4 ms·

Do you know of one? I have been looking for one for years and nobody has been able to provide me one. Sure some terms can’t be easily translated into English (e

Do you know of one? I have been looking for one for years and nobody has been able to provide me one. Sure some terms can’t be easily translated into English (especially those that rely on assumed cultural knowledge), but none that I have found can’t be expressed in English. Your Lisp - C analogy is not a bad one (I would have used assembler as the base rather than C). Sure there are some languages that are able to solve some problem more efficiently or elegantly than assembler, but there is no program that can’t (in principle) be written in assembler. There are however many programs that can be written in assembler that can’t be written in Lisp. To continue my provocative thesis then you can think of English as the assembler of human thought :)

gumby 10y ago
> Do you know of one? Of course, I use them all the time. I'll give you a couple of silly, yet profound examples. In German and Marathi there are different words for the droppings (crap) of different animals. In fact in German there's a book that teaches the kids different words. Unlike the highly developed squeamishness of the English language around body functions, you might use one of these words to describe something non-scatalogical (say, some dropped bolts under a piece of machinery) Köttel which includes in one word that they are small, scattered, left by some small creature (i.e. by someone careless or simpleminded -- probably insulting yourself or someone else you're talking about) -- something that can be explained in English but by the time you've done so it's not worth it. Or an example from English: because of the French invasion, English has different words for animals in the field (e.g. swine and pig) and on the table (pork). At home we'll use cow, Kuh, and vache (always humorously) as well as beef or "hamburger" in an English sentence just to emphasize different ways in which the animal is used in different cultures. Agricultural roots are still current German and Marathi in a way not true in English, again due to the Norman invasion. (oh yeah, another great German example is the different words for snot depending on its consistency). German has a rich ontology of earth moving apparatus, and each kind of machine (e.g. Löffelbaggnr) has a descriptive term that even kids know and can understand. If that exists in English I have not seen it (and I've spent some time in construction) except presumably to particular specialists. At the opposite end, in French you can't say shallow (only peu profond -- "a small depth") which has so much semantic richness it makes the term "shallow" shallow. In general, wordplay in English is pretty thin gruel compared to what you can get away with in French, or even German. Speaking of that the very structure of Arabic lets you say things with a richness (kitab vs katib) that is I find (and I have been speaking English in English speaking countries for more than 40 years) inexpressible in English. > To continue my provocative thesis then you can think of English as the assembler of human thought I enjoy speaking English but this statement is hardly true.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  All of these are examples of my claim which is that all concepts in other languages can be expressed in English. Sure you might have a specfic term for the droppings of cows in some language (we have the same thing in English not that it matters), but this concept can be translated into English. It might not be as poetic, or it might not have quite the same emotional association, but it is translatable. The concepts that can't be translated are all highly technical concepts from the cutting edge of science and technology. These often lack the vocabulary in other languages to enable them to be expressed in that language because the limited number of people that understand them only communicate to each other about them in English. There are a very large number of these scientific concepts hence there are a large number of concepts that can only be expressed in English.
  - drdeca 10y ago
    I don't get it; can't you just describe the technical things in the other languages? Brainf* may be turing complete, but I would certainly prefer to use a more ordinary language.
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      Yes you can, but at the cutting edge of science this is a big job because of the amount of assumed knowledge and concepts you need to explain the new concept. To translate the new concept you need translate all supporting concepts as well to enable the person to understand the new concept. In practice this requires translating a significant amount of all scientific knowledge from English into the target language (lets pick Swahili for example). Because this is such a huge job with little return, scientists just all work in one common language and for historical reasons this is English. Of course further away from the cutting edge the easier it is to explain concepts in a non-English language which is why science can be taught to undergraduates in a language other than English. Once you are dealing with the primary literature this becomes very difficult.
      - drdeca 10y ago
viraptor 10y ago
I believe "expressed" is closer to "there's a concept everybody is familiar with and there's a specific feeling associated with that one word/expression that everyone understands without providing the definition of the word". Kind of like schadenfreude is now known to English speakers as schadenfreude. You can explain what it means, but there's no direct equivalent that's as easy to bring up. From my own experience, I found that there's no direct equivalent to "disturbing" in Polish. There are many similar words (equivalents of "shocking" and other), but they just don't have the same feeling associated with them.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Schadenfreude as a concept existed in English long before the word appeared in English and I am sure Polish speakers feel disturbed at times even if they don't have a precise word for it. Human emotions and feelings are universal hence why they can all be expressed in all languages. The concepts that can't be expressed in all languages are those that are abstract and technical. A nice simple example of this is in some Australian Aboriginal languages there are no words for numbers of objects higher than 3 (they just become many). It really is impossible to translate the number 14 into these languages as the corresponding concept just doesn't exist.

