Issoire Lynx

I'm hoping this hasn't been asked before (this is my first post to this community, and I'm a little nervous,) but does anyone here know the difference between the German verbs 'zerbrechen' and 'brechen' (I'm not sure but I think I've seen this with zerfallen and fallen as well)?

In doing some informal rehearsing the other day, we were all saying things similar to this:

"First I say, 'In the name of our Lord, I, gordoom, promise that I will one day blah blah blah, by the faith that is in me.' And then you say, 'In the name of our Lord, I, dustthouart, in the form and manner wherein blah blah blah, by the faith that is in me.' Then the priest..."

Also found in this example from the BBC miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice:
Mrs. Bennet: "'My dear friend,' there now! 'Dine with Louisa and me today... la-di-da, la-di-da, la-di-da... as the gentlemen are to dine with the officers.' - Oh, that's unlucky! Still you must go and make what you can out of it."

Another use, commonly encountered in linguistic pursuits, is in filler for templates such as... actually I can't think of any in English right this moment, but I can think of some in Chinese, such as 以什麼什麼為主. In writing this would usually be 以......為主. Which is "take... as primary" literally, and would be said aloud as "take what what as primary." In English I would say "something something" for this kind of filler. In both languages, the "what what" and "something something" are said quickly and kind of blur together.

Another one of these "speech replacement words" in English is "yadda yadda yadda", from (I assume) Yiddish.

1. Is there an actual linguistic term for this phenomenon?
2. What words or phrases do people use in other languages for this purpose?

OK, I've been feeling kind of dumb about this, and wondering if I'm alone: until this year I had never heard that any Christians had a problem with using "X-mas" as opposed to "Christmas". Apparently it is seen as "taking Christ out of Christmas".

Am I alone in my cluelessness? Or are there places where it's not an issue? One explanation I read was that it only became a problem as fewer and fewer people were taught classical languages at school, but that's been the case for decades, so I'm not sure why it would suddenly be a big deal in the last ten years or so. Which is apparently the case, though like I said, it's news to me.

?




ETA: I should add that I do know that X-mas has been used for centuries, and that X is the symbol for the Greek letter Chi, first letter of Christ's name. What I was asking had more to do with how long it's been considered offensive and anti-Christian, presumably by people who have no idea that the X actually refers to Christ.

     Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates them - and good wishes to all the rest!
There's something I have been thinking of recently and I wonder if you could please help me find the right answer. Over the past years, I've noticed that characters in many English/American movies (or literature) are called Mr./Mrs., which is followed by the first letter of their name, often in a humorous way, for example in the movie 1776::
    T. Jefferson: "But I burn, Mr. A!"
    J. Adams: "So do I, Mr. J!"
Also, I noticed it also appears when a one character harbours romantical feelings for another one, such as Ms. Lovett who would sometimes call Todd Sweeney "Mr.T".
    Such form of address is certainly not popular in my native language (Czech) and even seems slightly weird to me, yet I really find it interesting, so can anybody please tell me a bit more about it? Are there more situations when you use it? Does it have a history? Does its origin come from some particular book or something else? Thanks! 

a question for commuters using regularly the underground (the tube, subway) in the UK, the US, Canada and other English-speaking countries. I wonder if there is a common question you'd use when travelling on a crowded train to find out if the person/people who is/are closer to the doors is/are going to leave the train at the next station or otherwise let you through? Can you think of any? Thanks in advance!

EDIT: if you have something to say about other means of transport (buses, trams, etc.), go ahead.

The etymology of 'yule' is said to be obscure. Any interesting theories on the origins of this term?

Hello, all! I just got into an argument about whether or not "pleaded" is a word and was ganged up on so badly that I need to find an answer!

Earlier, a few people and I were sitting around and the claim was made that "pleaded" is not a word. So, I figured I would look "plead" up in the dictionary, and sure enough "pleaded" is an accepted form of "plead." Somehow, it being in the dictionary was not good enough for these people!

I just read here that "pleaded" is the preferred form, however WikiAnswers is definitely not how I am going to resolve this argument.

