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Untranslatability
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another (given) language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a ''lacuna'', or lexical gap. The term arises when describing the difficulty of achieving the so-called perfect translation. It is based on the notion that there are certain concepts and words that are so interrelated that an accurate translation becomes an impossible task. Some writers have suggested that language carries sacred notions or is intrinsic to national identity. Brian James Baer posits that untranslatability is sometimes seen by nations as proof of the national genius. He quotes Alexandra Jaffe: "When translators talk about untranslatable, they often reinforce the notion that each language has its own 'genius', an 'essence' that naturally sets it apart from all other languages and reflects something of the 'soul' of its culture or people". A translator, however, can reso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lexical Gap
In linguistics an accidental gap, also known as a gap, paradigm gap, accidental lexical gap, lexical gap, lacuna, or hole in the pattern, is a potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite being theoretically permissible by the grammatical rules of that language. For example, a word pronounced is theoretically possible in English, as it would obey English phonological rules, but does not currently exist. Its absence is therefore an accidental gap, in the ontologic sense of the word ''accidental'' (that is, circumstantial rather than essential). Accidental gaps differ from systematic gaps, those words or other forms which do not exist in a language due to the boundaries set by phonological, morphological, and other rules of that specific language. In English, a word pronounced does not and ''cannot'' exist because it has no vowels and therefore does not obey the word-formation rules of English. This is a systematic, rather th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Periphrasis
In linguistics and literature, periphrasis () is the use of a larger number of words, with an implicit comparison to the possibility of using fewer. The comparison may be within a language or between languages. For example, "more happy" is periphrastic in comparison to "happier", and English "I will eat" is periphrastic in comparison to Spanish . The term originates from the Greek worπεριφράζομαι 'talking around', and was originally used for examples that came up in ancient Greek. In epic poetry, it was common to use periphrasis in examples such as "the sons of the Achaeans" (meaning the Achaeans), or "How did such words escape the fence of your teeth?" (adding a layer of poetic imagery to "your teeth"). Sometimes periphrastic forms were used for verbs that would otherwise be unpronounceable. For example, the verb δείκνυμι 'to show', has a hypothetical form * , which has the disallowed consonant cluster , so one would instead say , using a periphrasis with a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Modal Particle
German modal particles ( or ''Abtönungspartikel'') are uninflected words that are used mainly in the spontaneous spoken language in colloquial Colloquialism (also called ''colloquial language'', ''colloquial speech'', ''everyday language'', or ''general parlance'') is the linguistic style used for casual and informal communication. It is the most common form of speech in conversation amo ... registers in German. Their dual function is to reflect the mood or the attitude of the speaker or the narrator and to highlight the sentence's focus. Often, a modal particle has an effect that is vague and depends on the overall context. Speakers sometimes combine several particles, as in ''doch mal'', ''ja nun'' or ''ja doch nun mal''. It is a feature typical of the spoken language. Most German words can be translated into English without any problems but modal particles are a challenge to translate because English has no real equivalent to them. List of modal particles Halt, eben an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Danish Language
Danish (, ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern Germany, German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Age, Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the ''East Norse'' dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Bokmål, Norwegian Bokmål are classified as ''West Norse'' along with Faroese language, Faroese and Icelandic language, Icelandic. A more recent c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dutch Language
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the List of languages by total number of speakers, third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders (which includes 60% of the population of Belgium). "1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." (page 153). Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects. In South America, Dutch is the native l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Language
German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also an official language of Luxembourg, German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. There are also notable German-speaking communities in other parts of Europe, including: Poland (Upper Silesia), the Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Denmark (South Jutland County, North Schleswig), Slovakia (Krahule), Germans of Romania, Romania, Hungary (Sopron), and France (European Collectivity of Alsace, Alsace). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in the Americas. German is one of the global language system, major languages of the world, with nearly 80 million native speakers and over 130 mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stative Verbs
In linguistics, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static, or unchanging throughout their entire duration, and dynamic verbs describe processes that entail change over time. Many languages distinguish between the two types in terms of how they can be used grammatically. Contrast to dynamic Some languages use the same verbs for dynamic and stative situations, and others use different (but often related) verbs with some kind of qualifiers to distinguish between them. Some verbs may act as either stative or dynamic. A phrase like "he plays the piano" may be either stative or dynamic, according to the context. When in a given context, the verb "play" relates to a state (an interest or a profession), he could be an amateur who enjoys music or a professional pianist. The dynamic interpretation emerges from a speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adjective
An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with Noun, nouns. Nowadays, certain words that usually had been classified as adjectives, including ''the'', ''this'', ''my'', etc., typically are classed separately, as Determiner (class), determiners. Examples: * That's a ''funny'' idea. (Prepositive attributive) * That idea is ''funny''. (Predicate (grammar), Predicative) * * The ''good'', the ''bad'', and the ''funny''. (Substantive adjective, Substantive) * Clara Oswald, completely ''fictional'', died three times. (Apposition, Appositive) Etymology ''Adjective'' comes from Latin ', a calque of (whence also English ''epithet''). In the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copula (linguistics)
In linguistics, a copula (; : copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' in the sentence "It was not being cooperative." The word ''copula'' derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Korean, Beja, and Inuit languages. Most languages have one main copula (in English, the verb "to be"), although some (such as Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Aspect
In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during the event ("I helped him"). Imperfective aspect is used for situations conceived as existing continuously or habitually as time flows ("I was helping him"; "I used to help people"). Further distinctions can be made, for example, to distinguish states and ongoing actions ( continuous and progressive aspects) from repetitive actions ( habitual aspect). Certain aspectual distinctions express a relation between the time of the event and the time of reference. This is the case with the perfect aspect, which indicates that an event occurred prior to but has continuing relevance at the time of reference: "I have eaten"; "I had eaten"; "I will have eaten". Different languages make different grammatical aspectual disti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Tense
In grammar, tense is a grammatical category, category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their grammatical conjugation, conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past tense, past, present tense, present, and future tense, future. Some languages have only two distinct tenses, such as past and nonpast, or future and Nonfuture tense, nonfuture. There are also tenseless languages, like most of the Varieties of Chinese, Chinese languages, though they can possess a future and Nonfuture tense, nonfuture system typical of Sino-Tibetan languages. In recent work Maria Bittner and Judith Tonhauser have described the different ways in which tenseless languages nonetheless mark time. On the other hand, some languages make finer tense distinctions, such as remote vs recent past, or near vs remote future. Tenses generally express time relative to the TUTT (linguistics), moment of spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Language
Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic languages, Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a Language family, family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin with 66%, or around 800&nb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
