MyWiki:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 November 29

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November 29

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Similarities between English and German

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Hello, I know it's a big question but I dare to ask it still: How come there are so many idiomatic similarities between English and German? Of course, I know both are Indo-European, Germanic languages and that there are certain direct cultural influences especially due to the immigration of Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons) into British territory, but all that happened quite a long time ago, didn't it? So, for instance, why do we have a perfect parallel with the idiom "to give up the ghost = den Geist aufgeben" today? And there are so many more expressions that needn't necessarily have developed parallel in both languages (cf. "sharpshooter = Scharfschütze", "act of strength = Kraftakt", "to stink to high heaven = zum Himmel stinken", "to take sth to heart = sich etwas zu Herzen nehmen", "to hit the ceiling = an die Decke gehen" (similar), "to get out of hand = überhandnehmen" (similar) etc. etc. etc.) – rather they could be totally apart instead, and yet they are not! Now, why exactly is that the case?--Herfrid (talk) 16:58, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Any of those could come from different sources and might need to be researched individually. "Sharpshooter", according to EO, is a translation of Scharfschütze and appeared in English around the year 1800.[1] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:15, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Being languages of the same family doesn't just mean that the languages have similar vocabularies. It ALSO means the languages have commonalities among ALL linguistic traits, such as syntax, grammar, word formation, semantics, etc. For example, some of the same conventions that exist for the formation of neologisms in English would also be similar conventions in German, so we will find parallel constructions, idioms, etc. that developed even after the languages diverged, because they two languages still share a common history and common rules. --Jayron32 17:52, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
See [2]. Some of these indicate when they came into use, e.g Agora é tarde; Inês é morta (It’s too late; Inês is dead). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.13.208.70 (talk) 18:58, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
It's probably worth noting that "give up the ghost" is a Biblical phrase, and may be the result of English and German translators translating the same bit of Greek. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:34, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
"Stink to high heaven" comes from Claudius's line in Hamlet III iii: "Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heav'n", and at least one German etymological website traces the German equivalent back to the same source. You have to scroll down to "Es stinkt zum Himmel" and hover over it. --Antiquary (talk) 21:35, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
  • This is very interesting. Ideally, you'd want to look at Beowulf and Caedmon's Hymn and other Old English texts, comb them for idiomatic expressions, and see if they have correspondences in Old High German, and whether these have survived to the modern day. Unfortunately you might run into calques from the Bible or Latin that were borrowed into each language, as many of the remaining texts are religious in nature.
User Herfrid might also find the book Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages by Orrin W. Robinson very interesting, although it doesn't deal with idioms per se. μηδείς (talk) 01:47, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Thank you, μηδείς, for the recommendation and you, 82.13.208.70, for that link! What I don't quite get in that article is the following passage: "It’s a snippet of a phrase, barely noticeable, unless you’re intently focused on learning the language, deconstructing it and then laboriously building new sentences from the ground up." What exactly is supposed to be meant here?--Herfrid (talk) 19:38, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
After reading the context, I see that the writer is calling attention to the fact that the English idiomatic sentence, we're in the same boat has exactly the same idiomatic meaning in Arabic when using the very same words in Arabic. What he's saying is that such idioms are trivial sentences (a snippet of a phrase, barely noticeable) to native speakers of the language. It's not trivial if you're not a native speaker and are intently focused on learning the language, when there is not an acceptable idiomatic expression in your own language. In this case, one is forced to laboriously build[ing] a new sentence from the basics (the ground up) in order to grasp the meaning. Akld guy (talk) 05:26, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Thank you, Akld guy, for your help! I guess I got your point, though what I still don't quite get is what exactly "building new sentences from the ground up" refers to: the foreign source language or rather the translation language (= mother tongue)? If I regard an idiom in a foreign language, it won't be of great help to deconstruct and "rebuild" (how?) that idiom, right? Rather, I need to obtain etymological information about the origin of that idiom. Or am I missing something here?--Herfrid (talk) 18:48, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
@Herfrid: It means to build in the translator's target language a sentence that conveys the sense of the expression. Let's use the example phrase: we're in the same boat. To translate this into some language that has no idiom of the same meaning, the translator might construct a sentence (in the target language) that says: we are both going along in the same situation. It means the same, but it's a dull way to express it, unlike the instantly recognisable English idiom. I think I can't help you any more than this. Akld guy (talk) 19:24, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
@Akld guy: Thanks once more. Generally speaking, I absolutely see your point. However, the quotation is referring to the original, i. e. the source language ("learning the language, deconstructing it"), and I'm still not sure if "building new sentences from the ground up" is really intended to refer to the target language as obviously as you seem to claim it to be…--Herfrid (talk) 19:46, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Is there a term for trying to get information out of a dream through your phone?

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