Unique words in your language?

[Kalis]

Greeks have the word 'vre' or 're', which translates as...err, nothing really, mainly because it doesn't really mean anything in Greek. It's used for emphasis, similarly to how an exclamation mark (!) is used.

Although it is no longer unique to Greek as some other countries have adopted it (usually pronounced 'bre'), it doesn't really have a translation.

---------- Post added 2012-12-28 at 05:28 PM ----------

Gazump is an English word that is probably unique as it means to outbid by offering more than an already accepted bid, usually in reference to property.

[Elegiac]

No language has any real consistent rules when it comes to grammar, people try to make rules for languages, but there's always more exceptions. You are right about spelling (it makes no sense) but pronunciation is rather easy. Learning to pronounce English is probably easier than some single letters around the world (Czech Ř comes to mind first to me but there's more ofc).

This is actually not the case; a large number of current languages do in fact have a number of general rules. Not so in English; the only really consistent rule that English has is conjugation of adverbs (in that they basically all end in -ly).

I am not saying it's the hardest, but it is one of the harder ones. For example, compare the pronounciation of the component 'fin' in finite, infinite, and infinity.

---------- Post added 2012-12-28 at 07:37 AM ----------

Greeks have the word 'vre' or 're', which translates as...err, nothing really, mainly because it doesn't really mean anything in Greek. It's used for emphasis, similarly to how an exclamation mark (!) is used.

Although it is no longer unique to Greek as some other countries have adopted it (usually pronounced 'bre'), it doesn't really have a translation.

There is a reason why you don't hear it outside of informal settings; it is because it's a shortened form of μωρέ (for those that can't read Greek, it means stupid or foolish, and is the origin of the word moron in English).

[Deleted]

This is actually not the case; a large number of current languages do in fact have a number of general rules. Not so in English; the only really consistent rule that English has is conjugation of adverbs (in that they basically all end in -ly).

I am not saying it's the hardest, but it is one of the harder ones. For example, compare the pronounciation of the component 'fin' in finite, infinite, and infinity.

---------- Post added 2012-12-28 at 07:37 AM ----------



There is a reason why you don't hear it outside of informal settings; it is because it's a shortened form of μωρέ (for those that can't read Greek, it means stupid or foolish, and is the origin of the word moron in English).

I don't know. If I compare English to French or German, English is definitely way easier. I don't know about other languages so I can only compare to those two, but I'd say the main difficulty about English is its large amount of vocabulary, which takes quite some time to learn compared to other languages. And phrasal verbs, though that may count as vocabulary too.
But the grammar is so simple, one could say there's barely any grammar at all. There are a couple of rules here and there, but that's pretty much it. And the conjugation... well coming from a latin language I'd say English is simple as hell in that regard .

[Elegiac]

I don't know. If I compare English to French or German, English is definitely way easier. I don't know about other languages so I can only compare to those two, but I'd say the main difficulty about English is its large amount of vocabulary, which takes quite some time to learn compared to other languages. And phrasal verbs, though that may count as vocabulary too.
But the grammar is so simple, one could say there's barely any grammar at all. There are a couple of rules here and there, but that's pretty much it. And the conjugation... well coming from a latin language I'd say English is simple as hell in that regard .

The problem with English is that while a large portion of its base is Germanic, it has significant Romance influences via French which have corrupted the structure, pronounciation, and especially the vocabulary.

The language is gradually simplifying though, as all languages do when they get older.

---------- Post added 2012-12-28 at 08:03 AM ----------

You're right about that, but you just pick it up after you use the language for some time. There's languages out there you can never learn to pronounce properly even after many years, unless you are born to speak that language.

Well this is not a topic about the complexity of English anyway, my point was that other languages have so many more options how to say things, things you can't even really describe in English.

Some examples would be making words "smaller and cuter" (example - chica - chicita in Spanish (not sure about the spelling, might be a Q there). Kůň (horse) - koník (small horse) - koníček (a super cute little horse) in Czech), combining words in various original ways, etc. I know I keep bringing up Czech but that's because it's the only language I know that well. For example, the masculine nouns are also divided to living and unliving in Czech, and are treated differently when talking, in addition to the division between he, she and it. Also, you can change the order of words in the Czech syntax to stress some important thing, or make it sound more polite, or make it sound archaic, or whatever. English sentences simply stop making sense usually. Also, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs always change their form depending on the grammatical case, time, person, etc. thus, there's an unfathomably greater number of combinations for rhyming, making poetry and music lyrics much better. These are just things that I can think of English can not do. And there's more.

Which is a difference of grammar: English has lost a significant amount of its linguistic...flexibility. Nouns rarely decline, grammatical gender has been lost for most words, and vowel mutation is almost extinct.

[Gothicshark]

kočičinec (cat poo)

tootsie roll, kitty Crunchy (only if you own a dog and a cat, don't ask why), sand box mines, kitty cooties.

Also cooties it's a general kids term for the grossness of the opposite gender.

[Reeve]

tootsie roll, kitty Crunchy (only if you own a dog and a cat, don't ask why), sand box mines, kitty cooties.

Also cooties it's a general kids term for the grossness of the opposite gender.

I always liked this definition:

Cooties: Communicable Unpopularity

[Kalis]

...Also, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs always change their form depending on the grammatical case, time, person, etc. thus, there's an unfathomably greater number of combinations for rhyming, making poetry and music lyrics much better. These are just things that I can think of English can not do. And there's more.

