Welsh is not EnglishMark44 said:That's the one...
German isn't English either, but the list of German words in English is really long!pinball1970 said:Welsh is not English
English is chock-full of words that came from other languages. Would you deny that kayak, garage, wiener, pajamas, bungalow, pizza, and many others aren't words in English? They all have their origins in other languages.pinball1970 said:Welsh is not English
Bandersnatch said:Oh, and one of the nuttier words in English is 'fast'. It's a noun, it's an adjective, it's a verb, it's an adverb. I mean, come on.
Thanks for the insight! "Hold fast" would be "Halte fest" in German. There is also a word 'fast' in German, but it means 'almost', which gives reason to some 'fast food' jokes.epenguin said:And as adverb and adjective (in the sense of rapid) it has also come to mean the opposite of what it used to. There are plenty of remainders of the old meaning as in "hold fast " "fasten" etc.
Is it? My ear always heard PTT, faculty member from Bryn Mawr down in summers at U. of Del., saying "mower;" never had the presence of mind to ask him.Vanadium 50 said:the second word is one syllable.
Im aware of that (and French latin Norse...) I was going for accessible and something in common usefresh_42 said:German isn't English either, but the list of German words in English is really long!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English
Greg Bernhardt said:Pet Peeves of your native language
fresh_42 said:German isn't English either, but the list of German words in English is really long!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English
fresh_42 said:But it's hard to imagine a consonant becoming a vowel.
Mark44 said:Peeves in English - What a difference a single letter makes!
wretched - two syllables, accent on first
retched - one syllable
I don't think so. The attempts are as old as the word is, i.e. more than a century by now. And if it didn't happen up to now, why should it happen at all? Also its status as hybrid is a bit artificial, because the German counterparts are Eigenwert (Wert=value), Eigenraum (Raum=space), Eigenvektor and Eigenfunktion, i.e. it is a literal adjustment.epenguin said:There are bound to be some German terms in scientific English. One that sticks out is 'eigen-', as in the awkward set of hybrids eigenvalue, eigenvector, eigenfunction etc. You occasionally see attempts at an English version like "proper-" "self-" or "auto-" even going back a long way, but they have not taken. I suspect they will in the end. Like you used to see in texts 'gegen-' as in 'gegen ion' now totally supplanted by 'counter-'.
And this is really mean! I regularly write fibre instead of fiber because of this strange behavior elsewhere.Stephen Tashi said:Well, there are words ending in "le", such as "able", "table", "probable" etc. A vowel and consonant seem to change places. The "l" is sounded like "e" or "u" and the "e" is sounded like an "l".
This is actually the hardest part. I desperately miss all the short idioms which I do not know in English and which makes 90% of daily communication. E.g. we can say "wohl" (well) to mean yes with emphasis, or "doch" which is missing in English, meaning yes as an answer to no. The Hungarian say "but yes". So these many tiny phrases which constitutes communication can only be learned by acclimation and not by translation. I often wonder how a phrase in an American movie might have been in the original and I must admit that I have no idea, since what I would have said didn't fit the syllables. The German version can't be literally translated, so the English version remains unknown to me.Stephen Tashi said:How do non-native speakers of US English feel about all its idioms? - for example, "pet peeve".
When I sense that I'm communicating with a non-native speaker, I tried to avoid idioms. However, this makes what I write sound unnatural.
fresh_42 said:German isn't English either, but the list of German words in English is really long!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English
We have this too, please Google 'Yes we have no bananas.'fresh_42 said:This is actually the hardest part. I desperately miss all the short idioms which I do not know in English and which makes 90% of daily communication. E.g. we can say "wohl" (well) to mean yes with emphasis, or "doch" which is missing in English, meaning yes as an answer to no.
And I thought you had no milk since 1966.pinball1970 said:We have this too, please Google 'Yes we have no bananas.'
