{"id":200,"date":"2012-07-09T23:29:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T23:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=200"},"modified":"2012-07-18T20:50:32","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T20:50:32","slug":"to-withdraw-and-to-lift-in-danish-its-the-same-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"To withdraw and to lift. In Danish it’s the same word"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an earlier posting\u00a0I wrote about how the verb “Charge” in English is synonymous with “adding to” when we are talking about a car battery, but means the opposite, “taking from”, when we are talking about a credit card. Danish has its own quirky word with two\u00a0similarly polar opposite meanings, depending on context. The word is “at h\u00e6ve”.<\/p>\n

When talking about a bank account, “h\u00e6ve” means “to withdraw”:<\/p>\n

“I withdrew $200 from my checking account” ==> “Jeg h\u00e6vede 200 USD fra min checkkonto”.<\/em><\/p>\n

But when talking about a limit or limitation, “h\u00e6ve” means “to raise” or “to lift”:<\/p>\n

“We must raise the minimum wage by $2\/hour” ==> “Vi b\u00f8r h\u00e6ve minimumsl\u00f8nnen med 2 USD per time”<\/em><\/p>\n

So, then of course it gets very tricky if the English sentence at hand involves BOTH\u00a0a bank account and a limitation:<\/p>\n

“Your account has a negative balance. Raise your account balance (to zero or any positive amount)”<\/em> . If translated as “Din konto har en negativ saldo. H\u00e6v din saldo (til nul eller et positivt bel\u00f8b)”<\/em> it could be misunderstood in Danish (particularly without the words in parenthesis) as leading to the illogical conclusion that you should withdraw more money from your account, which is already overdrawn.<\/p>\n

Probably better to translate into Danish with one of\u00a0the unambigous synonyms for “increase:” (“\u00f8g” or “l\u00f8ft”), such as:\u00a0” Din konto har en negativ saldo. \u00d8g din saldo (til nul eller et positivt bel\u00f8b)”.<\/p>\n

And this idea of “withdrawing money to raise money” reminds me of the following bar trick (it helps if some alcohol has been consumed):
\n“Hey, may I borrow two dollars from you?”, “Sure!”, “Great, but I only need one right now. I may need the second one later, OK?”, “OK”
\nLittle later…
\n“Hey can I have the dollar back that I lent you?”, “What are you talking about?”, “The dollar that you borrowed from me…”, “Oh that one… Listen, remember I wanted to borrow TWO dollars from you?”, “Yeah…”, “So, you only gave me one, so I owe you one,\u00a0and you still owe me one, right?”, “Yeah, I guess…, “So, if I owe you one and you owe me one, we are even, right?!” , “I guess…”, “Now buy me a drink!…” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n \n \"Fb-Button\"\n <\/a>\n <\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an earlier posting\u00a0I wrote about how the verb “Charge” in English is synonymous with “adding to” when we are talking about a car battery, but means the opposite, “taking from”, when we are talking about a credit card. Danish … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-different-meaning","category-same-words","category-words-used-opposite-of-their-meaning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}