6 ms·

When you're native at a language, you often don't realize that you're using an idiom. By that I mean when you use an expression that means something different t

When you're native at a language, you often don't realize that you're using an idiom. By that I mean when you use an expression that means something different to what the literal words mean. Here's one I was thinking of the other day. In German, to breathe is just a verb: atmen. But in Danish, it's an idiom: at trække vejret. If you just found the straight dictionary definition of "at trække" you would find "to pull". "Vejret" is the weather. So if you didn't know that bringing the two together meant to breathe, you would end up being confused. It gets worse if the idiomatic phrase has grammatical significance. "I used to eat meat". If you only just learned a bit of English, you would wonder what "to use" in past tense meant that had to do with the rest of the sentence. Or perhaps you would theorize that a word was left out (eg using a fork to eat meat). But you'd be completely wrong, since what it actually means is that I stopped eating meat, though I had done so for a period in the past. My guess is that Japanese is far enough away from English that early translating software couldn't figure out these kinds of things. By contrast, I've never had modern LLMs write anything that didn't seem native, presumably because they are complicated enough to absorb the knowledge from the training data.

oh_my_goodness 1y ago
Wow, "pull weather" ~ "suck wind".
- tclancy 1y ago
  And “suck wind” is a US English idiom for being out of breath.
- lithocarpus 1y ago
  Literally pulling the weather inside by breathing. Same as sucking wind. It may be an idiom but it's one where the literal meaning fits.
mallowdram 1y ago
All words are metaphors, now add Western languages are agentic, Japanese is not. The problem CS ignored in language is that the arbitrariness in language leaves remarkably unmappable spaces between metaphors. In a way, LLMs are magic acts that expose language's Oz like tricks. Scaffolding idiomatic expressions inside that initial mess only reveals the trick's problem further. Literal words don't mean anything specifically unless they have a context, which is idiosyncratic. LLMs never are able to resolve the double whammy of lexemes and the conduit metaphor paradox. That's how they need constant specific supervision. They're babblers that have no idea what they're saying. Coders can't debate this, this is the inherent problem to language that generative and NLP waves away in a sleight of hand trick. Study the initial conditions to language folks: language doesn't really mean anything.
- nyeah 1y ago
  That appears to be meaningless. Please explain without using language.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    If you understand the nature of language fully, then its ultimate function is to refute itself. In other words, all our use of arbitrary signals leads eventually to specific signals. To make that simpler, each statement in any existing language is about replacing language.
    - the_af 1y ago
      I'll try to say this as politely as I can: I think this is a bot account. Not only your two posts above read like word-salad, I went through your comments history and almost every comment of yours reads like this (except maybe a couple). If so, could you maybe stop your experiment? I wasted time trying to parse your comment as if it was generated by a human.
      - mallowdram 1y ago
        I'm not a bot, I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic. and I'm pretty stunned at how inert CS is regarding language. You can find plenty of typos in my posts, and they're not all about this, they're about myth, causality, the symbolic. To accuse a human of being a bot is really poor manners. Far from word salads, they are based in deep theories from empirical demonstrations that words are our most fundamental illusions. If you want the deep research we use internally (about 100 citations) start here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYajatFQ_MU69MBDmIFe58I/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYaj... I suggest that CS has little ability to debates the scientific reality of language if posters are going to complain scientific statements that are defined and defendable are word salads. That's a warning CS hasn't done its homework.
        1y ago
gjm11 1y ago
"Used to" isn't actually a weird metaphorical thing. To "use" can mean (though in most contexts this meaning is obsolete) to do something regularly or habitually. So "I use to do X" means "I am in the habit of doing X", and "I used to do X" means "I was in the habit of doing X". The implication that you don't do it any more is a Gricean thing -- if you were still doing it you'd say "I use to do X" rather than "I used to do X". Nowadays no one uses "use to" in the present tense and no one is thinking of the above when they use "used to" in the past tense. But that's where it comes from. [EDITED to add:] I see that this has got some downvotes, but I'm having trouble figuring out why. If you read this and didn't like it, I'd be very grateful if you let me know what problem(s) you see. Thanks! (Of course maybe it's just random drive-by haters, but more likely there's something it would be useful for me to know. Maybe something I wrote is wrong, in which case I want to know. Maybe to some readers it looks like I'm insulting the person I was replying to or something, which wasn't at all my intention and if that's going on then I should probably clarify or apologize or something. I dunno.)
- Timwi 1y ago
  > I see that this has got some downvotes, but I'm having trouble figuring out why. If you read this and didn't like it, I'd be very grateful if you let me know what problem(s) you see. Thanks! Sure thing, I'll try. Your comment does not contribute to the discussion. It appears that you completely missed the point the comment you replied to made. The point was that “used to” has no inherent meaning and would seem odd to someone who is very new to English, and your response was just to explain what it means. You argue that it's not actually that odd but then basically prove how odd it is by highlighting how much obscure/obsolete knowledge is required to fully explain it.
  - gjm11 1y ago
    Huh, interesting. For what it's worth[1], here's how I see the same matters: [1] Which may not be much; I will in no way be offended if you don't care. I didn't miss that the person I was replying to said that "used to" is odd and confusing. I wasn't arguing that "used to" isn't odd (still less that it isn't confusing for novice English-speakers -- it certainly is). I was arguing that it's a different kind of odd from e.g. "at trække vejret" in Danish, and (to me, but evidently not to you!) I think it's an interestingly different kind of odd, which is why I thought it was worth pointing out. I wasn't attempting to "explain what it means", which obviously the person I was replying to already knows. I was attempting to explain why it means what it does. (In particular, it isn't true that "used to" has no inherent meaning[2]. It really is a past tense of "use", and while the specific meaning it's a past tense of is largely dead you can still, if you squint at it, see how it's of a piece with the other meanings of "use".) [2] Except in so far as no word has inherent meaning. Evidently, none of that came across the way I intended (or, perhaps, it came across fine but I misjudged how interested anyone else might be in the history): I should probably either have been more explicit or not bothered at all :-).
jodrellblank 1y ago
> "In German, to breathe is just a verb: atmen" There's an interesting rabbit hole to go down for English words from Latin "spirare" - to breathe, and how it connects air and breath of life, spirituality. We get respiration (re-spire, re-breathing), inspire (blowing on something, figuratively breathing life/fire into it), expire (breathing out the last breath of life), spirit (a vital substance of life), conspire (to breathe together, speak similar thoughts). https://www.etymonline.com/word/respire https://www.etymonline.com/word/respire https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire https://www.etymonline.com/word/spirit https://www.etymonline.com/word/spirit etc. Words that were almost literal Latin that are now more figurative English based on a sort of French / medieval version of the Latin version. [edit: just remembering that the rather Germanic and plain "Breathe on me breath of God" used to give me the image of someone going "huuuhhh" on their spectacles before polishing them. The next bit is "till all this earthly part of me Glows with thy fire divine" so it is supposed to be exciting and soul-sparking. I only feel the poetic imagery of "fill me with life, blow on the embers of my soul, oh life giving wind-deity", through Romance *spire* words not Anglish *breath* words. "inspire my spirit(2) through respiration, you spiritual spirit(1)"]
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  Inspiration, also!
- unmole 1y ago
  > In German, to breathe is just a verb: atmen If you want to go down the Proto-Indo-European rabbit hole, the Sanskrit word for soul is atman.
- wvbdmp 1y ago
  Of course, the association between moving air and the supernatural is not constrained to latin but seems to be pretty universal. The connection between breath and life is obvious, and so we have god “breathe life into” Adam’s still lifeless clay form. But even at the very beginning of Genesis, god himself is described in hebrew as a “wind” or “breath”. I’m sure many more and older languages feature these conflations, and the jews probably carried them over from earlier semitic cultures.
otikik 1y ago
> "I used to eat meat". In Spanish (from Spain), someone who "eats both meat and fish" is an expression for someone who is bisexual.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  Eats both tuna and sausage?