The German 'eigen' is well-translated as 'own', as in 'sein eigenes arm' = 'his own arm'; however, as an emergent word, 'own' is etymologically clumsy to use as a prefix, and reverting to one of the Old English-Saxon-Frisian-Norse progenitors of both 'eigen' and 'own', such as 'agan' or 'egan' is unnecessary when the modern German version is almost unchanged from the meaning-equivalents in those ancestor tongues, and means exactly what is wanted, so adopting it into modern English directly seems appropriate. Some may see the prepending of a German prefix to a word of Latin origin as jarring; however, it's not at all unusual in modern English.fresh_42 said:Eigen fits better than proper, which is closest to its translation: Eigenschaft = property. But proper has been taken already by 'clean' and by 'not fake', so you would add a seemingly fourth meaning, although it factually is its first and forgotten (?) proper meaning of 'belongs to'. In addition it is easy to pronounce by English speakers: ighen, which I suppose is the real reason it made it into science.
(Wikipedia)At the start of the 20th century, Hilbert studied the eigenvalues of integral operators by viewing the operators as infinite matrices. He was the first to use the German word eigen, which means "own", to denote eigenvalues and eigenvectors in 1904, though he may have been following a related usage by Helmholtz. For some time, the standard term in English was "proper value", but the more distinctive term "eigenvalue" is standard today.
Yeah I never quite knew what he meant when I listened on my mum's radio as a young child.fresh_42 said:And I thought you had no milk since 1966.
Oh yeah. I remember an interview on British tv when I was eighteen. I only knew my school's English and they interviewed - I think - a forward from Liverpool (gratulations by the way). Well, not-a-single-word.pinball1970 said:English and all its pet peeves, is a walk in the park compared to local language accents and dialects.
That is another topic thread though I think.
It is CONgratulations actually fresh and the plaudits should be reserved for our friends in Merseyside, I am not of that particular geography.fresh_42 said:Oh yeah. I remember an interview on British tv when I was eighteen. I only knew my school's English and they interviewed - I think - a forward from Liverpool (gratulations by the way). Well, not-a-single-word.
United or City?pinball1970 said:It is CONgratulations actually fresh and the plaudits should be reserved for our friends in Merseyside, I am not of that particular geography.
Ownership is distinct from possession. Whatever is my own belongs to me, but I can possess, i.e. have in my possession, that which belongs to another, i.e is another's own. A renter doesn't own the property he rents, but he possesses it, while it's owner doesn't possesses it, but still owns it. Own can also mean aver, as in 'though he wasn't there at that time, he later owned that he was'.fresh_42 said:There is also a slightly different meaning nowadays between eigen and own. Own is clearly used to express possession today, whereas eigen has the connotation of a property. E.g. "Es war ihm eigen, dass er morgens betete." means "It was his habit that he prayed in the morning." This connotation isn't transported by own, but it reflects what eigen means: a certain habit.
This is nit picking and jural. To own is then even stronger than to possess. And eigen is not own! There are certainly relations, as Eigentum is ownership, but Eigenschaft is property, and Eigenheit habit. These all show that eigen is far more variable than own or proper is. And it has a clear tendency towards a special property which makes it best fit for eigenvalues. A vector doesn't own his eigenvalue, nor is it a proper value. This would immediately raise the question about improper values.sysprog said:Ownership is distinct from possession. Whatever is my own belongs to me, but I can possess, i.e. have in my possession, that which belongs to another, i.e is another's own. A renter doesn't own the property he rents, but he possesses it, while it's owner doesn't possesses it, but still owns it. Own can also mean aver, as in 'though he wasn't there at that time, he later owned that he was'.
These might be true, but words change their meaning over centuries. You cannot apply their original meaning one-to-one.For the meaning of 'eigen' that you're distinguishing as 'habit', the latter word in English comes from the Latin verb 'habere', to have as one's own in the sense of to consist of, which is a cognate of the German verb 'haben', (the English word 'have' is more closely related to German 'kapieren'). The word 'custom' with the meaning of 'habit' in the sense to which you allude, is akin to Latin 'suus', one's own.
Man u Fresh, it's been a difficult time for us recently...fresh_42 said:United or City?
