fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2596 ]

[ SECRET POST #2596 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2596 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Star Trek: The Next Generation]

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03.

[The Croods]

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04.

[Elementary]

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05.

[Final Fantasy XIII]

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06.

[SCP Foundation]

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07.

[Philip Seymour Hoffman]

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08.

[Twin Peaks]

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09.

[Richard Armitage]

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10.

[Reign]

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11.

[The Hobbit]

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12.

[Hunger Games]

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13.

[Don't Hug Me I'm Scared]

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14.

[Teen Wolf]

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15.

[Panic! at The Disco/Dallon Weekes]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 063 secrets from Secret Submission Post #371.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Actually... in a lot of Indian languages there aren't words for those things. They just use the English. Some examples off the top of my head are "teaspoon" and "tablespoon" as units of measure in baking/cooking.

I am not really that familiar with the various languages of India outside of what I've heard my friends speak, but I do have enough experience with them to tell you that they aren't just doing it for no reason.

But see, that's what's baffling. So there isn't a word for 'teaspoon' as a measure. But there must be some equivalent in the language itself. And if there's no word in the language itself, how is 'teaspoon' understood or used?

If the word itself - and the concept behind it (this amount of a substance, the amount that fits into a spoon this size) - doesn't exist, why use a word that will have to be explained, rather than finding something that's already in the language? And what do 'purists' think? What do they do when they encounter a word that their language has no equivalent for - do they just grind to a halt?

I'm not trying to be nasty, i just don't understand it.

Now, I want to qualify this by saying that it's not something I really understand intimately either, so one or more of my points about language might be wrong here. I'm much more knowledgeable about the cuisine than I am about the linguistics in question, but nevertheless I'll try to provide what I understand to be part of the explanation.

It's very, very useful to realize that India was a British colony for a large part of its history. Essentially all of its industrialization can be attributed to that, so it isn't hard to see where certain English words such as terms for technology and engineering would have made their way into the language. It's also useful for the particular instance of the usage of "teaspoon" to realize that traditional Indian cuisine doesn't actually employ volumetric measurements. In ayurveda - the practice of traditional medicine - measures exist, but they are measurements by weight, not by volume. To imagine that introducing people to the concept of recipes that originated from Britain (such as yeast breads, cookies, etc.) necessitated the use of such language isn't difficult.

As for the last point, I'm not sure the concept of language purity is as strong in India as it is in some other countries. I may just be talking out of my ass on this one, but I've never heard any complaints about it in my limited experience, which definitely differentiates it from languages like Japanese and Russian.

Now, see, that's very interesting. I can understand tech words, since a lot of them are new to us, too, but....

(Sorry if i seem dense....) Surely in India there are recipes, and yes, if you're going to make a sponge cake for the English family, you'd have to use English measurements. But surely there would have to be a sort of...mental translation, and there must be an Indian equivalent of 'teaspoon', even if it's a measure of weight.

It's all very odd to me - which isn't to say bad, or wrong, or stupid - just odd, and interesting.

Well, yes. In traditional cooking there are recipes, but they aren't recipes like you would think of today. They are more like lists of ingredients, which one is expected to be able to put together by taste. ...Which actually isn't unlike a lot of the older recipes in European tradition either. Standardized measurements in cooking didn't really come about until the 1700's.

In India the sort of weight measurements that come from Ayurvedic medicine are not made with the kind of equipment a cook would have had access to back then.

I don't know what to tell you. Most of this information is just stuff I have gleaned from watching entirely too many youtube videos about Indian food since I happen to really like it and like to learn how to do things the proper way.

Heee. Youtube, the new University of the World!

Actually, Japanese is rife with loanwords from all different languages, not just English. It's a huge part of their language in general - for instance, the Japanese word for bread is "pan," which comes from the Portuguese "pão." Likewise, their word for hideout, "ajito," is from the Russian "agitpunkt." The Japanese language borrows from all over the place; English is just a small subset.

Not only that, but they've taken loanwords and given them their own meanings. In English, we think of " high tension" in the sense of a tense situation or a strong pulling force, but in Japanese it's used to refer to a state of intense excitement and has positive connotations rather than negative ones. For a country that's so traditional in a lot of ways, it really likes to borrow words!

I know all of that; I lived there for a year and studied the language for several. But there's still a national (read: government enabled) push to replace those words with ones that are entirely Japanese-derived. It's silly to the point of ridiculousness that there are departments that exist to try to essentially erase the need for katakana.

As far as I know this isn't the case for India, but I could be off base.

I don't know specifically about Indian languages, but my family background is Filipino, which was under Spain and the US. I can't speak Tagalog or any of the dialects, but the family and friends who do switch between English and whichever language they're using. And with numbers, there's switching to Spanish, but not all the time. Also, a friend of mine has parents who apparently switch between three different Indian languages themselves, with the occasional English word. afaik the switching doesn't happen with any intention in casual conversation with another person with the same switching ability, just some things flow better in one language or another. In other words, language is weird, man.

Also, loanwords exist in many languages, but they can get corrupted or altered in meaning over time (I vaguely recall someone characterizing English itself as rifling through the pockets of other languages for spare vocabulary). But if a word you've heard neatly encapsulates a new concept for a language, why make a new one? There's a certain amount of luck behind whether usage of a new word catches on or not, but it happens. (Others can probably point out more or better examples, but all I can think of right now is schadenfreude, for instance. And if any English speaker thought of the concept behind it before it became known, I'd imagine they talked around it, and their listener was like, "oh yeah, I know that feeling", but neither thought they needed a word, stat.)

Sa

(Also just wanted to note that my inability to speak any Filipino languages has elicited reactions anywhere from "aw, I wanted to talk in Tagalog, but whatever! Have some more food" to, er, much less kinder sentiments. And trying to learn when you're older, oddly enough, can add on to the flack. But otoh English is considered important to know, and when they were much younger, a couple of my cousins over in the PI briefly refused to speak anything but English... So there can still be language tension, even in an environment of casual language switching.)

Language *is* interesting. :) I can't imagine switching between three languages (but how awesome to be able to do that). I'd love to know why the (seemingly) nonsensical English words were chosen in the docu that I saw.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll

Terry Pratchett also used it, a little altered, in one of his books.

Ayrt

Thanks for the full quote and attribution!

I'm curious, was there a common thread or something specific about which English words were used in the documentary, or how? Or was it more like different English words/phrases/sentences peppered in at random? (The latter is what I'm more used to hearing in my case -- unless the speaker's talking to me, then the English:Tagalog (or other dialect) ratios switch, of course, but usage of the other language usually persists.)

You know, i have a terrible memory and it's been a while, but it seemed like it was just...random words. Nothing particularly tech-oriented or anything. Obviously, 'Google', stuff like that, but also things like...the man who ran the program was talking to a group of kids about how he had been sexually molested as a child, and how they should say, no, etc., and some of what he was saying he said in English.

And the kids used some English when talking to the local council/community organization about getting more public water pumps and again - no tech-oriented words, just...random words. I wish i could remember the docu, i'd link it. One of the boys in the group got to go speak at the UN, i think, or UNICEF...man, i just can't remember, it was last year.

Ayrt

That sounds a lot like what I grew up hearing! My 2 cents, I think it's just people who feel at home with two or more languages used to conversing with the same. It's also kind of like people who've lived elsewhere with a different major language than their native tongue, and find themselves having trouble switching back back home.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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