Keys Corner

We saw Volver last night, with our Spanish evening class (and a lot of other Spanish evening class groups, as the cinema was running a special evening class session). We really enjoyed it – see the summary here, to find out what it’s about.

You don’t get any choice by the way – as far as I know it is only available in Spanish with subtitles, which is why we went to see it. For some reason, most people there didn’t seem to find it a hassle, reading German subtitles and listening at the same time to the Spanish dialog… Recommended!

What connotations does “drop” have for you? As far as I’m concerned, they are negative – you drop a bad idea, for example. Or you might drop your drawers if you have to reveal that you have been caught out. Sales drop off, if a product isn’t successful. If you drop a glass, it usually breaks.

So why on earth would anyone want to call a platform to spread know-how Dropping Knowledge? My guess is, it was invented by non-native speaker of English. It sounds slightly more more positive that “Dumping Knowledge” I suppose…

The Economist, not for the first time, has an article where fuel consumption is quoted in miles per gallon (mpg) and km per liter (km/l). In Germany, and as far as I know, in all other European countries fuel comsumption is measured in liters per 100 km, the same in Australia. I’m not aware of any country using km/l. So where does The Economist get the idea that quoting km/l is helpful to their readers? Which countries use it?

(To convert mpg to l/100 km you can use this calculator.)

The Merriam-Webster dictionary has added the verb “to google” to the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary which is being published later this year. Which means Google joins the list of brand names that have become nouns or verbs replacing traditional words like “hoover” (vacuum-clean), “kleenex” (tissue) – or of course in Germany “Tempo“, “sellotape” (sticky tape, in Germany usually called “Tesafilm“).

What do the above words have in common?

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...(otherwise known as www.tashian.com/multibabel) is an interesting web site if you want to try repeatedly translating a phase or sentence back and forth between English and a series of other languages. The result is much like you got if you used to play Chinese Whispers when you were younger.

For example, after ten iterations:

It’s better to learn a language, than rely on translation tools on the web

becomes

It is a language, this impulse of conteggio learns better in the subsidies to the translation in the Web

Take this Implicit Association Test (being run by Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington) and find out.

Some background information on Implicit Association Tests from the participating universities: Psychologists understand that people may not say what’s on their minds either because they are unwilling or because they are unable to do so. For example, if asked “How much do you smoke?” a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may purposely report smoking only 2 packs a day because they are embarrassed to admit the correct number. Or, the smoker may simply not answer the question, regarding it as a private matter. (These are examples of being unwilling to report a known answer.) But it is also possible that a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may report smoking only 2 packs because they honestly believe they only smoke about 2 packs a day. (Unknowingly giving an incorrect answer is sometimes called self-deception; this illustrates being unable to give the desired answer).

The unwilling-unable distinction is like the difference between purposely hiding something from others and unconsciously hiding something from yourself. The Implicit Association Test makes it possible to penetrate both of these types of hiding. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report.

And a link to more demonstration tests.

The Independent reports that English is approaching the million-word milestone. Now, the largest edition of Duden (the authoritive German language dictionary) contains about 200 000 words, and in French there are between 25 000 and 100 000 words, depending on who you listen to. The million word total comes from an American consultancy called Global Language Monitor.

So what are all these words in English? Well, according to the Independent:

Up to 20 per cent of the words used by Global Language Monitor come from hybrids such as Chinglish and Japlish. Words from Chinglish include the business terms “drinktea“, meaning closed, and “torunbusiness“, meaning open. Bushisms such as “uninalienable” and ‘misunderestimate’ are included.

And presumably, non-Bushisms such as “Bushism“? Oh – and by the way, in case you think I made up the word in the title of this posting, Google returns over 500 hits for it.

The German language is horribly polluted with “denglisch” – English words (some of which aren’t, even if you think they might be, such as “handy” (mobile phone)) every which way you look. You can do your bit to help save the language by enrolling to become “godfather” for a word.

There are (at the time of writing) still some good basic words, such as “der” (the) or “oder” (or) left, and some which I have never in 25 years here heard used in German and which aren’t in my Pons dictionary, such as “donkey” (Esel?). Hmm – perhaps it’s already too late…

I must admit that I am not the world’s best speller by a long margin. And English is worse than most other languages, because many words have friends, who sound identical but mean something completely different. For example, bear and bare. And which is that gland, that older men sometimes have problems with – the prostate or the prostrate? If you’re wracking your brains, maybe you need to browse Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Useage, or perhaps buy a copy.