What I am looking for is some sort of peer reviewed explanation for why and how "pleaded" became/is a word (because...the dictionary isn't good enough...?)

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

My friend posted a Facebook status saying that he was back in Southern California, which would be surprisingly early for winter break, and five or six of us have commented on it saying just "already??" Another friend posted "なにー？？" (which he and I are aware doesn't translate to "already??"), which got me wondering as to how to say "already" in the sense that we're using it in other languages. The direct Spanish translation would be "ya", and the Chinese translation would be "已經", but both don't have quite the same meaning as "already"; my friend who posted in Japanese said that "もう", similarly, sounds awkward, and my boyfriend added that "sudah" in Indonesian isn't the same, either. "なにー？？" and "真的??" capture our confusion but not the way we've basically been copying and pasting each others' responses.

How would you translate "already??" into other languages in a way that's both grammatical and felicitous (in the linguistic sense)?

I was looking at some Coptic Orthodox icons and on those of saints they say "piapostolos" and on those of archangels they say "piarchangelos" in Coptic letters after their name (so, St. Mark is Markos Piapostolos).

The apostolos and archangelos parts are pretty clear but does anyone know what the "pi-" means exactly? It's probably Coptic but since Copts mostly speak Arabic now, I guess it could be Arabic, too. My first guess would be something like "holy" but in all the other Afro-Asiatic languages I've heard the word "holy" for it is something like kadish/qaddash/etc...

(I've tried looking this up elsewhere, already)

Since my university doesn't offer any courses in modern Hebrew, I'd like to find a halfway decent teach-yourself book until I can find an actual class on it. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything on my own yet -- does anyone have any good recommendations for a teach-yourself type book for modern Hebrew? I'm fuzzy on the alphabet (both script and print) since it's been years since temple school, so anything that has a section on learning the alphabet is a huge plus, but not necessary. If anyone could recommend a good alef-bet workbook too that'd be great.

Thanks!

I'm looking to get another tattoo in kanji* (like the one in my icon! :) but I want to make sure I have the characters right.
*I'm still unsure whether this is "kanji" or something else. It's the supposedly mandarin chinese from the side of the Firefly class ship in Firefly/Serenity, the characters mean "peace" and "tranquility" which loosely translates to Serenity. I'd like something in the same language, but either Chinese or Japanese will do. Any non-english lettering will do, but I'm looking for something similarly picturesque.

I need another two-character tattoo so it balances. I want it to say "polyamory" or some variation on the theme. I was looking at "many" and "love" in kanji, but then I wasn't sure if using those literal translations together would form something like "giant slut".

So I'd like to know how "many" + "love" would translate, if there is a Chinese/Japanese term for consensual non-monogamy, and any suggestions for a two-character tattoo in the said theme. Any help would be appreciated :)

I've noticed something unusual about my friend that I can't quite put my finger on. She has a range of peculiarities in the way she structures her sentences; here are a couple of examples:

- Saying, "for I can take a walk" instead of what's normally, "so that I can take a walk"
- "Are you wanting to go?" instead of, "Do you want to go?"

There's a few more but I'm blanking on them--these are the most consistent though. Another thing I've noticed is her placement of the primary stress in a word sometimes differs to the pronunciation that a native speaker might have.
What makes me (and her, now that I've mentioned it) most curious is that she is a native English speaker, having been raised in a Southern Californian neighborhood with little to no contact with anyone who might have impacted her learning of the language in a significant manner.

Does anyone have an idea of what, if anything, may have caused these slight irregularities? Or was it just coincidental?

(she is descendant of a fully norwegian family, if that makes a difference).

I was reading this Time Magazine article about what to call this decade that'll be ending next Friday.

So what are your thoughts? What should it be called? For the life of me, I can't seem to choose one that I like. Though, I am leaning towards the "zeroes." While we're on the subject, the next decade will be called "the teens" right?

Also, I'm curious as to what the situation is in other languages... Does this problem exist?

I'm on a hunt, but it's going rather vaguely, so I thought I'd try to narrow my search and just suck it up and ask someone...

