/lit/ - Literature

Enjoy the bratwurst

>>23479640
I always hear about words in other languages that can't be translated to English, but I'm curious whether there are English words which are hard to translate into most languages.

>>23479640
I heard there's no such thing as a truly untranslatable word. There may be some words that are harder to translate and require a clunky exposition to get the meaning across to an Anglophone, but nothing so foreign that it can't be expressed.

>>23479646
>>23479658
A lot of the problem is not all languages conceptually match up. Some basic things like counting, colours, body parts, directions, are divided differently, but there's also a variety of contextualised information which only arises from viewing the world through that language. Sure, you can translate the two kinds of blue from Russian into English, but it won't give your eyes the extra cones needed to detect the difference that native level Russian speakers have.
Beyond that, different phenomena take on different metaphorical meaning, so where a French person feels ants, an English speaker feels pins and needles.

>>23479676
Good post, anon.

>>23479676
>extra cones
what are you babbling about you retard
Linguistic differentiation is not a superpower

>>23479676
>a French person feels ants, an English speaker feels pins and needles.
This is a translation amd 100% clear

>>23479676
The Russian blue thing doesn't really work, since Cyan is a word that already exists for the extra shade of blue they have. There's a million words for a million different shades of colours in English, even for more obscure stuff like Ochre and Puse

>>23479646
Trámite, From Argentine spanish:

It most closely translates to paperwork, but it also inseparably conveys the act of having to go somewhere far and inconvenient to sign it, and the annoyance of the act as well, as it is assumed that it will be a bullshit form anyway, that there will be some complication, and that there will be lots of waiting in municipal plastic chairs

>>23479708
Russian speakers develop more blue cones in their eyes and so differentiate colour better than English speakers. In other news, your nervous system responds to stimuli, and, water is wet most of the time

>>23479717
this is a translation

>>23479719
This is not only false but stupid
Russians categorize blues differently but they are perceptible to anyone not colorblind
They don't have "extra cones", whatever that means

>>23479716
>Cyan is a word that already exists for the extra shade of blue they have.
You seem to think cyan (in its various shades) is considered a light(?) blue by Russian, and that they have no word for cyan. It's almost like you're not seeing what they are.

>>23479742
I look forward to your scientific discovery disproving the connection being published.

>>23479745
4 Russian speakers born to Russian parents
1 born in Moscow
1 in Eastern Kazakhstan
1 in Siberia
1 in Brazil
All will make the blue color distinction due to growing up native Russian speakers
What 'stimuli' are their nervous systems responding to that others' aren't?

>>23479755
Firstly, they won't all make the distinction the same as their immersed native parents.
>>23479755
>What 'stimuli' are their nervous systems responding to that others' aren't?
You can't be this dumb that you're trying to argue learning a language is not several stimulating experiences for your nervous system and beyond.

>>23479719
What the fuck are you talking about you retarded gorilla nigger? The rods and cones in your eye are developed according to your genes, they don't fucking develop according to the language coming out of your mouth you fucking idiot.

Literally the most moronic shit I have ever read in my life

>>23479717
rigmarole

>>23479768
They will
The distinction is cultural and linguistic, not physical
There is 0 evidence of Russian speakers having 'extra cones'. If a nigger is born and raised in Moscow by Russian parents he will also perceive blue as they do.
Perhaps you are thinking of the following
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1876524/
>These results demonstrate that (i) categories in language affect performance on simple perceptual color tasks and (ii) the effect of language is online (and can be disrupted by verbal interference).
Nothing about 'extra cones'

>>23479778
>>23479784
You know your eyes have all these nervous connections which tie up to your brain and depending on what your brain thinks colour divisions are, they prefer to maintain some connections above others.
>They will
They won't because they're not all immersed, and there are plenty of studies about second language confusion.
>The distinction is cultural and linguistic, not physical
The physical is sculpted by both of those stimuli. That is also why you can grow parts of your brain to different shapes and sizes, or lose portions of it, over the space of months through stimuli like taking a job training course.

