, if they woke you up at 2:00 a.m. then you'd refer to that as bien temprano en la mañana.

However, times between 1:00 a.m. to 11:59 a.m. are always appended by de la mañana regardless of whether you were sleeping or not: 1:15 is always la una y cuarto de la mañana.

No idea about other dialects.

[Astraios]

I found this, where ˀarye is the African lion and laviˀ the Asian lion.

Nope. I looked on Wikipedia and it doesn't mention anything about that. There's even only a page for ˀaryē ˀasyatī. It can't be anyway because the only word for 'lioness' is ləb̠īˀā, i.e. the feminine form of lāb̠īˀ.

[zompist]

I was taught that you never say Buenas noches / Bonne nuit unless you're going to bed, but apparently this doesn't track with the usage of noche / nuit in other contexts?

[Ser]

I was taught that you never say Buenas noches / Bonne nuit unless you're going to bed, but apparently this doesn't track with the usage of noche / nuit in other contexts?

That's definitely incorrect about Buenas noches. You can say it to say "hello, good evening" as long as it's during or past dusk.

[Ars Lande]

I was taught that you never say Buenas noches / Bonne nuit unless you're going to bed, but apparently this doesn't track with the usage of noche / nuit in other contexts?

That's correct about Bonne nuit. Nuit doesn't quite match in usage with English night either. I'd translate both Saturday evening and Saturday night as samedi soir. Unless you mean the whole night, in which case it's Dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche.

[hwhatting]

I was taught that you never say Buenas noches / Bonne nuit unless you're going to bed, but apparently this doesn't track with the usage of noche / nuit in other contexts?

That's correct about Bonne nuit. Nuit doesn't quite match in usage with English night either. I'd translate both Saturday evening and Saturday night as samedi soir. Unless you mean the whole night, in which case it's Dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche.

German is the same as French here - you say Gute Nacht mostly when you're about to turn in, or, sometimes, when parting with people late at night. It's never a greeting.
On the hamlet - village - town - city distinction: German has Stadt which covers both "town" and "city". Then there's Großstadt "big city", but that's more of a descriptive term. Most people I know call everthing that is smaller than a Stadt "Dorf" ("village"). There's a word Flecken for small villages, probably corresponding to "hamlet", but I've only seen that in older books and in geographical descriptions.

[Rui]

Forgot about this one in Mandarin: there are two words for "or".

或（者）(huo4 zhe3) is used with statements, while 还是 (hai2 shi4) is used with questions. There's something more subtle about it that I don't quite know, but I do know that they both translate to "or" in English, and are not interchangeable.

[linguoboy]

或（者）(huo4 zhe3) is used with statements, while 还是 (hai2 shi4) is used with questions. There's something more subtle about it that I don't quite know, but I do know that they both translate to "or" in English, and are not interchangeable.

This reminds me of the (somewhat different) vel vs aut distinction in Latin and the corresponding albo vs lub distinction in Polish.

A useful distinction I wish English had, from Cajun French: échiné means "tired from lack of sleep" as opposed to lasse and largue which both mean tiredness due to exertion, or tiredness generally.

[clawgrip]

Japanese yūgata is often translated as "evening" but it is actually more like mid to late afternoon, around 3 to 6 pm or so.

[linguoboy]

One supposed fact about Chinese that I'd like to have corroborated by other native speakers: Our Chinese teacher (a 外省人 from Nantong) told us that there is no excluded middle when it comes to Chinese adjectives. That is, bùhǎo means exactly the same as huài (and vice versa). This would be a significant contrast to English, where "not good" can mean "neither good nor bad" as well as "bad".

[Travis B.]

I was taught that you never say Buenas noches / Bonne nuit unless you're going to bed, but apparently this doesn't track with the usage of noche / nuit in other contexts?

That's correct about Bonne nuit. Nuit doesn't quite match in usage with English night either. I'd translate both Saturday evening and Saturday night as samedi soir. Unless you mean the whole night, in which case it's Dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche.

German is the same as French here - you say Gute Nacht mostly when you're about to turn in, or, sometimes, when parting with people late at night. It's never a greeting.

Note that English is basically the same way; people only use good night upon parting, never as a greeting, where instead one would use good evening.

[Qwynegold]

English distinguishes between "house" and "building", while Swedish "hus" covers more than "house", but I'm not sure about how much of "building" is covered.

Eh? Building is byggnad.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

English distinguishes between "house" and "building", while Swedish "hus" covers more than "house", but I'm not sure about how much of "building" is covered.

Eh? Building is byggnad.

In Swedish it's perfectly normal to refer to the WTC North Tower as norra huset, whereas house would seem out of place in English. The main building of my university is called universitetshuset in Swedish, but I suspect it would not go by University House in English.

[Ser]

I know one instance of a building being called a "house", and even then it's a very house-y kind of building.

Here it is:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... e_UBC..jpg

[Travis B.]

I know one instance of a building being called a "house", and even then it's a very house-y kind of building.

Here it is:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... e_UBC..jpg

Yes, occasionally buildings are referred to as houses in English, but typically then it is usually specific to particular buildings, often being part of their name.

[zompist]

English distinguishes between "house" and "building", while Swedish "hus" covers more than "house", but I'm not sure about how much of "building" is covered.

Eh? Building is byggnad.

In Swedish it's perfectly normal to refer to the WTC North Tower as norra huset, whereas house would seem out of place in English. The main building of my university is called universitetshuset in Swedish, but I suspect it would not go by University House in English.