gumby 10y ago

> Do you know of one? Of course, I use them all the time. I'll give you a couple of silly, yet profound examples. In German and Marathi there are different words for the droppings (crap) of different animals. In fact in German there's a book that teaches the kids different words. Unlike the highly developed squeamishness of the English language around body functions, you might use one of these words to describe something non-scatalogical (say, some dropped bolts under a piece of machinery) Köttel which includes in one word that they are small, scattered, left by some small creature (i.e. by someone careless or simpleminded -- probably insulting yourself or someone else you're talking about) -- something that can be explained in English but by the time you've done so it's not worth it. Or an example from English: because of the French invasion, English has different words for animals in the field (e.g. swine and pig) and on the table (pork). At home we'll use cow, Kuh, and vache (always humorously) as well as beef or "hamburger" in an English sentence just to emphasize different ways in which the animal is used in different cultures. Agricultural roots are still current German and Marathi in a way not true in English, again due to the Norman invasion. (oh yeah, another great German example is the different words for snot depending on its consistency). German has a rich ontology of earth moving apparatus, and each kind of machine (e.g. Löffelbaggnr) has a descriptive term that even kids know and can understand. If that exists in English I have not seen it (and I've spent some time in construction) except presumably to particular specialists. At the opposite end, in French you can't say shallow (only peu profond -- "a small depth") which has so much semantic richness it makes the term "shallow" shallow. In general, wordplay in English is pretty thin gruel compared to what you can get away with in French, or even German. Speaking of that the very structure of Arabic lets you say things with a richness (kitab vs katib) that is I find (and I have been speaking English in English speaking countries for more than 40 years) inexpressible in English. > To continue my provocative thesis then you can think of English as the assembler of human thought I enjoy speaking English but this statement is hardly true.

danieltillett 10y ago
All of these are examples of my claim which is that all concepts in other languages can be expressed in English. Sure you might have a specfic term for the droppings of cows in some language (we have the same thing in English not that it matters), but this concept can be translated into English. It might not be as poetic, or it might not have quite the same emotional association, but it is translatable. The concepts that can't be translated are all highly technical concepts from the cutting edge of science and technology. These often lack the vocabulary in other languages to enable them to be expressed in that language because the limited number of people that understand them only communicate to each other about them in English. There are a very large number of these scientific concepts hence there are a large number of concepts that can only be expressed in English.
- drdeca 10y ago
  I don't get it; can't you just describe the technical things in the other languages? Brainf* may be turing complete, but I would certainly prefer to use a more ordinary language.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Yes you can, but at the cutting edge of science this is a big job because of the amount of assumed knowledge and concepts you need to explain the new concept. To translate the new concept you need translate all supporting concepts as well to enable the person to understand the new concept. In practice this requires translating a significant amount of all scientific knowledge from English into the target language (lets pick Swahili for example). Because this is such a huge job with little return, scientists just all work in one common language and for historical reasons this is English. Of course further away from the cutting edge the easier it is to explain concepts in a non-English language which is why science can be taught to undergraduates in a language other than English. Once you are dealing with the primary literature this becomes very difficult.
    - drdeca 10y ago

viraptor 10y ago

I believe "expressed" is closer to "there's a concept everybody is familiar with and there's a specific feeling associated with that one word/expression that everyone understands without providing the definition of the word". Kind of like schadenfreude is now known to English speakers as schadenfreude. You can explain what it means, but there's no direct equivalent that's as easy to bring up. From my own experience, I found that there's no direct equivalent to "disturbing" in Polish. There are many similar words (equivalents of "shocking" and other), but they just don't have the same feeling associated with them.

danieltillett 10y ago
Schadenfreude as a concept existed in English long before the word appeared in English and I am sure Polish speakers feel disturbed at times even if they don't have a precise word for it. Human emotions and feelings are universal hence why they can all be expressed in all languages. The concepts that can't be expressed in all languages are those that are abstract and technical. A nice simple example of this is in some Australian Aboriginal languages there are no words for numbers of objects higher than 3 (they just become many). It really is impossible to translate the number 14 into these languages as the corresponding concept just doesn't exist.