{"id":409,"date":"2014-04-08T22:55:19","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T05:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=409"},"modified":"2014-04-08T22:59:44","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T05:59:44","slug":"is-it-hard-to-figure-out-what-goes-where-and-which-does-what-well-it-can-be-hard-or-hardly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"Is it hard to figure out what goes where and which does what? Well, it can be hard or hardly…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take the simple word “Take”: The same English word is both a noun (“a take<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>“, referring to recording a movie scene) and it is also a verb (“to take”). Simultaneously, the cousin-word “taken” doubles as both past tense of the verb, and an adjective, AND an adverb. Wow, English can be so concise! \ud83d\ude42 The tendency of the English language to<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> often use the same exact word for all grammatical variations can make it some times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0hard to understand the English at hand, not to mention the challenges of localizing to a different language. On one hand: you can have something absolutely correct because in English the noun, the verb, the adjective or the adverb are often the very same word. On the other hand: it can be absolutely wrong: the sameness of two English words can make the word(s) slip through the localization\/translation machinery and appear at the other end in entirely wrong shape for the target language.<\/p>\n

Examples:<\/p>\n

A web site button labelled “Pay” —> This is an order to pay for merchandise, which in Danish would have the correct translation: “Betal”. Database-based “translation systems” that hold single words and sentences of a web site in different languages can some times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> be too simplistic in their approach… So, next time<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> these systems encounter the word “Pay” they often would go: “Aha! “Pay”, we’ve seen that before, we have a match, let’s insert the Danish word “Betal” then”. And that would be incorrect.<\/em>
\nWhile English uses the same word in a request to pay and in a sentence about payments, in Danish they would be two words with different endings:<\/p>\n

English ==> Danish<\/strong>
\nTo pay –> At betale<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\nWould you like to pay? –> Vil du gerne betale? (loses<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> prefix “at”)
\nPlease pay<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>! –> Betal<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> venligst<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>! (loses<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> -e at the end)<\/p>\n

Danish generally has two forms of a verb: the passive one ends with an<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> -e and in the active<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> version the ending -e is omitted. Things get much worse for Slavic languages where you can have up to 7 different endings of a verb depending on inflection.<\/p>\n

And just when one thinks one has figured it out, one hasn’t:<\/p>\n

The English adjective “hard” has two different adverbs, -which mean exactly the opposite of each other!<\/p>\n

English ==> Danish<\/strong>
\nHe works hard –> Han arbejder<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> h\u00e5rdt
\nHe hardly works –> Han arbejder<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0knapt nok<\/p>\n

Puzzling and mysterious indeed… \":-)\"\u00a0\"Work<\/a>\"wurkkitteh\"<\/p>\n

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

Take the simple word “Take”: The same English word is both a noun (“a take“, referring to recording a movie scene) and it is also a verb (“to take”). Simultaneously, the cousin-word “taken” doubles as both past tense of the … 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":[3,13,4,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambigous-english","category-different-meaning","category-funny","category-same-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","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=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}