>>23479640
>truchement --- [French] the word encapsulates getting something specifically through your personal connection to another person, and typically by that other person speaking on your behalf.
There really isn't an English word for this because "truchement" isn't context specific. English has things like nepotism, or maybe networking depending on the context. Closest word would probably be recommendation with a few adjectives thrown onto it, but it's not really a recommendation. Maybe some frog can explain it better. I'm not a frog.

>>23479676
>where a French feels ants
English persons feel ants too, anon, if in the strictly limited vicinity of their pants.

>>23479640
"something you can't get used to" apparently exists in my language but no other language
>pic
would... hire her

>>23479859
If I'm understanding this correctly then it sounds like how in English we would say "I have connections" like "I got the job through my connections".

>>23479646
"Please".

>>23480411
Or putting a good word in

>>23479719
>Russian speakers develop more blue cones in their eyes and so differentiate colour better than English speakers. In other news, your nervous system responds to stimuli, and, water is wet most of the time
There are a huge number of ways to refer to specific colors, as well as general colors in the English language, but trying to translate specific foreign terms into English, can and may be problematic, since even the average “fluent” English Speaker, gas little to no understanding of the various terminology specifics within the English language.
This article on color terminology helps point out part of the issue, and I doubt that 99.9% of supposedly fluent English speakers would be knowledgable and capable of using most or all of the terms correctly.
https://www.kategreendesign.com/kate-green-art-information-blog/what-does-colour-hue-value-tone-shade-and-tint-mean-when-talking-about-a-painting
The next issue is the terminology used for colors related to certain specific subjects.
Most “Black” people, as the term is used in America and Britain, don’t really have “Black” skin, as far as the term representing the color or “Value” goes.
There are exceptions to skin color where the people from certain parts of Africa do have skin so dark that the color value us actually close to “Black”.
The term “White” for skin color is also problematic, since most “white” people don’t really gave a skin color or value close to the color terminology fir “white”, although some Albinos, Gingers, and other Caucasians, do have very pale skin that might be somewhat close to a “white” color value.
Similar issues exist for eye color.

>>23479640
>Try to translate a untranslatable word from a language you know fluently (or profciently) as best can into English
Mate (Australian): Cunt.
Cunt (Australian): Mate.

>>23479676
Retarded sapir-whorf nonsense. You don't filter sense impressions via language, you don't "tell yourself" what you're seeing before seeing it. An English speaker will distinguish between dark and light blue as the Russian does between cиний and гoлyбoй.
You might of course become more conscious of your impressions by reading sensual prose, everyone here surely knows this effect of seeing the world differently for a while after a great author made you aware of what to look at, but that's not a langauge-specific physiological change.

>>23479640
竟然 - surprisingly, unexpectedly, actually. like a pivot word to show unanticipated information
顺利 - smooth, unhindered. an adjective describing an action flowing 顺 without problems and thus resulting in profit/good use 利
利用 - to use something in a way that benefits you

>>23479640
Pic related. The beauties of the Celtic languages make me sad they never developed into a proper literary culture.

>>23480879
FAAAAAAAAARK

>>23480883
>>23480879

>>23479805
>The physical is sculpted by both of those stimuli. That is also why you can grow parts of your brain to different shapes and sizes, or lose portions of it, over the space of months through stimuli like taking a job training course.
Yeah, but not the literal rods and cones in your eyes. The reason why Russian speakers differentiate blues more easily is because their common language has an extra word for differentiating blues. If Swahili had a word for every color between #FFFFFF and #000000 and those words were ingrained in people since birth then they would be able to differentiate colors better than anybody else on the planet. You don't grow better rods and cones in your eyes because you speak a certain language, if that were true then colorblindness could be cured by learning Russian. Absolutely retarded.

>>23480879
They did. They just didn't continue because Northumberland influenced Scottish nobility and later England conquered Wales and Ireland.

>>23480901
>If Swahili had a word for every color between #FFFFFF and #000000 and those words were ingrained in people since birth
That would be reflected in their brain structure with a large amount of the brain mass devoted to thinking about colors. Maybe that includes more actual rods and cones since they're basically neurons. It hasn't been demonstrated either way but his model isn't implausible, it's how brains generally work.

>>23479640
>>23479008
>>23478921
>>23479397
>>23480135
>>23478093
Why the fuck you faggots flooding the catalog with beautiful women today? Is this a new psyop?

