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> Americans tend to overload the same word with a different meaning depending on the context. They also often resort to idioms and cultural references. This is
by jonahx 2mo ago
> Americans tend to overload the same word with a different meaning depending on the context. They also often resort to idioms and cultural references.
This is not specific to "Americans". Learn any language and you will have the same impression, and experience the same gulf between textbook usage and everyday usage.
- fluoridation 2mo agoAs a non-native speaker, English does have (what I think is) a rather unique phenomenon where the same verb can be used to express different shades of meaning (or sometimes wildly different meanings) depending on whether or which proposition is attached to it. "To step" means to take a step, but "to step up" means to confront something. When you "talk to" someone you converse with them, and when you "talk at" someone you monologue at them.
- tdeck 2mo agoEnglish uses a lot of prepositional phrase idioms. Now that I'm learning Japanese, I find there are relatively few like that (although not zero, compare "と相談" to discuss with and に相談" to consult). But it instead uses many, many compound verb expressions that are often not intiutive to a learner and just have to be memorized, so the effect is similar. It also has words with opposite meanings like 断る (kotowaru, to reject, to ask permission), and 適当 (tekitou, suitable, appropriate, half-assed, careless).
- fluoridation 2mo agoThanks. I'm learning Japanese too. The other day I learned that 在る can be used with either で or に and didn't make this connection, though I guess whether it counts as different meanings depends on how you look at it, since in both cases you're specifying the position in spacetime of something.
- Gander5739 2mo ago> [Japanese] also has words with opposite meanings These are known as contronyms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym).
- tdeck 2mo agoThank you! It's funny how I have never thought of most of these. The only similar word I could think of was "biweekly".
- DiogenesKynikos 2mo agoThis is a feature among the Germanic languages (of which English is one). In German, these are called splittable verbs, and they can appear in two forms: "upstep" and "step up," depending on the sentence structure. That makes "upstep" / "step up" seem more like a separate verb from "step," rather than just being the same verb with an adverb added on.
- schoen 2mo agoMy German teachers translated "trennbare Verben" as "separable verbs": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb
- gmac 2mo agoThese are called phrasal verbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs