Innovative Usage Thread

[Vijay]

I just found a North Korean song whose title was translated into English as "This Is Offensive!"

It actually means "It's War."

[Vlürch]

I just found a North Korean song whose title was translated into English as "This Is Offensive!"

It actually means "It's War."

Isn't this just a case of assuming that a word is synonymous when it's not? You know, looking up a list of synonyms but the term they chose turned out to have a more specific meaning than just war?

[Vijay]

I just found a North Korean song whose title was translated into English as "This Is Offensive!"

It actually means "It's War."

Isn't this just a case of assuming that a word is synonymous when it's not? You know, looking up a list of synonyms but the term they chose turned out to have a more specific meaning than just war?

Maybe, depending on what you mean. They could have plausibly translated it as "This Is An Offensive!" But "This Is Offensive!" means something else entirely.

[Vlürch]

Maybe, depending on what you mean. They could have plausibly translated it as "This Is An Offensive!"

Yeah, that's what I meant. I figured maybe the process was something like the following:
1. Come up with a song title
2. Translate it to English
3. Doesn't sound interesting enough
4. Look up synonyms on thesaurus.com or whatever
5. Pick the one that just sounds the coolest
6. Disregard grammar (this is war -> this is offensive) or just don't use any article
7. Don't double-check because of reasons

...and the reason that was my first thought is that I've been guilty of doing that myself, mostly when I was like 12-14 with stuff for roleplaying games and whatnot, but there have been times when I've double-checked something I came up with in a language other than Finnish or English only afterwards and it turned out to be like that.

Anyway, I don't know much about North Korea, but considering there are South Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. and German, French, etc. and I'm pretty sure even Finnish artists/bands whose songs have titles and/or lyrics that are clearly "mis-synonymed" in that exact way (although I can't remember any examples off the top of my head right now), I feel like it might be Occam's razor. Then again, usually I think Occam's razor is just a real-life handwave, so maybe me saying it's probably that means it's not and there's actually some kind of a better explanation... hmm.

Maybe an even simpler explanation could be that it might be a machine translation?

[Linguoboy]

Question to Nancy Pelosi from a Fox News reporter: “Why would the public not think that the House is dead set on a course to impeach the president when all of this milieu was going on?”

That's a novel use of "milieu" to me, but the Speaker took it in stride, reportedly replying, "All this milieu is a seeking of the truth."

[Raphael]

Question to Nancy Pelosi from a Fox News reporter: “Why would the public not think that the House is dead set on a course to impeach the president when all of this milieu was going on?”

That's a novel use of "milieu" to me, but the Speaker took it in stride, reportedly replying, "All this milieu is a seeking of the truth."

Years ago, I read an article about a right-wing, I think, actor, who, judging from some of the things he was quoted as saying, apparently thought that a "liberal bias" is some kind of group of liberals.

[Pabappa]

maybe this fits here .... i found this tweet:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJQ3wQ1WsAA ... name=small

any idea why she spelled it with an à? Is that used derisively or do some people just write that way all the time?

[Kuchigakatai]

maybe this fits here .... i found this tweet:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJQ3wQ1WsAA ... name=small

any idea why she spelled it with an à? Is that used derisively or do some people just write that way all the time?

In Latin America, when you buy a desktop computer or a laptop, there's no guarantee that the keyboard layout Windows has activated by default is the Latin American one; it might be the Spaniard one.

This especially affects typing acute accents, because the dead key that corresponds to the acute accent (á) in the Latin American layout corresponds to the grave (à) accent in the Spaniard layout. So plenty of people who are otherwise used to the Latin American layout don't bother figuring out how to change the layout, and end up either getting used to a different virtual layout (the Spaniard layout is ostensibly not printed on the physical keys) or not caring except in gross cases (and typing graves instead of acutes is not a gross enough case).

In other words, although that woman's likely from Bolivia (I haven't visited her Twitter page to check), her Windows installation is likely using a Spaniard layout that is not meant for her keyboard and that she has not commonly come across anyway.