>>23481164
>Maybe that includes more actual rods and cones
>>>maybe
There is no maybe, it's no. We literally know the exact sequence of genes that code for production of rods and cones, and we can edit those genes to create rats with a deficit/surplus of cones which impacts color vision. There is no neuroplasticity in those cells, they don't change after birth

>>23481315
>There is no neuroplasticity in those cells
You don't know if there is any and you're a fucking retard.

>>23481315
>they don't change after birth
That's untrue. Colour vision and depth perception require infants to grow enough to have the physical capacity and fovea strength for them. The rods aren't long enough to distinguish that much when they're born and cones need to strengthen and then they start working out the opponent process. That's generally at a point where they already comprehend some language. New born children don't have big enough eyes for things like focal length to work for them, let alone colour vision the way adults experience it.

>>23481229
The ancient psy-op known "heterosexuality"

>>23479783
Not the same. What the other anon is talking about is always a bureaucratic hell, and when it’s not, it feels like one.
At the same time, for some reason, that same word is often used for things that take little time, something akin to “in and out.”

>>23481229
I love beautiful women so much bros

>>23480883
Sounds a lot like heimwee which is Germanic I think.

>>23480883
Saudade.

>>23481327
New cells growing is not neuro plasticity, its hyperplasia. Besides the point there is no neo-neurogenesis and your hypotheses has no physical basis or research to support it. So please stop your word games which only a layman can take serious…

>untranslatable word
>add it to English
>it's now an English word
Simple as

>>23481667
The neuroplastic part anon is referring to is probably in the brain. The current theory of how it works is the information from your eye has different levels of priority within your brain. More cones anon probably is describing a greater priority for blue, so less of that information is seen as noise. The plastic bit is the noise filter we all have, and the Russian one has better atuned to blue.

>>23481667
>your hypotheses has no physical basis or research to support it
Not mine, they do and you're a fucking idiot. Anything you say about any subject will be worse than useless, cancerous even.

>>23479646
“Random”
In Italy a lot of the math papers here just use the English word “random,” or substitute it with an awkward word like fortuito (by chance) or casuale (accidental), which don’t convey the mathematical property of randomness like English can with such a common word

Argentinian slang that is translatable to English, but loses its charm:
>Boludo
>Pelotudo
>Gil
>Laburo (from the italian lavoro)
>Wacho/Chabón/Flaco/Pibe (all ways of saying guy)
>Reversing syllabes (cufa, dogor, grone, lorca)
>Flashear/Flashero/Flasheando
>Mal (used to agree with someone)
>Peroncho/Kuka/Globoludo/Pubertario (political insults)
>Gagá/Corki/Viejo Meado

>>23481721
It's a problem for a lot of finance
>Luck means success
>Risk means opportunity

>>23479717
In America you could just say "going to the DMV" and it would convey the exact same sentiment.

>>23479717
¿Estas seguro que trámite no existe en otros países? Siempre se me hizo una palabra increiblemente común.

>>23479646
As a native Spanish speaker, I find "like" and "love" as terms that don't translate with the meaning into Spanish

"Like" is "gustar", and "love" is "amar"
When talking about anything that doesn't involve another person it's quite straightforward. You if you like something a lot you love it. Amar > gustar

But when talking about romantic or similar feelings, "gustar" ironically carries more weight toward the erotic or passionate when compared to "amar"
Is you say "me gustas" (I like you) It's understood as "I want to date you, I like you (romantically) or I am interested in you"
In english "I love you" doesn't feel as implicitly romantic as "te amo", I've seen daughters say "I love you" to their fathers, but in spanish that is much more unusual

There's also "quiero" which is literally "want" but can be used as "te quiero" meaning "I like/love you" and can be said to someone in a non-romantic sense as well

So it's not necessarily an untranslateable word, as it has a very obvious translation, but the meaning and weight of the word is quite different
I've heard that there are 5 ways to say "Like/love" in Japanese which carry different weight and connotations, idk if it's true but it's more or less what I'm expressing

