6 ms·

Ambiguous words and dictionary hacks (2007)

38 points by telotortium 8y ago

Natsu 8y ago
The foggy/cloudy distinction is a funny distinction. I still remember how until I went through a cloud in a plane as a kid, I somehow didn't realize that fog and clouds were exactly the same thing. Sure, you could point out that one touches the ground and the other doesn't, but that feels like a rather nebulous distinction to make. Incidentally, the same lack of distinction exists in Portuguese.
- flomble 8y ago
  >nebulous Delightful. I think you get right to the reason for the distinction in language. The two things weren't unified in your conception until you were inside a cloud, which until recently was impossible except by climbing to high altitudes. Fogs and clouds are usually experienced in very different ways, so it seems natural to me that people came up with different words for them.
  - gattilorenz 8y ago
    I think that another factor is that they have quite different effects in day-to-day life. If it's cloudy you can still do most of the stuff you would normally do, but you wouldn't want to ride your car/horse/chariot/whatever at full speed in a foggy day (and in general, things that require good visibility). It's a useful distinction. I'm not familiar with the Portuguese climate, but is fog somewhat common? If not, that might be a reason why you never felt the need for a word expressing the concept.
  - de_watcher 8y ago
    There can even be two different words for the fog: for one that's low above the fields and the other one that's everywhere.
- bjackman 8y ago
  Related: I've explained the difference between "damp" and "humid" to bemused Italians on a couple of occasions.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    I'm not a native English speaker. What's the difference?
    - wil421 8y ago
      Humid is usually related to weather or air. Damp is usually a negative term to use for something that feels wet but it could relate to air inside, as in my basement feels damp or my raincoat is still damp from yesterday. Humid is usually related to I weather and a lot of the time hot weather but not always. It’s so humid today it feels like a jungle outside.
      - baud147258 8y ago
        Thank you. I'm not a native speaker, so I'm usually mixing close enough expression/words
- Anarch157a 8y ago
  >Incidentally, the same lack of distinction exists in Portuguese. Depends on the idiom. In Rio Grande Do Sul, where fog is a lot more common, we used to say "tempo cerrado", while "tempo nublado" means cloudy wheater. A better candidate for an ambiguous term in portuguese is "tempo". It means both "time" and "wheater".
  - Natsu 8y ago
    Obrigado. That's interesting, when I lived in SP I only ever saw nublado for either. But I've only been around SP and Brasilia, so I haven't been to Rio Grande Do Sul at all.
Lewton 8y ago
Funny how there’s so much text yet he never admits that he’s clearly in the wrong with his claim that Spanish has “just as many ambiguous words“ as English In fact, the post reads like he thinks he triumphed
- yorwba 8y ago
  > he’s clearly in the wrong with his claim that Spanish has “just as many ambiguous words“ as English How so? He's not clearly in the right either, but that's because he doesn't compare counts, which might be meaningless anyway due to the poor precision of the method （synonyms in one language look like ambiguous translations for a word in the other). His initial problem was that he couldn't give any Spanish examples (which could suggest that none exist). But when he used this method to generate examples, it seems like Mr. Manzo changed his mind. Sounds like a triumph.
- tangus 8y ago
  But he's perfectly right. I don't know if he can arrive to that conclusion from his experiment, nevertheless he's right. Spanish is full of ambiguous words. Just looking around at my desk, I can find... papel - paper/role monitor - monitor/supervisor (in Arg, also the student in charge of class materials) factura - invoice/a kind of pastry (Arg) caja - box/till/case/drum/soundbox revista - magazine/review And let's not start with the verbs... sonreír - smirk/grin/smile arrancar - pull out / pull up / pluck / tear out / rip out / blow off / snatch / wrench / start / start a vehicle or machine / boot / set sail...
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Interesting, but most of those exist also in english, many almost exactly. Paper - A Newspaper Company, Fiberous sheets, Thin covering, to title or register an object, etc. Monitor - same. Both monitor as in observe/supervise, and the object, also a common title of newspapers. Fr Drum - Musical drum, storage barrel, to attract attention, to repeat, a fast beat, a stretched diaphram and its effect, throb. Magazine - Publication, Bullet cartridge recepticle. ____ Review is common magazine title. Seems roughly equal honestly. All languages borrow abstractions from simple words as complexity grows.
zyx321 8y ago
I am not particularly familiar with Spanish, but with German as my primary language I had the opposite impression that English is a language with an excessive amount of words. There were so many words that have different meanings but offer no useful distinction, such as (pig/pork) or (damp/dank/moist/humid). As such, it would be quite interesting to see some kind of quantitative judgment on the matter of which language has more or (less/fewer) ambiguous words.
- sornaensis 8y ago
  A towel is damp it is not humid. A pig is not a pork. A rain-forest is humid but not dank, a cellar may be dank. Food is moist, not damp, etc etc. These words have reason to exist and have particular usages.
  - jerrre 8y ago
    If other languages can exist where pork and pig are the same word, doesn't it prove the opposite?
    - yorwba 8y ago
      Those languages usually qualify pork as "pig meat" if necessary. (Schweinefleisch in German, 猪肉 in Chinese)
      - zyx321 8y ago
        But only if necessary. In most cases the "meat" either implied ("What kind of meat is that?" "Pig") or replaced by the specific name of the cut (Schweineschnitzel, Putenbrust, Lammkotlett).
        cm2012 8y ago
        The "extra" english words succinctly add context then.
air7 8y ago
Worth mentioning is the Toki Pona artificial language that has only 120 words. It's essentially designed for ambiguity. "With such a tiny vocabulary, ambiguity is inevitable but not necessarily bad: The vagueness forces you to focus on very basic, core features instead of lots of tiny, often frivolous details." [1] [1] http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona3.php http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona3.php

