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The imprecision of English

od sudanglo, 15. decembra 2010

Príspevky: 52

Jazyk: English

NiteMirror (Zobraziť profil) 15. decembra 2010 21:34:01

This topic is reminding me of an old Groucho Marx joke. "Last night I shot an Elephant in my pajamas. What he was doing in my pajamas, I'll never know."

Hmm, wish I had something a bit more meaningful to contribute, but ... ah, nope.

philodice (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 0:12:24

[quote=ViliusIronically, even after checking the meanings of "to pick up on", I do not fully understand the question./quote]Um, Neither do I.

I think he meant "Pick on" or "pick up", not a combination of both.

trojo (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 0:25:46

philodice:
ViliusIronically:, even after checking the meanings of "to pick up on", I do not fully understand the question.
Um, Neither do I.

I think he meant "Pick on" or "pick up", not a combination of both.
Maybe "pick up on" is only recognized in some English dialects but not others? (Which is weird because I understood it, but he's from southern England and I'm from Alabama... maybe it's a "southern" thing haha).

I understand "pick up on" as meaning to detect something subtle.

philodice (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 0:36:06

trojo:
philodice:
ViliusIronically:, even after checking the meanings of "to pick up on", I do not fully understand the question.
Um, Neither do I.

I think he meant "Pick on" or "pick up", not a combination of both.
Maybe "pick up on" is only recognized in some English dialects but not others? (Which is weird because I understood it, but he's from southern England and I'm from Alabama... maybe it's a "southern" thing haha).

I understand "pick up on" as meaning to detect something subtle.
Oh, right. I just haven't heard that in a while. Yes, that is what is meant.
My family and friends don't say that.

3rdblade (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 1:01:35

"Geoff said to Mike that he loved his friend."

That's a chestnut from one of the old EO textbooks I have. Though if I were writing that sentence I wouldn't put it like that.

yugary (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 3:18:43

The most common English words have more than a dozen different meanings each, so speakers have to depend heavily on context to divine what is intended. English wouldn't be nearly so much fun if it weren't capable of such imprecision and ambiguity, as in the following, often cited, jokes.

"The peasants are revolting!"

Mother: "Son, go next door and see how old Mrs. Johnson is."
Son (returning): "Mom, she told me it's none of my business."

Check out the following link for a few laughs.

English Ambiguities

ceigered (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 7:04:50

geo1963:
sudanglo:I have read comments from speakers of other languages that English is not a precise language.

Where does this idea come from? What feature of English are they picking up on.

Given the enormous vocabulary of English and that the verb system is much subtler than in many Continental languages, it seems a strange reaction.
Read articles of Claude Piron and you will get the idea. English is not precise. It is only that the English do not notice that fact. Enormous vocabulary, especially with not phonetically connected words (city - urban, moon - lunar, year - annual) is not an advantage but a burden.

Example of English ambiguity:

Union Demands Increased Unemployment.
Thanks for dinner. I’ve never seen potatoes cooked like that before.
Prostitutes Appeal to Pope.
We saw her duck.
I don't know what's so ambiguous here.
Only "prosititues appeal to Pope" is ambiguous as to whether "appeal" is a noun or verb, but it doesn't matter either way, since the meaning does not change - there is an appeal, the appeal is to the pope, and the appeal belongs to the prostitutes. There is only one basic meaning you can get out of that, the only difference is whether appeal is a noun or verb, which is unrelated to the consequential meaning of the sentence.
He could not agree with the amendments to the draft resolution proposed by the delegation of India.
Is this not equally ambiguous in any language?
If there were multiple resolutions:

Li ne povis konsenti kun la amendoj al la (draft) rezolucioj kiuj estis proponataj de India.

Then Eo is just as ambiguous as English in that sense.

I honestly think there are many ambiguous things in other languages, it's just that English gets a lot of attention because its "popular" at the moment. I mean, the Slavic case system can be highly ambiguous at times when prepositions aren't used, and even Latin had ambiguities (and prepositions weren't always used either) (e.g. "lupus", "lupi" and "lupo").