oh_my_goodness 1y ago

Wow, "pull weather" ~ "suck wind".

tclancy 1y ago
And “suck wind” is a US English idiom for being out of breath.
lithocarpus 1y ago
Literally pulling the weather inside by breathing. Same as sucking wind. It may be an idiom but it's one where the literal meaning fits.

mallowdram 1y ago

All words are metaphors, now add Western languages are agentic, Japanese is not. The problem CS ignored in language is that the arbitrariness in language leaves remarkably unmappable spaces between metaphors. In a way, LLMs are magic acts that expose language's Oz like tricks. Scaffolding idiomatic expressions inside that initial mess only reveals the trick's problem further. Literal words don't mean anything specifically unless they have a context, which is idiosyncratic. LLMs never are able to resolve the double whammy of lexemes and the conduit metaphor paradox. That's how they need constant specific supervision. They're babblers that have no idea what they're saying. Coders can't debate this, this is the inherent problem to language that generative and NLP waves away in a sleight of hand trick. Study the initial conditions to language folks: language doesn't really mean anything.

nyeah 1y ago
That appears to be meaningless. Please explain without using language.
- mallowdram 1y ago
  If you understand the nature of language fully, then its ultimate function is to refute itself. In other words, all our use of arbitrary signals leads eventually to specific signals. To make that simpler, each statement in any existing language is about replacing language.
  - the_af 1y ago
    I'll try to say this as politely as I can: I think this is a bot account. Not only your two posts above read like word-salad, I went through your comments history and almost every comment of yours reads like this (except maybe a couple). If so, could you maybe stop your experiment? I wasted time trying to parse your comment as if it was generated by a human.
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      I'm not a bot, I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic. and I'm pretty stunned at how inert CS is regarding language. You can find plenty of typos in my posts, and they're not all about this, they're about myth, causality, the symbolic. To accuse a human of being a bot is really poor manners. Far from word salads, they are based in deep theories from empirical demonstrations that words are our most fundamental illusions. If you want the deep research we use internally (about 100 citations) start here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYajatFQ_MU69MBDmIFe58I/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYaj... I suggest that CS has little ability to debates the scientific reality of language if posters are going to complain scientific statements that are defined and defendable are word salads. That's a warning CS hasn't done its homework.
      - 1y ago