38 points by telotortium 8y ago

The foggy/cloudy distinction is a funny distinction. I still remember how until I went through a cloud in a plane as a kid, I somehow didn't realize that fog and clouds were exactly the same thing. Sure, you could point out that one touches the ground and the other doesn't, but that feels like a rather nebulous distinction to make. Incidentally, the same lack of distinction exists in Portuguese.

flomble 8y ago
>nebulous Delightful. I think you get right to the reason for the distinction in language. The two things weren't unified in your conception until you were inside a cloud, which until recently was impossible except by climbing to high altitudes. Fogs and clouds are usually experienced in very different ways, so it seems natural to me that people came up with different words for them.
- gattilorenz 8y ago
  I think that another factor is that they have quite different effects in day-to-day life. If it's cloudy you can still do most of the stuff you would normally do, but you wouldn't want to ride your car/horse/chariot/whatever at full speed in a foggy day (and in general, things that require good visibility). It's a useful distinction. I'm not familiar with the Portuguese climate, but is fog somewhat common? If not, that might be a reason why you never felt the need for a word expressing the concept.
- de_watcher 8y ago
  There can even be two different words for the fog: for one that's low above the fields and the other one that's everywhere.
bjackman 8y ago
Related: I've explained the difference between "damp" and "humid" to bemused Italians on a couple of occasions.
- baud147258 8y ago
  I'm not a native English speaker. What's the difference?
  - wil421 8y ago
    Humid is usually related to weather or air. Damp is usually a negative term to use for something that feels wet but it could relate to air inside, as in my basement feels damp or my raincoat is still damp from yesterday. Humid is usually related to I weather and a lot of the time hot weather but not always. It’s so humid today it feels like a jungle outside.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      Thank you. I'm not a native speaker, so I'm usually mixing close enough expression/words
Anarch157a 8y ago
>Incidentally, the same lack of distinction exists in Portuguese. Depends on the idiom. In Rio Grande Do Sul, where fog is a lot more common, we used to say "tempo cerrado", while "tempo nublado" means cloudy wheater. A better candidate for an ambiguous term in portuguese is "tempo". It means both "time" and "wheater".
- Natsu 8y ago
  Obrigado. That's interesting, when I lived in SP I only ever saw nublado for either. But I've only been around SP and Brasilia, so I haven't been to Rio Grande Do Sul at all.

Lewton 8y ago

Funny how there’s so much text yet he never admits that he’s clearly in the wrong with his claim that Spanish has “just as many ambiguous words“ as English In fact, the post reads like he thinks he triumphed

yorwba 8y ago
> he’s clearly in the wrong with his claim that Spanish has “just as many ambiguous words“ as English How so? He's not clearly in the right either, but that's because he doesn't compare counts, which might be meaningless anyway due to the poor precision of the method （synonyms in one language look like ambiguous translations for a word in the other). His initial problem was that he couldn't give any Spanish examples (which could suggest that none exist). But when he used this method to generate examples, it seems like Mr. Manzo changed his mind. Sounds like a triumph.
tangus 8y ago
But he's perfectly right. I don't know if he can arrive to that conclusion from his experiment, nevertheless he's right. Spanish is full of ambiguous words. Just looking around at my desk, I can find... papel - paper/role monitor - monitor/supervisor (in Arg, also the student in charge of class materials) factura - invoice/a kind of pastry (Arg) caja - box/till/case/drum/soundbox revista - magazine/review And let's not start with the verbs... sonreír - smirk/grin/smile arrancar - pull out / pull up / pluck / tear out / rip out / blow off / snatch / wrench / start / start a vehicle or machine / boot / set sail...
- justtopost 8y ago
  Interesting, but most of those exist also in english, many almost exactly. Paper - A Newspaper Company, Fiberous sheets, Thin covering, to title or register an object, etc. Monitor - same. Both monitor as in observe/supervise, and the object, also a common title of newspapers. Fr Drum - Musical drum, storage barrel, to attract attention, to repeat, a fast beat, a stretched diaphram and its effect, throb. Magazine - Publication, Bullet cartridge recepticle. ____ Review is common magazine title. Seems roughly equal honestly. All languages borrow abstractions from simple words as complexity grows.

zyx321 8y ago

I am not particularly familiar with Spanish, but with German as my primary language I had the opposite impression that English is a language with an excessive amount of words. There were so many words that have different meanings but offer no useful distinction, such as (pig/pork) or (damp/dank/moist/humid). As such, it would be quite interesting to see some kind of quantitative judgment on the matter of which language has more or (less/fewer) ambiguous words.

sornaensis 8y ago
A towel is damp it is not humid. A pig is not a pork. A rain-forest is humid but not dank, a cellar may be dank. Food is moist, not damp, etc etc. These words have reason to exist and have particular usages.
- jerrre 8y ago
  If other languages can exist where pork and pig are the same word, doesn't it prove the opposite?
  - yorwba 8y ago
    Those languages usually qualify pork as "pig meat" if necessary. (Schweinefleisch in German, 猪肉 in Chinese)
    - zyx321 8y ago
      But only if necessary. In most cases the "meat" either implied ("What kind of meat is that?" "Pig") or replaced by the specific name of the cut (Schweineschnitzel, Putenbrust, Lammkotlett).
      - cm2012 8y ago
        The "extra" english words succinctly add context then.

air7 8y ago

Worth mentioning is the Toki Pona artificial language that has only 120 words. It's essentially designed for ambiguity. "With such a tiny vocabulary, ambiguity is inevitable but not necessarily bad: The vagueness forces you to focus on very basic, core features instead of lots of tiny, often frivolous details." [1] [1] http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona3.php http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona3.php