English is the best language for rhyming in due to the lack of gender endings - love will always rhyme with dove! It also has the largest number of words due to being a hotch potch of every other language. thereby making it the most flexible.

Lyrics/poetry in most languages is constrained by the rules of grammar, in English it's only constrained by the vocabulary of the writer.

[pucGG]

11 pages. I wonder how often the latin term 'deus ex machina' has been mentioned. I think it translates directly into something like 'god out of the machine', it's a term used when speaking of plays or movies that have an absurd 'hand-of-god' kind of ending. Like War of the Worlds, where the humans were totally losing the battle, and then poof, what do you know, the aliens are allergic to oxygen or some bacteria of whatever. Bottom line is they just died and that was the end of the movie.

[Mjau]

Well in norwegian we say "glad i deg/hun/han/den/etc" which is similar to "I love you/her/him/that" but not quite the same. "I love you" would be "jeg elsker deg". "Glad i deg" means that you care about something/someone, even love something/someone, but it's no the same as saying I love you.

Someone also mentioned bequem and we have that word in norwegian too, bekvem and ubekvem, means something close to comfortable and uncomfortable.

[Rastas]

Well, we finns have lots of different words for the basic english word of "snow". Here is just a glimpse of some (I quickly counted 69) examples. All of the words basically mean snow, but describe what exact kind of snow it is.
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettel...ielen_sanoista

Actually, I'd never heard of some of those, and Finnish is my first language... But I think I've heard Eskimos have a ton of words for snow too, so perhaps there are some equivalents - though I by no means claim to know them

Having read the thread, a few things come to mind... If someone asked me to translate 'Schadenfreude' into Finnish, I'd say 'vahingonilo'. The day after tomorrow would be 'ylihuominen'. But then again, the Finnish language is rife with compound nouns. Makes it pretty easy to have 'one word' for all sorts of weird things.

[Jackmoves]

I always had a much easier time learning English compared to German, but thats just me. Never considered english a hard language to learn. ;P

Swedish morphology is similar to English as well... that is, words have comparatively few inflections. There are two genders, two grammatical cases, and a distinction between plural and singular. German on the other hand got 3 genders, 4 grammatical cases and more inflectional endings etc etc.

So yeah, English was a walk in the park for me compared to German.

[Reeve]

I always had a much easier time learning English compared to German, but thats just me. Never considered english a hard language to learn. ;P

Swedish morphology is similar to English as well... that is, words have comparatively few inflections. There are two genders, two grammatical cases, and a distinction between plural and singular. German on the other hand got 3 genders, 4 grammatical cases and more inflectional endings etc etc.

So yeah, English was a walk in the park for me compared to German.

Mark Twain wrote a great and hilarious essay on how complicated the German language can be, called "The Awful German Language." You should check it out if you find the time.

[Jackmoves]

Mark Twain wrote a great and hilarious essay on how complicated the German language can be, called "The Awful German Language." You should check it out if you find the time.

That title sums it up well, rofl. Will do!

[Ravenblade]

Mark Twain wrote a great and hilarious essay on how complicated the German language can be, called "The Awful German Language." You should check it out if you find the time.

Possibly he wrote that when it was complicated. Meanwhile many reforms have taken place especially to make it easier to learn for foreigners and Germans alike. They even killed a letter for that.

[Beavis]

Possibly he wrote that when it was complicated. Meanwhile many reforms have taken place especially to make it easier to learn for foreigners and Germans alike. They even killed a letter for that.

It's still way harder to learn than American English. Brush myself the teeth? WTF is that?

[Catta]

Possibly he wrote that when it was complicated. Meanwhile many reforms have taken place especially to make it easier to learn for foreigners and Germans alike. They even killed a letter for that.

Seeing as speak German. Do you have the same problem as I do when speaking English? When it comes to numbers both Danish and German has the reversed numbers. So when i have to say 34 - i sometimes say 4 first by mistake or have to think about the number for an extra couple of seconds.

[Deleted]

A quite unique word would be "Poltergeist" as some languages don't have an equivalent but use the German word instead.

[Deleted]

Craic! Irish and doesn't really have an accurate represention outside Irish but the answer is always. F--- all! You? Lol

[Reeve]

Seeing as speak German. Do you have the same problem as I do when speaking English? When it comes to numbers both Danish and German has the reversed numbers. So when i have to say 34 - i sometimes say 4 first by mistake or have to think about the number for an extra couple of seconds.

Fier und dreizig!

---------- Post added 2012-12-28 at 07:18 PM ----------

Not really a word per say, but a number. I was wondering if other languages said numbers like we do (Or at least most people in my general location do) in English when we talk about a word in the thousands, but prefix a number in the teens before saying "hundred".

Example: 1500, pronounced as 15-hundred instead of 1 thousand 500.

Do any other languages do something like that for numbers?

Other languages do much weirder things, actually. Like in French, for example, the number 98 is pronounced quatre-vignt dix-huit, or "four-twenties-ten-eight." The Danish get really weird too.

That's still not taking into account things like long-form versus short-form notation, where the number billion in many languages is equivalent to the American English trillion.

[Axehandle]

Bootylicious or jiggy.

No other language has direct translations for them.