I thought of another English word that is difficult to explain, because it has so many different meanings: the verb “get”.
Again, this dates back to when I was studying in Quebec, and one of my québécoise roommates who was studying English asked me to explain the word. It quickly became difficult to explain.
I’d never thought of it before, but it’s a verb with an awful lot of meanings:
It can mean “to have” (“I’v got my iPad with me.”)
It can mean “to understand.” (“By George, I’ve got it!”)
It can be used as an affirmative: (“You’ll be home at 9 pm, understood?” “Got it.”)
It can be a command/imperative (“Get out!”).
Per Elaine on Seinfeld, it can be an idiom for “you’re not serious” or “Really!” (that same “Get out!”).
It can be an intensifier: “Let’s get going”.
It can mean an obligation: “I’ve got to do my homework.”
It can be an auxillary verb, to mean things like “finish”: “I’ll get it done”.
It can be used in the same sentence in different meanings: “I’ve got [obligation] to get [do] my homework done.”
Not that all of those different meanings can’t be translated, but that it’s a hard word because it has so many different meanings.
It may be that this is a difference between Romance languages and Germanic ones, because I think I read once that German does have a cognate for “get” that has a similar range of meanings.
If your friend comes from a country with a porn industry, there will surely be a word or short phrase in his language that means the same thing. You, personally, might not know the word, but it exists. Finding out the word may require consultation with someone in the industry.
Irish and Scottish Gaelic have no word for “yes” or “no”. Of course, since most, if not all, Gaelic speakers these days are bilingual they are familiar with the English word.
Seems to me that this is far more about cricket culture than English language, having to do with how much of the rules are unwritten, and how breaking those unwritten rules is perceived. So I think how easy it is for any person to understand would have far less to do with their native language and far more to do with their native sports culture.
The only reason you may need to specify it is because “vaquero” has come to mean “cowboy” in 99% of cases. You know, sort of like we say “indio del Oeste” and “indio de la India”, with my apologies to Anaamika; two different meanings, same word; or like we use additional words to differentiate “wait” from “await”. If you say vaquero, it means cowboy unless otherwise specified (and it’s more likely to mean “gunman-with-a-colt” than “cowherd”).
And a 90yo grandmother from Soria is a lot more likely to undertake branding and castration (although admittedly of pigs) than a movie cowboy…
A friend was chucking about how “some moron called a piece of armor a ‘quijote’ in the Spanish version of WoW”. “Oh”, say I, “would that be some sort of heavy-armor leggings?” “ Uh, actually, yes” “Guess where did Don Alonso Quijano pick his nom-de-guerre” “:smack: D’oh!”
I have never heard of “cowboy” being used in that manner, so I’m going to say “no”.
It does, however, make me think that the phrase “cowboy diplomacy” could be easily misunderstood. Though I think the most recent President Bush could fall under either possible meaning of the phrase.
Hmong doesnt really have any words for “that, am, and,” and a few other small English words.
Since i’ve been with a hmong girl for over a year and know quite a bit of Hmong i can speak with her parents and stuff. I always add in an English “and” or “that” which im sure only confuses them
Sensible enough. I’m trying to think of cases where that convention would break down, say when there is no “main” verb handy, but those cases might be pretty contrived.
Still, let’s have a go. I ask you in English, “Did you write to or talk to your professor?”, and I intend it as a yes/no question. That is, I just want to know whether you took either action. As long as you did one of them, I don’t care which it is. So, valid replies include “yes” and “no”, and might in fact be all I want. This might also be how you’d prefer to answer the question, if you want to be coy and reveal as little information as possible.
Now let’s look at this little interaction in Chinese. (Or Japanese, or Latin, or the like.) Is there a concise way a Chinese responder could say “One of your verbs applies, but I’m not saying which”, corresponding to “yes”, or “None of them apply”, corresponding to “no”?