And RE those elephant pyjama and wooden leg jokes (which cracked me up I might add lango.gif), the same thing can be done in other languages anyway.

Anyway, ultimately it seems that English appears imprecise because it lacks the crutches that other European languages have in their declensions and verb conjugations. In English, as with Indonesian, Chinese, and even languages full of particles and markers like Japanese and Korean, there is a need to think outside the square to figure out the precise meaning of a sentence. So, in a way, such analytical languages can be easy in that words don't decline into a bazillion forms, but they can be hard in that it relies on the speaker to think more about the meaning than if they had a case marker or something telling them quite bluntly.

Rohan (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 8:25:41

ceigered:I don't know what's so ambiguous here.
Only "prosititues appeal to Pope" is ambiguous as to whether "appeal" is a noun or verb, but it doesn't matter either way,...
Actually, the ambiguity here is caused not due to any uncertainty about whether 'appeal' is a noun or a verb, but because of the multiple meanings of the verb 'appeal'.

Consider:

1. The NGO appealed to the UN for aid.
2. His out-of-the-box ideas greatly appeal to me.

'Appeal' in the second sentence means something close to 'attract', 'gratify'. It is this meaning that makes 'Prostitutes appeal to Pope', if misunderstood, highly scandalous.

Had 'appeal' been meant as a noun, an apostrophe would have been present right before or after the 's' of 'prostitutes'.

...

Isolated sentences divorced from their contexts, both discursive and physical, are bound to sometimes be ambiguous. And not just in English. What's the big deal? Almost all of the 'examples' of greater-than-average ambiguity in English presented here would acquire a clear meaning in one fell swoop if the contexts in which they were uttered were to be mentioned.

biguglydave (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 8:48:27

sudanglo:
Where does this idea come from? What feature of English are they picking up on.
As a native speaker of English, I understand what Sudanglo means when he says "to pick up on"; i.e. to detect a regular pattern of subtle impressions.

However, because I live in the US, I also understand that 5,000 kilometers of land between the seacoasts causes/allows/encourages a lot of variation. There are too many contexts, even for me, in US English; social, political, literary, regional, religious, historical, etc. I believe that there is a core group of "universal root words" in "business school English", but even I am not sure. I can't sense the difference between a "universally understood root word" and a "regionalism", precisely because I'm a native speaker.

For example, when I drive my vehicle eastbound across the Missouri River on highway 90 in the State of South Dakota, "a very expensive dinner" (tre multekosta vespermanĝo) turns into "a pretty pricey supper" (samsignife sed alivorte, tre multekosta vespermanĝo). When I moved into this region a few years ago, I encountered a lot of language surprises, even in my native country! "Imprecise", no, "diverse", yes!

Finally, I like Claude Piron's story about his first day in New York City as a 25-year-old, university-trained translator. He discovered a large difference between the English that he learned in Europe and the street English of New York City, but only in specific social situations. He was able to investigate and solve the problems using English.

Don't you think that he would have had the same problems and used the same solution in other places; e.g. Moscow or Beijing? I think so.

ceigered (Zobraziť profil) 16. decembra 2010 9:02:05

Ah thanks for that Rohan, it seems I am too *cough* innocent to grasp the subtle double entendre there! rido.gif

I guess then though that for those who point this out as being an English only thing, look at other languages around you and think about how imprecise they too are. E.g. the Esperanto suffix -eg-, does this mean "big" (physically) or "alot" (to a high degree)? One easily can guess from context. (as Rohan said)

Plus, we have some very ambiguous words in some "precise" languaegs like Latin etc. Almost every language actually shows how imprecisely words are rooted to their meanings, when one studies the etymology of a word okulumo.gif.

(actually, this came up in one of my Indonesian classes - when you want to translate the idea of "I think", do you say "I think (there are thoughts in my head)", or "I believe"? And even then, what does "thinking" or "thinking" actually entail? (I have translated the Indonesian believe in that example, but the actual words are "kira" and "pikir" respectively, and one would probably use "pikir" too, and the EO "opinii" probably translates to "menurut pendapat saya (according to my opinion) but that's beside the point)

Nahor