gjm11 1y ago

"Used to" isn't actually a weird metaphorical thing. To "use" can mean (though in most contexts this meaning is obsolete) to do something regularly or habitually. So "I use to do X" means "I am in the habit of doing X", and "I used to do X" means "I was in the habit of doing X". The implication that you don't do it any more is a Gricean thing -- if you were still doing it you'd say "I use to do X" rather than "I used to do X". Nowadays no one uses "use to" in the present tense and no one is thinking of the above when they use "used to" in the past tense. But that's where it comes from. [EDITED to add:] I see that this has got some downvotes, but I'm having trouble figuring out why. If you read this and didn't like it, I'd be very grateful if you let me know what problem(s) you see. Thanks! (Of course maybe it's just random drive-by haters, but more likely there's something it would be useful for me to know. Maybe something I wrote is wrong, in which case I want to know. Maybe to some readers it looks like I'm insulting the person I was replying to or something, which wasn't at all my intention and if that's going on then I should probably clarify or apologize or something. I dunno.)

Timwi 1y ago
> I see that this has got some downvotes, but I'm having trouble figuring out why. If you read this and didn't like it, I'd be very grateful if you let me know what problem(s) you see. Thanks! Sure thing, I'll try. Your comment does not contribute to the discussion. It appears that you completely missed the point the comment you replied to made. The point was that “used to” has no inherent meaning and would seem odd to someone who is very new to English, and your response was just to explain what it means. You argue that it's not actually that odd but then basically prove how odd it is by highlighting how much obscure/obsolete knowledge is required to fully explain it.
- gjm11 1y ago
  Huh, interesting. For what it's worth[1], here's how I see the same matters: [1] Which may not be much; I will in no way be offended if you don't care. I didn't miss that the person I was replying to said that "used to" is odd and confusing. I wasn't arguing that "used to" isn't odd (still less that it isn't confusing for novice English-speakers -- it certainly is). I was arguing that it's a different kind of odd from e.g. "at trække vejret" in Danish, and (to me, but evidently not to you!) I think it's an interestingly different kind of odd, which is why I thought it was worth pointing out. I wasn't attempting to "explain what it means", which obviously the person I was replying to already knows. I was attempting to explain why it means what it does. (In particular, it isn't true that "used to" has no inherent meaning[2]. It really is a past tense of "use", and while the specific meaning it's a past tense of is largely dead you can still, if you squint at it, see how it's of a piece with the other meanings of "use".) [2] Except in so far as no word has inherent meaning. Evidently, none of that came across the way I intended (or, perhaps, it came across fine but I misjudged how interested anyone else might be in the history): I should probably either have been more explicit or not bothered at all :-).

jodrellblank 1y ago

> "In German, to breathe is just a verb: atmen" There's an interesting rabbit hole to go down for English words from Latin "spirare" - to breathe, and how it connects air and breath of life, spirituality. We get respiration (re-spire, re-breathing), inspire (blowing on something, figuratively breathing life/fire into it), expire (breathing out the last breath of life), spirit (a vital substance of life), conspire (to breathe together, speak similar thoughts). https://www.etymonline.com/word/respire https://www.etymonline.com/word/respire https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire https://www.etymonline.com/word/spirit https://www.etymonline.com/word/spirit etc. Words that were almost literal Latin that are now more figurative English based on a sort of French / medieval version of the Latin version. [edit: just remembering that the rather Germanic and plain "Breathe on me breath of God" used to give me the image of someone going "huuuhhh" on their spectacles before polishing them. The next bit is "till all this earthly part of me Glows with thy fire divine" so it is supposed to be exciting and soul-sparking. I only feel the poetic imagery of "fill me with life, blow on the embers of my soul, oh life giving wind-deity", through Romance *spire* words not Anglish *breath* words. "inspire my spirit(2) through respiration, you spiritual spirit(1)"]

BizarroLand 1y ago
Inspiration, also!
unmole 1y ago
> In German, to breathe is just a verb: atmen If you want to go down the Proto-Indo-European rabbit hole, the Sanskrit word for soul is atman.
wvbdmp 1y ago
Of course, the association between moving air and the supernatural is not constrained to latin but seems to be pretty universal. The connection between breath and life is obvious, and so we have god “breathe life into” Adam’s still lifeless clay form. But even at the very beginning of Genesis, god himself is described in hebrew as a “wind” or “breath”. I’m sure many more and older languages feature these conflations, and the jews probably carried them over from earlier semitic cultures.

otikik 1y ago

> "I used to eat meat". In Spanish (from Spain), someone who "eats both meat and fish" is an expression for someone who is bisexual.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
Eats both tuna and sausage?