I love the English language, for many things, for example its beauty, and its power to reach globally.
But it has its frustrations. My pet hate one is that there is no plural for "you". I can't get over that. So many times does one need to explain whether one means "you" the individual or "you" the company/family/whatever.
Another one is despite the hundreds of thousands of words in English, most of them have several definitions, and often very quite dissimilar. I was reminded of one today: "amateur".
Its two most used definitions of "amateur" are:
"a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons. Compare professional."
And: "a person inexperienced or unskilled in a particular activity: Hunting lions is not for amateurs."
Very different definitions!
I know amateur photographers who are more skilled than some professional photographers I know.
And yet, when I say "I'm an amateur", there's no way for the reader/listener to know whether I mean "I do this for love only" or "I'm not really very good" without clumsily going into explaining it. Is there?
25 comments:
Try interpreting, and translating to and from English professionally, for a living! So many anomalies, words that sound identical but are spelt differently with different meanings; even different pronunciations for the same word, or different meanings for the same word according to where you are in the UK, geographically!
A recent one?
'We're by the weir on the Wear. Where were you?' :-)
And then of course there is the all-to-frequent issue of trying to translate a word that has no equivalent in English, as vast and varied as the language is!
My 'pet' hate? 'American English!' :-)
Thankfully, my partner has excellent communication skills, so can usually 'educate' me as appropriate!
I had one recently, "selvglad". In Danish it means somebody who is inappropriately/exaggeratedly pleased with himself and interested in and fond of himself.
The Danish-English dictionary does not have an equivalent term, useful as it would be. The closest it comes is the phrase "pleased with himself".
The plural of you is y'all, at least for those raised in the Southern US like I was.
I sometimes use "you guys" or such, but it's quite informal.
"Selvglad" in English is "Narcissus" (narcissism, in Russian - the same) - tied to Greek/Latin mythology, no problem.
"You", as I remember from my school grammar classes, always implies "are" even if used alone. That makes it plural even if you (are) use (using) it against a single person.
No problem! :-)
Maybe "selvglad" = narcissist ?
Well, they are definitely synonyms, but I think there are differences.
I'm no linguist, but my feeling is that a narcissist is sort of "in love" with himself, while a person who is "selvglad" (an adjective, by the way) just thinks he's the greatest guy in the world.
I prefer the original definition of amateur which means: someone who loves something. It comes from the Latin Amat. Amateurs are people who do something for the love of it and not for lucre. And in my view it has little or nothing to do with skill levels.
Indeed it is often argued that amateur photographers are the ones who have the time to perfect their work since they are not constained by being forced to produce for their livihood. A pro has to turn out some number of images on demand and probably is not spending much time on any of them.
While english words often do have various meanings, the word amateur is ambivalent at least in all occidental countries, as far as I know. it is not connected with some characteristic of english language, but reflects a sociologic problem.
Some people like labels, are fighting to have a place in the professional arena, and don't want to have people fooling around in the name of love of art making maybe better job than themselves. So they will think amateurs are to be despised, and will use the word that way. It is fight for position in hierarchy.
While people who take pictures just because they like to do it will use amateur in a totally positive way.
Oddly, "you" is the plural form. English dropped the singular form for some reason, and then threw several related rules out the window.
The singular form was "thou" or "thee", depending on whether it was subject, object, etc. Possessive: "thine".
Anyway, that's why it's always you "are", even if you're talking to one person. It used to be "thou art", it should have changed to "you is", but now it's just mismatched.
Sometimes I'd like to go back in time and find the person who decided that one and have a long talk with them.
I agree with Kasia. American English (my native tongue!) is the worst. I speak several languages, and people always ask me what is the hardest language to learn. They assume it's Chinese, Russian, or some language with an alphabet that is unfamiliar to them. I tell them English is the hardest by far, because its rules don't make sense or are applied so inconsistently. That includes spelling rules.
I love a language like Russian or Polish where everything sounds just like it's spelled!
GD, thanks, informative.
Aniko, good point. Thinking about it, it's actually the same in Danish, so I should not blame the language for it.
I guess many definition inconsistencies come from power struggles and such nonsense.
Gilsdesk:
I would certainly NOT argue with you over the assertion that English is an extremely difficult language to learn properly :-)
I stumble a little with Italian, have passable Czech and Spanish, and I speak Russian and Polish fluently; it's interesting to hear that you believe these languages sound as they are spelt, when 'w' frequently becomes a 'v' or is silent, and an apparent 'l' has a 'w' sound :-)
There are many other examples too, including words that appear (to a 'western' eye) to contain no vowels at all! :-)
I was going to point out that "ya'll" is the plural of "you" here in Texas, but someone beat me to it. During the time I spent in Pennsylvania I heard "you's" used a lot. It always seemed awkward and contrived to me.
