Catfish-Man

David Smith

@Catfish-Man

“Listen: David Smith has come unstuck in time.” — Kurt Vonnegut, probably

Cohost bonus feature: 80% less professional

log inask
Catfish-Man
@Catfish-Man
Webster
@Webster
vogon
@vogon

a thing I often get sniped into thinking about is the phenomenon of multilingual people leaking information about their native language when speaking in languages they acquired later

e.g. in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5oSy1Cik50, Clem repeatedly refers to oxalic acid as "oxal acid" and my mind immediately went to "is 'oxalic acid' 'Oxalsäure' in German?"

turns out, yep! language is a set of interacting systems and it's fun to think about the hidden implications of it

Webster
@Webster

this has happened to me in reverse. when i was learning the words "viento" and "ventana" in spanish i was like "OHHHHH it's called a WINDOW because the WIND goes through it!"

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @vogon's post:

lexi
@lexi

(also, this also works in the opposite direction: "literally" directly translated literally means something completely different in german, but my dumbass sometimes says the more direct translation which completely misses the point but any english speaker gets it lol)

login to reply

in reply to @Webster's post:

kameronspottyfox
@kameronspottyfox

What's even weirder is when you find languages that don't even have a word for "to have".

Like in Japanese: you don't really say "I have a cat" it's more like "As for me, there is a cat."

Or in Irish/Welsh...it's not "I have a cat" but "there is a cat at me."

login to reply
Keeble
@Keeble

In fact, “window” is not a word with Romance language roots; it’s an old Norse root word that was competing with another Anglo Norman derived word that IS a cognate for “ventana”: “fenester”, which is still used in the context of the English word “defenestration”

login to reply
Pinned Tags