There are many ways in Latin of simply affirming or denying in response to a yes/no question without referring back to a pivotal word in the question, but nothing like a simple dyad like yes/no. Traupman cites a case in which an interlocutor asks for a response of either sīc or minimē, but generally you repeat a word from the question or use one of a whole slew of contentless affirmations or denials. There is no one pair of words that is understood to be the essence all affirmations and denials.
The word “privacy” is extremely difficult to translate into Russian. It’s easy to explain “secrecy”, “ownership”, “isolation”… but hard to get the whole notion of privacy across, even with multiple sentences.
Funnily enough, our word buckaroo, which is just a more colorful way of referring to the same concept as cowboy, is an Anglicization of the Spanish vaquero. So, though the Spanish word may refer simply to the occupation, it comes into English as an even more romantic term for an already romanticized archetype (whose referents often don’t deal with cattle at all).
You can say that something is “litchno”(“personal”). It doesn’t mean quite the same thing to me, but I guess it would have the same effect. If you asked me for someone’s private medical information, I could say “tova e litchna* informatzia! Gledai si rabota!” (“That’s personal information! Mind your own business!”) But yeah, it isn’t exactly the same thing.
To me noix means any kind of nut (or shelled fruit, as Kobal2 points out); if you want me to think walnut you have to specify noix de Grenoble. Once again this may be usage variation between different French-speaking countries.
So am I; it seems to me that the idea that the monarch may not spend the realm’s funds only according to his will is one of the first constitutional checks and balances to appear in a system as it moves away from absolutism.
Could work, but “sympa” is an especially franco-French term which may not work for matt_mcl’s purposes.
This said, I’m wondering whose slogan this is.
Now that I think about it, I’m not sure how I would translate “fair play” into French. The Trésor does have an entry for fair-play (it recognizes both the hyphenated and unhyphenated forms) with a remark that its place in the French language is controversial.
Patate is also correct.
“Chauve-souris” literally means “bald mouse”, not rat.
I don’t speak Japanese well, but I can imagine (on the “no” side) a speaker saying “違います” (literally, “you are making a mistake”, but commonly used to mean “no”), or more colourfully “それじゃないよ”, meaning “no way!” Or “まだ” meaning “not yet”.
Counter to this: “cowboy” is fairly common in Australian English to refer to careless workmen. “Indian” is not. I’d guess this use of cowboy comes from the sense of lawlessness and lack of command.
Re the earlier claim about cowboy being unique to American English, Australian English has three words that have the same or similar meaning: stockman, drover, and bushranger. The last is specific to an outlaw, so I guess a subset of cowboy.
Actually, I do find it difficult to literally translate this sentence into Chinese. My Chinese must be rusting away from years of disuse. I have a hard time coming up with a good translation for “write to” and “talk to” as used in the context of this sentence that won’t sound awkward. The best I can do is “Did you contact your professor?” (你聯絡了你的教授嗎？) In Cantonese, probably literally the equivalent of “Did you find your professor?” (你有冇搵你個敎授呀？) (I’m not completely sure if “to find” 找 can be used in this sense in standard Chinese)
For your question though, I think depending on how the question is phrased, the equivalent of generic verbs such as “to be”, “to do” and “to have” would cover many cases in general. Other dopers less rusty in Chinese might be able to chime in with other examples.
But we have this in English as well. Sure, if you have an acquaintance who invites you somewhere, you can just say “Oh, I’m kinda busy that night,” and if you have a good friend, you can tell them, “Nah, I don’t feel like going out.” But if it’s a relationship in between those, it’s a little bit rude to not give an excuse, don’t you think?
Nitpick hibernicus, 違います is literally “it’s different,” it’s 間違います that literally means “you’re making a mistake.” But otherwise your no’s sound good.
On the yes side, you could probably answer “Yeah, I did it,” to a question with two verbs if you want to be vague about it. But the question itself would be a little odd. If someone said “Did you write to or talk to your prof?” it would sound like the questioner wants a specific answer. I think it’s more common to ask if you contacted her.
Uh, actually, yes” “Guess where did Don Alonso Quijano pick his nom-de-guerre” “:smack: D’oh!”