I'm afraid to say, but if you ever saw English fans abroad and the next day Scottish ... I know whom I'd prefer to party with.pinball1970 said:They have a bad reputation on the whole
As verbs, own is abstract, and possesses is physical.fresh_42 said:To own is then even stronger than to possess.
Is 'sehr eigenes arm' = 'his own arm' not correct?And eigen is not own!
In each of those words, 'eigen' contributes some sense of 'own', and each could be anglicized by 'own' prepended to a suffix: 'eigentum' ≈ 'owndom', 'eigenschaft' ≈ 'ownship', 'eigenheit' ≈ 'ownhood'.There are certainly relations, as Eigentum is ownership, but Eigenschaft is property,
and Eigenheit habit.
I would own that contention to be founded on little more than an impropriation to yourself of a declaratory fiat on the matter.These all show that eigen is far more variable than own or proper is.
I wouldn't disagree with the claim that it's a good choice.And it has a clear tendency towards a special property which makes it best fit for eigenvalues.
In English, we wouldn't say of a thing that it owns (verb) anything, but we could refer to its own (adjective) characteristic value (not 'his own', because mathematical objects, quite properly (in the sense of 'rightfully') in my (own) opinion, don't have gender in English).A vector doesn't own his eigenvalue, nor is it a proper value.
Not if we don't improperly (i.e incorrectly in this instance) use the word 'proper' intransitively, and say instead that the value 'is proper to it', meaning 'belongs to it' or (more reachingly) 'is characteristic of it'.This would immediately raise the question about improper values.
Of course that's true; however, ancestor languages being static, except perhaps when a previously lost ancient document is discovered, it is not wrong for us to consult the meanings of the ancient root words when constructing words for newly discovered characteristics.These might be true, but words change their meaning over centuries. You cannot apply their original meaning one-to-one.
fresh_42 said:I'm afraid to say, but if you ever saw English fans abroad and the next day Scottish ... I know whom I'd prefer to party with.
The word 'homogenized' (the pronunciations hō-ˈmä-jə- nīzd or hə-ˈmä-jə- nīzd are correct for that word) refers to something that started out inhomogenous (milk with the cream floating on top) having been later subjected to a process by which it becomes homogenous (micro-mixed to a stable consistency that does not allow the cream to spontaneously re-agglomerate at the top, as simply shaking a bottle of unhomogenized milk would allow).gmax137 said:The talk about math (eigen...) and milk brought this one to mind. Why do we say, "this milk is homogenized" or "the population is homogeneous," but in (every) math class I ever was in, the differential equation is homogeneous (ho-mo-GEE-knee-us)? That always bugged me, but when I pronounced it hum-ODGE-in-us I got nothing but funny looks by everyone. After a few tries, I just went along with the ho-mo-GEE-knee-us crowd.
They're two closely related words that historically have been sometimes distinguished and sometimes conflated. Depending upon context, they could be used or interpreted as distinct words, or as different spellings of the same word, sometimes with slightly different emphasis. For example, the word 'homogenous' was used in biology to mean having apparently related characteristics, while in the argots of various industries, it was, and in some cases still is, used instead of 'homogeneous', with the same or almost the same meaning of uniform consistency of a composite material.gmax137 said:so you're saying these are two different words!? well I learn something new every day. thanks!
This reminds me of a book of illustrated idioms in French and English. You would have for instance "It's raining cats and dogs," with a drawing of cats and dogs falling down, and on the facing page you would have "Il pleut des cordes," with ropes "raining" down. Was very funny!Stephen Tashi said:How do non-native speakers of US English feel about all its idioms? - for example, "pet peeve".
Isn't it also a problem that idioms can be quite regional? Brits and Americans don't always use the same idioms.Stephen Tashi said:When I sense that I'm communicating with a non-native speaker, I tried to avoid idioms. However, this makes what I write sound unnatural.
Could that impression be (at least partially) due to a tendency to take less notice of more locally (and consequently more frequently and familiarly) encountered examples?DrClaude said:Generally, I get the feeling that Americans speak much more in metaphors and idioms than other people. Am I wrong?