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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

by 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.
dddddaviddddd 8y ago
Shouldn't be too hard to verify the claim. Just grab a dictionary file and analyse the proportion of words with more than one definition.
- dagw 8y ago
  You need to do the inverse as well, ie who many different words mean the 'same' thing.

by Lewton 8y ago

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.

dddddaviddddd 8y ago

Shouldn't be too hard to verify the claim. Just grab a dictionary file and analyse the proportion of words with more than one definition.

dagw 8y ago
You need to do the inverse as well, ie who many different words mean the 'same' thing.