>>23481921
>I've heard that there are 5 ways to say "Like/love" in Japanese which carry different weight and connotations, idk if it's true but it's more or less what I'm expressing
There's also the Soseki comment that a character would never say I love you in a Japanese novel because it would be too direct, and instead something like
>Isn't the moon beautiful?
is more realistically understandable as a confession

>>23481721
don't you have "aleatory" in Italian? aleatoria / aleatorio?
Jesus Christ get your shit together Italy

>>23481921
We've also got something like 'fancy' or 'into' and a bunch of others

"Caith," from Irish, can mean "to wear," also "to wear out," "to consume," "to smoke (cigarettes, etc.)," "to cast or throw something," "to spend," "to clear something (as in jumping over a gap, etc.)," also used to denote obligation, "I have to do something"

>>23479646
glimpse
thwart
glimmer
gnarled

>>23482291
The amount of words for "the amount of tobacco you borrow off someone" in Irish probably needs some sociological study.
But using words with multivalent meanings doesn't make it untranslatable, because then all high context languages are by default untranslatable. I will admit Irish is pulling the piss with its dedication to limiting the amount of nouns by assuming context at times, but just because they use the same word for bird, human, and seal pup doesn't mean you can't work out which one it is from context. Set in English has lots of definitions, but most of them can be translated into a contextually relevant form in a target language.

>>23482352
>glimpse
no.
but if you would have said "glance"... maybe...

>>23479646
The.

>>23482385
The is easy. A and an are hard.

>>23481408
The Greeks were right again.

>>23482385
This doesn't count because it's a grammatical function word not a word with meaning
This is trivial to translate to some languages and impossible to translate to others
>>23482386
Same thing

>>23482352
>glimpse
瞥见
>thwart
阻挠,阻挠好
>glimmer
闪烁
>gnarled
Ok this one doesn't have an equivalent in Chinese

>>23482424
>he thinks articles don’t have meaning

>>23482465
it does not describe an action, thing, thought, etc etc
it is a grammatical word, much like the past tense verb suffix -ed is grammatical

>>23482481
If removing a word from a sentence changes the meaning of the sentence then the word has meaning.
>They visited the museums.
>They visited museums.

>>23482523
if you can define it it has meaning
removing -ed from the sentence would change it too
>They visited the museums.
>They visit the museums.
is -ed a word with meaning too? a suffix with meaning? is it not just a grammatical suffix?

>>23482567
Google "inflection (linguistics)".

Articles can also be thought of as inflections. Just inflections that aren't attached directly to the word.

>>23479640
The dancer's excuse: the ground is tilted.

>>23482582
exactly, and thus they're not words with meaning. they are grammatical function words/modifiers which is what I was saying in the first place

>>23482593
Whether you're talking about a definite and specific thing matters in a lot of languages.

>>23479640
fuk you

>>23482385
der, die, das (dem, der, den, des)
>>23482386
ein, eine, eine (einen, einem, einer, eines)
Of course both of these are impossible in Slavic languages, for example. Most of them have no concept of "definitive" words. The ones that do, like Bulgarian, use a suffix at the end of the word to make it "definitive", or whatever retarded Angloid grammar calls it.

>>23479719
>>23479745
>>23479805
All any article I read on this says is that Russians perform better when given tests to differentiate between light blue and dark blue. What are you reading that says the Russian speakers have additional rods and cones in their eyes? Cause those tests could just as easily be neurological, I can't find studies on the physical makeup of the eyes anywhere.
Incidently, I'd be interested to see Russian Second Language speakers can differentiate the blues, or if it's only native Russian speakers.

>>23479719
>Russian speakers develop more blue cones in their eyes and so differentiate colour better than English speakers
This shoulds like bullshit, but I'm gonna go with it.

My family plays the sophistry game around the dinner table: Someone asked a question and someone else gives a bullshit, but plausible sounding answer.

I want my kids to recognize sophistry when they hear/see it.

>>23479783
Until just now I always thought this word was
Rig-ah-ma-role

>>23479658
>翻译工作恰如嚼饭喂人。一个人若不能自己嚼饭,就只好吃别人嚼过的饭。不过经过这么一嚼,饭的滋味、香味肯定比原来乏味多了。
>Translation is like chewing food and feeding it to someone who can't chew for themself. Once the food has been chewed, it no longer has the same delicious flavor as before.
That's not what untranslatable means. Any concept can be expressed in any major language. The difference is that for some it takes a word, and for others it takes a paragraph.