Well, it could, but it would sound a bit archaic or British. We still talk about the Houses of Parliament or the House of Representatives, and the BBC is headquartered at Broadcasting House.

[gach]

或（者）(huo4 zhe3) is used with statements, while 还是 (hai2 shi4) is used with questions. There's something more subtle about it that I don't quite know, but I do know that they both translate to "or" in English, and are not interchangeable.

This reminds me of the (somewhat different) vel vs aut distinction in Latin and the corresponding albo vs lub distinction in Polish.

There's a distinction in "or" also in Finnish. The general word used in statements (regardless of their reality) is tai as in

Lounaa-seen kuulu-u kahvi tai tee.
lunch-ILL belong-3SG coffee or tea
"The lunch includes coffee or tea."

With multiple choice questions you use a special exclusive or vai:

Ota-t-ko kahvi-a vai tee-tä?
take-2SG-INT coffee-PART or tea-PART
"Do you take coffee or tea?"

You can also give non-exclusive choices in a question by using the general "or" tai. This means that you are asking about the general truth value of the interrogative proposition rather than singling out the choices:

Ota-t-ko kahvi-a tai tee-tä?
take-2SG-INT coffee-PART or tea-PART
"Do you take some coffee or tea?"

Outside questions you can use only tai regardless of whether its intended meaning is exclusive or not.

[Nortaneous]

I've never had a German teacher who could explain what the hell a Kneipe is, so there's that.

And has kennen/wissen been mentioned yet? That's the typical example.

How do other languages classify roads? English has 'road' and 'street', which as far as I can tell are interchangeable except streets are always paved whereas roads might not be, and then 'avenue' and 'boulevard', which are big streets, 'court', which dead-ends, and 'place' and 'drive', which I guess are supposed to sound classy but in practice just get thrown onto names when they don't feel like using 'street'. (Where I live, there's a foo Road that dead-ends onto a foo Drive.) I've gotten the impression that Germany has fewer words -- Straße is vaguely equivalent to 'street' but can be bigger, Gasse is only for very small roads, I have no idea how Allee works, and sometimes roads don't end with any sort of road word at all. But my German is shit so I'm probably wrong.

Also Latin terms for sex acts.

[Qwynegold]

English distinguishes between "house" and "building", while Swedish "hus" covers more than "house", but I'm not sure about how much of "building" is covered.

Eh? Building is byggnad.

In Swedish it's perfectly normal to refer to the WTC North Tower as norra huset, whereas house would seem out of place in English. The main building of my university is called universitetshuset in Swedish, but I suspect it would not go by University House in English.

Yes on the second example, no on the first. At least I would never call it norra huset, just norra tornet.

[finlay]

How do other languages classify roads? English has 'road' and 'street', which as far as I can tell are interchangeable except streets are always paved whereas roads might not be, and then 'avenue' and 'boulevard', which are big streets, 'court', which dead-ends, and 'place' and 'drive', which I guess are supposed to sound classy but in practice just get thrown onto names when they don't feel like using 'street'. (Where I live, there's a foo Road that dead-ends onto a foo Drive.) I've gotten the impression that Germany has fewer words -- Straße is vaguely equivalent to 'street' but can be bigger, Gasse is only for very small roads, I have no idea how Allee works, and sometimes roads don't end with any sort of road word at all. But my German is shit so I'm probably wrong.

It varies from place to place, naturally, but in the UK, they're pretty random. Within a city, a Road tends to be a long artery road, whereas a Street is normal. You don't get Streets outside of cities. In Edinburgh, though, you can get whole districts which have the same "name" for all their streets, but they have different names like Road, Avenue, Street, Court, Close, Crescent, Circle, Place, Drive, Terrace, etc etc (though I don't think you ever see Boulevard). An avenue is a street lined with trees, a court is I guess a dead-end (never really thought about it), close is the name given to alleys in Edinburgh, especially in the Old Town, crescent is a semi-circle shape, circle brings it back round again (you see this one in the Georgian New Town), place is an alternative to street, drive is a longer road than street but quieter than road, terraces tend to have terraced houses... except that when it comes to naming streets half these conventions are thrown out the window anyway. My home address ends in Road and it's a cul-de-sac. Also some cities and areas have idiosyncratic naming, like in Edinburgh you see Row and Loan (usually longer streets again), which I haven't seen anywhere else (maybe other places in Scotland?), and in York there were a lot of Gates – which actually refer to the street leading up to a gate, which itself was called a Bar (so for example, Micklegate leads up to Micklegate Bar – the first is the street and the second is the gate). I think you get this once or twice in Edinburgh somewhere too though.

In Japan most streets aren't named, and the address doesn't mention the street name anyway (it's done by district and block). They do have some named streets, though, which tend to be the more important ones. But there tends to be no limit on their length, so they can keep going for a long time if, for example, they lead out of the city. Generally, 通り (tori or dori) is translated as "street", but for very long streets like Inokashira-dori it feels inappropriate to translated it to Inokashira Street, because in the UK it'd probably be called a Road. They do also have 街道 (kaidou) for even longer roads, which tend to be arterial roads leading from the centre of Tokyo to another satellite town – for instance, I used to live next to Oume-kaido (青梅街道), which leads to Oume, on the western edge of Tokyo, quite far away. They tend to be translated as Avenue after the American fashion. I have seen other names, such as 道路 (douro), and I don't know exactly what the difference is, although again it's used for quite a long road, but can also be used as part of 高速道路 (kousokudouro), which means "high speed road" or highway. Also I hear the naming conventions in other cities like Osaka are completely different.