Try Thai on for size. 50 something consonants and 20 odd vowels. Strange writing. It's written as spoken but when transliterated into the western alphabet even simple words come out with 5 meanings. "Ma" = mom, dog, come, horse, (and I forget the 5th at the moment) depending on the intonation. High, Rising, Middle, Falling, Low. And the same goes for most other words. So if you don't say a word exactly with the same tonal shape then it becomes non-sensical or sometimes even insulting. I did try for a time to learn this but I've pretty much given up now.
The Thai people learning English have an easier time because they simply don't mind if they speak or spell it wrongly. Add to this the confusion that often the transliteration follows traditions that are wrong. For example, using PH for P when we expect to say it as F. I'm sure language lovers delight in all this but for just getting along it's a bit of a nightmare.
'Selvglad' would be either conceited or smug in English.
They are both very close to it in meaning, yes.
Though my feeling is that "conceited" has a stronger undertone of one being *wrong* about the high opinion of oneself. And "smug" has more of tone of being sort of contended with oneself and one's accomplishments.
"Selvglad" goes more in the direction of being a bit in love with oneself, though not quite like "narcissistic".
In parts of the U.S. deep south, "y'all" is singular - "all y'all" is the accepted plural.
An interesting discussion about language from Robert A. Heinlein "Stranger In A Strange Land", between Mahmoud and Jubal:
Mahmoud: "... Mike thinks in Martian - and this gives him a different 'map'. You follow me?"
"I grok it," agreed Jubal. "Language itself shapes a man's basic ideas."
"Yes, but - Doctor, you speak Arabic?"
"Eh? Badly," admitted Jubal. "Put in a while as an army surgeon in North Africa. I still read it because I prefer the words of the Prophet in the original."
"Proper. The Koran cannot be translated - the 'map' changes no matter how one tries. You understand, then, how difficult I found English. It was not alone that my native language has simpler inflections; the 'map' changed. English is the largest human tongue; its variety, subtlety, and irrational idiomatic complexity make it possible to say things in English which cannot be said in any other language. It almost drove me crazy ... until I learned to think in it - and that put a new 'map' of the world on top of the one I grew up with. A better one, perhaps - certainly a more detailed one. But there are things which can be said in Arabic that cannot be said in English."
Jubal nodded. That's why I've kept up my reading." ...
Everybody's view of the world is defined by his 'map', which is basically defined by his language resp. his thinking ... fortunately, there are other possibilities of communication beyond words, opening up its limitations.
The plural of you is y'all, at least for those raised in the Southern US like I was.
That's only for hillbillies and anyway doesn't work because it can be used in the same meaning as the general "you."
can't be used that way I mean. I'm not surprised dumb-as-a-post Kent, God love him, would think so.
while a person who is "selvglad" (an adjective, by the way) just thinks he's the greatest guy in the world.
That's exactly the same thing. only someone in love with himself would think he's the greatest guy in the world. Usually it's opinion shared by no one else. Kent knows all about that.
My relatives, who all use "ya'll" as the plural of "you", laugh when we hear people on TV use "ya'll" as the singular form of "you". I have only seen it used that way in movies or television where Souterners were being ridiculed. Maybe there are some who use it that way, but I have never heard it in real life.
To be more precise, in the area where I was raised, there are three forms: "you" (singular), "y'all" (plural), and "all y'all". Foreigners (anyone not from the region ;-)) sometimes get the impression that "y'all" is singular because they hear someone talking to one person and saying things like "Do y'all want to go to the movie?" But the "y'all" is indeed plural in such a case and is indicating something like "you and the usual crowd of friends/relations".
"All y'all" is also a plural form but emphasizes that it's referring to everyone in this usual crowd. "Are all y'all coming to the party?" Using just "y'all" would allow the possibility that perhaps some of the crowd might not come.
Of course, "ya'll" is already a contraction of "you all", so "all ya'll" means "all you all".
I believe people in Ireland have found quite a simple solution to your pet problem - I witnessed many of them saying "yous" when they needed a plural form.
See, simple solution.
Generally solutions like that develop when there's a need, so I'm just a bit surprised that one hasn't in this case.
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