>>23482980
Was the imprecise translation intentional?

>>23483024
"Imprecise" how? You're always sacrificing something when translating. You can be word for word faithful to the exact original wording, or you can translate the meaning behind the phrase. Rarely both, especially with a language like Chinese which is extremely meaning-dense.

>>23482792
das sind drei wörter

>>23482980
>Any concept can be expressed in any major language.
Sometimes the conveyed meaning is more about associations than clear concepts. In English choosing the Latin word over the Germanic word generally conveys a different meaning. Subtle cultural associations are easy to miss and made almost impossible to translate by literalist thinking that dismisses the medium and context. Reading anything is always surface level unless you're engrossed in the context in which it was written. Nobody can fully read anything and when it comes to ancient texts we're not even close.

>>23479646
One word which I'm frustrated by absence of in English is "kara", which is Esperanto for, roughly, "dear" or "darling", but it's much more normal and acceptable to use it to platonic friends, not only romantically. Sometimes I'll end up just using it in English sentences.

>>23480844
Could "take advantage of" potentially overlap with 利用?

>>23482431
Fun fact, when writing in Chinese I've taken sometimes to calling my computer room 閃光齋 after the "Blinkenlights" poster on the wall. Not really relevant, just was reminded by the character 閃.

>>23482424
Don't a lot of languages that don't have articles indicate definiteness by other means, e.g. чeлoвeк пpихoдил vs. пpихoдил чeлoвeк?

>>23479640
In a sense, all words are untranslatable; almost no word in one language has an exact match in another that can be used the same in all contexts, except for technical terms like "photosynthesis" or "logarithm".

>>23483516
What about "your mom"? I think it transcends languages.

>>23479640
translating 道 could fill books and you probably couldn't pinpoint the perfect translation. it is both an organizing, immanent principle and something we can engage in a "become what you are" way. that becoming what you are is always moving, just like the organizing principle of dao. it's a process without a conscious agent, an eternally decanting source of all that is occurring. another analogy, although still deficient, is Heidegger's idea of the world world-ing. dao dao's. i agree with ames that any translation pretty much requires an -ing suffix. a one-and-many becoming. sorry for rambling, but i guess my translation could be accomplished by inverting the deleuzian becoming-imperceptible to "imperceptible becoming." even engaging in this exercise, it feels deficient.

>>23483823
Word
There’s the English translation

>>23479717
Rigamarole.

>>23481491
Byzantine Kafka-esque rigamarole.

>>23481921
Adore/-ation. Have to box it in wtih a bunch of non necessarily related turns of phrase often times.

>>23482352
>glimpse

(Augen)blick

>>23483968
Many Chinese translations of the New Testament actually do render logos as 道.

>>23479640
There are a lot of verbs in Turkish that would not have one word translations in many languages due to its extensive verb constructions or whatever the lingustic term is for it.
For example:
acımak - to pity
acınmak - to be pitied
acındırmak - to make someone pity you, or more precisely, to attempt that.
"Kendini acındırma" would be "don't play for sympathy" or "don't try to arouse pity"
Which sounds less elegant to me.

>>23484116
here, you dropped these: . . . . . .

>>23483972
based grammar nazi
(I mean that in the good way)

>>23483495
yeah but the Chinese word has a wider scope

>>23484196
does it have to do with the shape of the little squiggles making up the pictogram?

