{"id":287,"date":"2012-09-29T07:01:15","date_gmt":"2012-09-29T07:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=287"},"modified":"2012-09-29T07:08:09","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T07:08:09","slug":"difference-between-a-reason-of-a-reason-for-and-reason-requires-some-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=287","title":{"rendered":"Difference between a “reason of”, a “reason for” and “reason” requires some reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

The English sentence “5 reasons to pay with PayPal” was translated as “5 \u00e5rsager til at betale med PayPal”. This is wrong in an interesting way: The two English nouns “reason” and “cause” will probably appear in most English synonym dictionaries side-by-side as synonyms. Yet, they are subtly different and the difference is not easily seen in the stand-alone word, but in the preposition that follows.<\/p>\n

In English there can be a “cause of” or a “cause for”. In Danish we have two different words for that:<\/p>\n

A reason FOR something\u00a0to happen, or a cause FOR something happening (or shortened: A reason TO do something) is in Danish\u00a0“en grund”. This is,\u00a0loosely\u00a0speaking, an answer to “WHY (something is happening)”.<\/p>\n

However, a cause OF something happening is in Danish “en \u00e5rsag”. Again,\u00a0loosely\u00a0speaking, this is “WHAT (has caused the event)”. Interestingly, “cause’s” English synonym “reason” is rarely used with the preposition OF.<\/p>\n

a cause of\u00a0\u00a0==> en\u00a0\u00e5rsag
\na cause for, reason for, reason to ==> en\u00a0grund<\/p>\n

The correct translation of the English sentence\u00a0“5 reasons to pay with PayPal” is therefore “5 grunde<\/strong> til at betale med PayPal”.<\/p>\n

There’s another interesting quirk with “reason”:<\/p>\n

“Reason” without an “a” in front (because it’s not countable) is something else than “A Reason”. This “Reason” is synonymous with “Wisdom”:<\/p>\n

Reason (noun, no plural) ==> Fornuft (noun, no plural)<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting observation for me, and for machines trying to translate, that some words do NOT get an \u00a0‘a’ or a “the” in front and that that can make such a\u00a0difference in meaning…<\/p>\n

To complete this, let’s look at the same-sounding verbs:<\/p>\n

To reason ==> at argumentere, at r\u00e6sonnere, at fornuftigg\u00f8re, at t\u00e6nke
\nTo cause ==> at for\u00e5rsage, at forvolde, at skyldes<\/p>\n

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

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

The English sentence “5 reasons to pay with PayPal” was translated as “5 \u00e5rsager til at betale med PayPal”. This is wrong in an interesting way: The two English nouns “reason” and “cause” will probably appear in most English synonym … 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":[3,13,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambigous-english","category-different-meaning","category-same-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","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=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}