Found a neat article about idioms in various languages
What are some of your favorite idioms in the language(s) that you speak?
Here are two language-themed idioms from English:
“That’s Greek to me”, which is used to refer to something that is difficult to understand for the speaker (by using Greek as a metaphorical language that many English speakers would not understand). The linked Wikipedia articles notes various corresponding sayings in other languages, where the metaphorical language is often changed.
“Pardon my French”, which is used to excuse profanity. This phrase seems to have had a pretentious origin and then evolved into something that is often sarcastic.
I haven’t solved this problem either… What may help is to add sentences providing context, however, I found that I started associating words with a sentence, instead of with their meaning.
Idiom seems a bit formal and pedantic in English as well. People might use the phrases like “saying” or “manner of speech” instead.
It’s funny when phrases/words describe themselves. These are called [Autological word - Wikipedia](Autological word/phrases). With opposite concept, a heterological word, then a paradox arises when we consider whether heterological applies to itself:
I think that’s a phenomenon in most languages, where there are many synonyms with subtle differences and slight variations in connotations and appropriate context.
What about Russian? I imagine that you could make a similar list.
I think the majority of people that are trained in touch typing would hold down shift with one finger (typically a pinky) while pressing another key with some other finger.
However, with injuries or disability, that might not be easy or even possible. Caps lock provides one workaround to allow such people to type capital letters. However, caps lock typically does not provide the same functionality as holding down shift for actuating other inputs (such as typing certain symbols). Similarly, one might be unable to use other keys like “Ctrl”, “Alt”, etc. in tandem with another keypress.
To address such disabilities, major operating systems implement this accessibility feature:
Yes, if we’re looking at merely synonyms. But luckily synonyms often come from different root words so it’s not that hard to distinguish them. Here the annoying part is that not only they mean similar things, they even look the same. I think in English an example could be “use” vs “utilize”. At least for me, since they look similar to my eye, for other people they might be sufficiently different.
I was just reading the British Go Journal’s Spring 2000 issue.
It surprised me to see an article still referring to “wei-chi” rather than weiqi. The same author, Franco Pratesi, also uses the unusual orthography “Shangai” for Shanghai.
One guess is that these were fashionable European styles at the time. Wiktionary says that the Shangai form is used in Portuguese, alongside Xangai. However, the topic is Western Go journalism in the 19th century, so perhaps an attempt was being made to mimic historic forms.
Interestingly, the quoted material from 1892 uses the even more archaic wei-ch’i.
To quote:
The name of Z. Volpicelli is known … thanks to two pioneering English articles that he published … printed in Shangai … the second, of 1892, contains one of the first descriptions of wei-chi in an European language.
Whilst quoting I also noticed another oddity, the “stubborn” spelling an European, the type of which we’ve discussed before.
German has these too, “geflügelte Wörter”. They’re from Homer’s epics. When a character says something, it is sometimes introduced with the phrase Καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηῦδα “And then he answered him and spoke with winged words”
There are some who argue that it’s not winged, as if the words fly from one to another, but feathered like an arrow and they hit their mark.
German Geflügelte Wörter are quotes of famous people, though, or famous texts, that made it into everyday use.
Distinguishing 食べ物 from 食物 is through the first one having くん pronunciation: たべもの (because there’s a hiragana in) and the second having おん pronunciation: しょくもつ (a word made up solely of kanji; funnily it could be read as しょくぶつ, but that usually means plant: 植物).
品 just means item, and 材 means ingredient, so these make sense as well.
食料 and 食糧 are most annoying, since they are pronounced the same (which is why they have the same radical 米). However, they’re pretty much synonymous, and the kanji might only give a slight nuance.
In other words, kanji is used to give more nuance, such as with 分かる (generally to understand or know something) and 解る(to understand / figure out a problem), or 見る (to see), 観る (to view) and 診る (to inspect). It’s an extra literary dimension that our languages lack, and can be used to great creativity (e.g. 煙草 being read as たばこ / tobacco or 麦酒 being read as ビール / beer)
The problem is not that you can’t distinguish them, べ in 食べ物 is quite clear, it’s that it’s harder and more annoying. Sure, no one has any problems with this specific word because it’s so easy, but I bet you could come up with an appropriately difficult example for you where kanji is slightly different but looks the same or reading changes for no reason.
The problem with these particular words is when you’re given English in anki and need to answer Japanese. That’s the point, because you need to prepare English part in a way to make you quickly figure out translation, and not get confused. So you kinda need to put in a hint there, and that’s why I’m figuring out nuance.
Precisely the problem with English → Japanese part of anki.
Yeah, my trouble are mostly with Anki. In the real text I don’t find words particularly annoying.
I wanna try and rewrite English parts of leeched cards in a way that would help me figure out the exact synonym. Like translating 短所 as shortcoming and 欠点 as lacking point.
One funny example is コンクール which is translated as competition or contest in jisho org which can be confused. But apparently it comes from French concours from Latin concursus, and has Russian analogue конкурс, and when you know that, it’s easy.
The next annoying set of words are those containing 用:
使用 - to use something, in a straightforward way, for it intended purpose
利用 - to use something with the meaning of benefitting or taking advantage of something, maybe outside of the typical usage
活用 - use something effectively or proficiently within intended purpose
運用 - this one it seems is used in a sense of “operating” as in “operation manual”, “operation procedures” or management as in 資産運用.
Additionally there’s a bunch of 応用, 実用 and 適用. But I’m having a hard time figuring out those.
Additionally I found a fun-looking game on steam, I wonder if I could play it.
This site was brought to my attention: Improve your Japanese pronunciation using YouTube You type in a word and it finds videos with the word (using the subtitles in the language) so you can listen in context for pronunciation. Clever idea
Not just for Japanese, seems like a few different languages