>>23482378
>the amount of tobacco you borrow off someone" in
Yeah things like this would be what I'd pick out of Irish instead of verbs/nouns with lots of meanings. Despite using the same word for various things, there are weirdly specific things we thought needed a word or phrase to themselves
>The nap you take after first milking cows
>The hollow bit behind your knees
>The allotted portion of hair/food/society each person gets
>a lucky bee nest
>the number four if it's in reference to objects instead of pure math or people
>we should have a word for swimming underwater, but use the same word for swimming and crawling

>>23484238
>The hollow bit behind your knees
that's a good place to hit someone lol

>>23484243
It's also where you feel water come up your legs, so "up to your knees" is "up to the hollow behind your knee" literally

>>23484243
Oh yeah but most of the time we use the same word for foot and leg lol

>>23484245
>feel water come up your legs
I have no idea what you are talking about, could you give more details?
I had a dream where I had skulls tattoed on my knees, seems related

>>23484251
If you wade into water up to your knees, how we would describe it is up to the back of your knee. There's a different word for the front of your knee where you don't have as many exposed soft and venous and nerve rich bits, but that bit isn't going to feel cold water shock risks like the sensation from the back of the knee will.
It's like we have a special word for leg in the phrase "broken leg" so people aren't confused and think you broke your foot. Most of the time though you call your leg a foot, and get specific about knees.

>>23484243
I think the Irish prefer shooting a gun there

>>23484260
oh so like water up to 100% shin = up to back of your knee?
I like your leg vs. foot thing, some languages don't have that
like some languages don't have neck vs. throat either

knee-pit?

>>23484265
they ran out of arrows?

>thread makes me go down the rabbit hole that Bible doesn't mention pyramids or cats
halp

>>23484268
The most awkward one about the neck area is "nape" is basically "where you attach yoke". There's a lot of classical/medieval medicine descriptions that carry on in the language too so there's really specific words for things which probably don't exist, or really descriptive things which translate directly as disproven things but mean a medically proven thing. Literal translation followed by (actual modern translation)
So you can have black humours (depression), pale humour (lymph), bright humour (blood of the Olympian gods), cold humour (phlegm), glass humour (vitreous humour in the eye), eye humour (rizz)

>>23484289
>The most awkward one about the neck area is "nape" is basically "where you attach yoke".
that's sad
in my language nape it's related to the throat, as opposed to neck
but then again my people have derived enjoyment from observing wildlife (including those who carry their young by their nape) for a long time
>glass humour (vitreous humour in the eye), eye humour (rizz)
hey yo pushin it

>>23484303
The eye thing is because that word for eye means both a literal eye, but also a kind of hypnotic poetic feat.

>nap-of-the-earth vs nape-of-the-earth debate incoming
woo woo johnny

>>23484306
>a kind of hypnotic poetic feat
like to eye with a finger or smth? or to hold one's sight? also related to arms..

>>23484303
I'll add the nape thing isn't sad, it's just awkward. It's used for cows and we love cows, so it's also a word you'd use for marrying someone (like to get yoked to someone)
It just sounds awkward if you don't think cows are the best thing since your mother. A lot of marriage and love things sound weird when translated, like asking someone if they want to be buried with your ancestors is a really sweet love marriage proposal, like saying til death do we part is not enough. If you translate it directly however it sounds like a threat.

>>23484308
It's closer to what mesmerism would be in English. The poetic thing is a specific type of verse with a rhythm or rhapsody which shows off a poet's talent. Being a poet was seen as life goals, so a lot of common words have some secondary technical poetic meaning like that. Some words have an ordinary and poetic meaning, but eye in this case is a specific type of verse performance that's supposed to be enchanting. It's like how you might call someone a metaphorical snake charmer in English

>>23484310
oh, maybe nape vs. scruff may be related to herbivore (equals) vs carnivore (parent-child)

>>23484153
No, in Turkish ı and i are two different letters with different sounds.

>>23484312
so it's like adapting it to "the thing" you want to impregnate? man I wish that would be an universal case, like knowing that my yet-to-be-born children will not be educated by deranged communists (which public education in Europe is 100% consisting of...)

>>23484237
Not really, and they're not even really pictograms a lot of the time either. We think of them as "ideograms" but mostly they stand for syllables and words. The majority of characters are constructed on the basis of pronunciation plus a general category of meaning.
>>23484238
>>23484243
English has a word for it too, if obscure- poplit.

>>23484320
so what do you do with the extra dots? export them to israel as yods?

>>23484310
I remember reading the phrase "I'd prefer you to a hundred dairy cows" or something like that once in a translation of an Irish song.

>>23484327
I don't know, maybe they use them to save on periods.