I want to buy German manga (comics in the Japanese cartoon style). There is one in particular that I'd want to buy, and it is written, drawn, and produced IN Germany (not translated from the Japanese). However, as I'm trying to continue my study of the German language, I wouldn't mind buying some German translations of other things as well.

So my question is this: Do any of you know of any specific sites from which I could order German comics? I'm looking for something based in Germany (for more variety), but by all means, if you know of one that's based in the US, the shipping savings would be appreciated. =^_^=;

For some reason I always have a really hard time when it comes to learning basic greetings in a language (hello, good morning, what's your name?, how are you?, etc) yet I can dive into things like "Are there any nice restaurants near the plaza?" Does anyone else experience the same thing? Is there a way to get through greetings quickly, painlessly, and effectively?

I've been back in Medway this week, and thinking about phonetics (too much time on my hands for sure!). Round my way, there's almost sound merger between words like Dan and down, but not quite (often represented in writing as things like Saarf London). So aʊ gets turned into just plain a contrasted with the æ of words like cat or the ʊ:w of words like dawn or horse . Is there an official name for this change, along the lines of "trap-bath split" or "cot-caught merger"?

So to make it clearer
Dan= dæn (RP) dan (Medway)
down= daʊn (RP) da:n (Medway)
Dawn= dɔ:n (RP) dʊ:wn (Medway)

What's the deal with how Iraq is pronounced in the west? Where did this "eye-rack" mess come from? "Ee-rock" (sorry, I don't have any formal linguistics knowledge and don't know the proper symbols/terminology for the sounds) isn't difficult or unnatural for English speakers in the US and other countries to manage, so how did this change occur?

It just bothers me so much, partly because I'm Indian-American and sick of people butchering my own not-hard-if you-actually-stop-and-think-about-it name and the names of my friends of various ethnicities. I was so thrilled to hear Obama pronounce "Pakistan" properly, as opposed to "pack-uh-stan"--I get that a short A sound is more common in English, but once again, it's not that hard to pronounce it properly.

Anyway, I guess this was more of a rant than an actual question, but if you have any ideas of how this came about, I'd be interested in hearing them. Thanks!

EDIT: I should add that "ee-rock" is an approximation. I don't pronounce it that literally, but I don't know the terms for the various sounds, and I was focusing far more on the errors in the vowel sounds, since we have access to a very wide range of vowel sounds in our natural vocabularies, but on a day-to-day basis we don't use the same consonant sounds as needed to pronounce "Iraq" accurately according to Arabic. Apologies for not being more specific on that!

I've been wanting to post here for quite some time, but the truth is I'm a bit embarrassed.

I seem to have hit some sort of low-level plateau learning Turkish and I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could recommend some materials or - wonder of wonders - new strategies/techniques.

( That's not the embarrassing part, though. )

Does anyone have any recommendations? I hate the idea that I'm wasting my time here by not taking advantage of +60 million native speakers!

As of this afternoon, I'm the proud owner of the electronic Van Dale Dutch/English/French/German large dictionary set! Yay! My uni uses these dictionaries and I love them, they are easy to work with and contain lots of extra information and idiomatic expressions. They have about 115.000 lemmas per language, I believe. I'm so happy! As much fun it is to leaf through my paper dictionaries, these will help me taking less than an hour on a few lines of text and there's something to say for that too :P


(I realize this sounds like a commercial but I'm just so excited! I'd never have bought them for myself because they're quite expensive, but I've been given them by my department as 'salary' for a tutorial I taught last semester. The Board didn't allow them to officially appoint a TA, but the department had the funds to let me choose a gift worth the pay I'd have gotten. I love how the department is doing everything possible to keep the students on their feet while the Board is ripping it all to shreds. No really, how's firing half the Linguistics staff while telling them to add to the curriculum and teach a 3-fold of the current student load a realistic and even good idea?)

Hi,

I'm looking for books/papers on the use of the diminutive in German and Dutch. I'm mostly looking for (recent) comparative studies on its current use in both languages, but I'd be interested in anything at all about the topic, including suffixes in different Germanic dialects, the popularity of the diminutive in given names, and even just random anecdotes. My uni library doesn't really seem to have anything useful, so... what would be a good place to look?