Conlangery SHORTS #06: Borrowing Cultural Concepts

Conlangery SHORTS #06: Borrowing Cultural Concepts

Published: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 05:00:19 +0000 \

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Transcript

utterance-id1 [noise] [noise] <unk> languages would create gorge quarterly and that's brand new and recording this so i'm not exactly sure when this is born a pop up but i thought i would screw a few in mckean um recently as i am recording this week did an episode on <unk> through translations and there were a lot of <unk> topics that popped up and a lot of and we've <unk> shows on language contact and on the on building your luxury condos and such and i thought i was thinking oh this is more of a con worldly topic but um it just to get you the story of what brought this ideal into my mind i was looking up um for my <unk> morphology class basically all english words that can be traced to the indoor european rupe ghost tea which um <unk> <unk> men uh something uh gas toast stranger and actually gives us both the words uh gas and hoesch through different sources in fact it gives us the two major senses of host uh hosted in an army and hosted in um a person who received yeah even though um uh both of them through different latin roots [noise] so that's interesting that's not what i'm going to talk about what i found there was i uh found a word um that comes in through greek from that route then yeah and when i look up i had no idea what that meant i looked it up and it meant and uh <unk> uh uh mentioned that it would the greek concept of hospitality now there are sort of specific rituals and such that are currently um associated with them and pleading um the most interesting thing here i see on the p._t._a. article is ah <unk> any on which is a parting gift uh but what made me think about it is i don't know particularly uh what is any uh or or whatever it reflects is really means increase [noise] but i know that it is it does have we do some times ended up borrowing sort of uh very mundane word in a killer culturally wrote relevant sense so an example i know a little bit more about people who talk about china very often in english well borrow the word <unk> to refer to a particular um sort of networking that happens in chinese society now glassy by itself actually means relationship so you can you and you can use it in other cases where um you are expressing weather things are related or have a relationship if you if you say <unk> mayo clients seat that this one and that one have no <unk> see they have no relationship [noise] that's just basically saying they're not related you you can even talk about ah okay <unk> y you there are so what relationship maybe you answer that they're a father and son or um brothers or a husband and wife or husband and husband uh although i'm not sure how to say that in chinese oddly enough you can use it for all those senses but the particular <unk> where we borrow is this why is she in terms of social connection [laughter] now you may say well that's not that interesting that happens all the time i mean it is interesting and and it's kind of lawyers we always enjoy that that sort of thing but you know that's covered in sort of the general way that we mentioned things like ah like ah key mono coming to mean ah going from something to wear to meaning this particular uh form of japanese dress although i'm not sure if it doesn't actually mean that japanese as well um uh or or um my my wonderfully my favorite my favorite example actually from japanese that and he made the way that it ping pong over and then on the way back from japanese gained a very specific meaning [laughter] but i think these cultural things it's sort of <unk> it's owned thing now another aspect and when it mentioned about this is why is she in the in the sense that we talked about in china is not really this daily concept so we have words for this thing i i keep saying connections social connection uh you might call it networking [noise] the main reason i think that people borrow the word is that they're not just borrowing foreign concept there's not really all cultures have some way of talking about you are social connection your social network and such and how that might help you in business or in politics or whatever which uh <unk> very uh very important in doing business and <unk> and that's why one reason people talk about so much but i think people are taking that word and then <unk> not just with social connections in general but all of the <unk> trappings that go on with maintaining wind see in chinese society that are not just these are your social connections but this is the whole construct so for a contract that this particular size society has around social connection so you know because there are no harm it's for gift giving there are all sorts of things that are um associated with how <unk> she works and and uh and uh how strong your connection is so i don't really have a huge point to this but i think applying this chew <unk> cultures you could think about borrowing a word that could look somewhat mundane to the speakers of the language you're powering from but takes on this extra meaning just because you are taking the word for something that's in a particular culture and then carrying with it all the cultural trappings in order to distinguish not so much [noise] the concept itself but cultural construct around the concept and how those differ from your own culture so you know this you know thinking about this made me useful for people with con world's who are uh dealing with multiple cultures who has you know varying beliefs and practices and varying values that might want to sort of think okay maybe when these two cultures are interacting this culture borrowed this word which is not that special admit language <unk> becomes a very special term of art to people who are specialize in dealing between the cultures and that's really all i wanted to choose to raise that thought people's minds maybe maybe some some things will come out of that from the more con worldly side of the the audience now ah i hope that was a useful noodles using there and i will say happy <unk> thank you for listening to <unk> you can find our our cars ensure knows that con <unk> dot com you can send questions comments or topic or featured language suggestions to con lying or e. i. g. e. mail dot com [noise] to submit a con lying or nightline greedy for the top of the show see our contribute page for details web space <unk> provided by the language creation society and our theme music is by no device [noise] ah just a small little correction i wanted to make uh after i had recorded this i suppose by um and it totally lieberman and found that the idea that any uh or even <unk> which which ah derives are <unk> you know come from <unk> is not exactly accepted by everyone in the uh as far as in the uh <unk> so that part might not might not exactly be accurate but then ah things and etymology when you're going back that far can be a little tricky to ever get anyway so there's always <unk> anyway just wanted that

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Conlangery Podcast/Conlangery SHORTS 06 Borrowing Cultural Concepts (last edited 2017-09-09 00:34:08 by TranscriBot)