>>23484324
I guess the "glint in your father's eye' metaphor in English is equivalent of what it tries to describe. Basically it's someone who is a smooth talker but also is trying to catch eligible sex partners with the glimmer in their eye would have eye humour. It's a mythic bodily fluid (humour) which controls your ability to talk your way into bed with someone (eye).

>>23484325
>Not really, and they're not even really pictograms a lot of the time either. We think of them as "ideograms" but mostly they stand for syllables and words. The majority of characters are constructed on the basis of pronunciation plus a general category of meaning.
"ideogram" sounds like a cheap "hieroglyph" so I would recommend you stick with pictogram
>assuming squiggles have nothing to do with it
pic rel

>>23484331
maybe they use them as semicolons
>Cormac McCarthy haunts turkey news at 11

>>23484332
smooth talker... but smooth talker enough?

>>23484325
>poplit
That's really cute

>>23484340
At any rate, the language existed before the characters, and it would still be the language with or without them, just like English would still be English if you wrote it in a different alphabet.

>>23484367
yeah but the squiggles making a picture that relates to the word is the best part of it
I mean it's less boring than Egyptian where the hieroglyph is either a word, the first syllable of the word, or the first letter of the word
don't deprive us of the Chinese Gift :3

>>23484370
It is admittedly a very neat writing system, but I have to admit it's also kind of impractical.

>>23484373
you are generous

>>23484376
By the way, if you're curious to learn more about how it works, you could read this, which provides a decent analogy (though I'd take note of the caveats at the bottom)
http://zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm

>>23484381
that's the sole article I based my squiggle inquiry upon..

>read article about Chinese writing
>ask somebody who writes Chinese about Chinese writing, based on the article about Chinese writing
>knowledgeable Chinese person refers me to the original article
ok you can shut down the internet now, you have my official blessing

>>23484315
There's a different word for scruff. You can describe the same part as the yoking part, the hindering part, and the scruffing part. The yoking thing is generally positive, the hindering thing generally neutral applied to the neck, and the scruff one is only used when you're actually grabbing something by the scruff. The first two you usually translate as nape, but the last one only as scruff.

>>23481648
Beautiful women are what's best in life.

>>23484473
I wish I was beautiful.

>>23484416
you know what I mean you scruffy bastard

>>23484480
You have a beautiful soul <3

>>23484609
I'm glad you think so.

>>23481820
Es muy común, en Bolivia igual se usa bastante y hablando con gente de otros países si les digo que tengo trámites pendientes me entienden inmediatamente.

>>23481737
Argentinians when they 100% agree with you:
>wrong, stupid

>>23481664
Quase.

>>23483487
In Portuguese we say caro when applied to people. Eg. Caro Anon
I say when applied to people because it means expensive when it's applied to objects.

>>23485095
Yeah, the Esperanto word has a similar double meaning. (I once jokingly greeted a bilingual friend with "Salt! How you, expensive?" which is a deliberately stupid translation of "Sal! Kiel vi, kara?")

>>23479646
'sniper' is borrowed by basically every language, it's a concept invented by english speakers

>>23482878
that's pretty cool

"Viitsima" is a verb in Estonian language that I have a difficult time translating.
"Ma ei viitsi." I can't be bothered to do this because I would rather lay on the couch.

>>23485310
"Can't be arsed", maybe?

>>23479719
>cones
a good cone to you too sir

>>23479859
Nepotism?

>>23481737
All slang loses its charm when translated, retard. Like directly translating an idiom.

>>23483487
Eh?
'Dear' is (was?) common in the Isles at one point, I'm sure that with the near century of proliferation of American media its been relegated to only being used by geriatrics and fags now but it had its day.

>>23485633
>>23481737
quite an interesting theme, practically all slang derives from technology
pic rel book mainly concerns criminality but the fine gentlemen of /lit/ surely can extrapolate

>>23485647
Well, for me as an American it seems odd to use it for platonic friends.

>>23485749
>for me as an American it seems odd to use it for platonic friends.
indeed americans don't really have frens since 1956 (desegregation AKA making education a tool of second hand propaganda)

>>23482352
>gnarled
Dutch: snauwen

>>23484473
Fever pitched delirium empty river go do sex happy time forever you