[axolotl]

An interesting participle I encountered in a text message recently.

"...and this one girl I had only hungen out with a few times before was like let's..."

I've talked to her a bit more since, and she seems to actually use "hungen" somewhat consistently! Interesting.

[alynnidalar]

From a native English speaker? Where’s she from? That’s quite interesting usage!

[axolotl]

From a native English speaker? Where’s she from? That’s quite interesting usage!

Yes, from a native! She is from Salt Lake City. I was really surprised too, never heard anyone say it before.

[äreo]

I've both heard and said "letten," as in "This is the first time I've letten the pool get this green."

[hwhatting]

In both cases, the past participle is identical to the simple past in the standard, so that looks like differentiation between those forms as the reason for that usage.

[Vijay]

Maybe, depending on what you mean. They could have plausibly translated it as "This Is An Offensive!"

Yeah, that's what I meant. I figured maybe the process was something like the following:
1. Come up with a song title
2. Translate it to English
3. Doesn't sound interesting enough
4. Look up synonyms on thesaurus.com or whatever
5. Pick the one that just sounds the coolest
6. Disregard grammar (this is war -> this is offensive) or just don't use any article
7. Don't double-check because of reasons

...and the reason that was my first thought is that I've been guilty of doing that myself, mostly when I was like 12-14 with stuff for roleplaying games and whatnot, but there have been times when I've double-checked something I came up with in a language other than Finnish or English only afterwards and it turned out to be like that.

Anyway, I don't know much about North Korea, but considering there are South Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. and German, French, etc. and I'm pretty sure even Finnish artists/bands whose songs have titles and/or lyrics that are clearly "mis-synonymed" in that exact way (although I can't remember any examples off the top of my head right now), I feel like it might be Occam's razor. Then again, usually I think Occam's razor is just a real-life handwave, so maybe me saying it's probably that means it's not and there's actually some kind of a better explanation... hmm.

Maybe an even simpler explanation could be that it might be a machine translation?

I think honestly the person who tried to translate the song title into English just didn't know English that well.

[äreo]

In both cases, the past participle is identical to the simple past in the standard, so that looks like differentiation between those forms as the reason for that usage.

Yes, though another important aspect of it is that the past participle is being derived regularly from the simple past, which means that people with these sorts of usages can sometimes be heard using words like "tooken" rather than "taken" and "aten" rather than "eaten." Indeed, Travis B. has even noted that there can be a difference between "aten" and "eaten," the later being used in an experiential sense ("I've eaten sushi before, it was better than I expected") and the former being used in the sense of "Oh no, I'm not very hungry, I've already aten."

[Vijay]

"Now I'm diding home"

(Using DiDi as a verb. Never seen this done with this particular word before).

[Moose-tache]

"Now I'm diding home"

(Using DiDi as a verb. Never seen this done with this particular word before).

Was this in English? That kind of thing is pretty common. Verbing weirds language. If it was in Malayalam or something, I'd be quite interested to know if this is a common occurrence.

[Vijay]

"Now I'm diding home"

(Using DiDi as a verb. Never seen this done with this particular word before).

Was this in English? That kind of thing is pretty common. Verbing weirds language.

Yes, I know, and yes, this was in English. I just haven't seen this particular brand name verbed before. (Also very mildly interesting to me personally that it became "diding" and not "DiDiing" or "didiing" or something).

[Nortaneous]

the past tense of "Naruto run" is "Naruto runned"

[Linguoboy]

"The President's claims of innocence looked even more incredulous Tuesday night after The New York Times reported that Trump released the hold on Ukraine aid after he was briefed on the whistleblower report outlining his dealings with Ukraine." (CNN)

The OED lists the meaning "not to be believed" as "obsolete"; the most recent citation is from 1750. So I expect this is an innovation rather than a continuation of that usage. I expect that the meaning of "astonishing" or "marvelous" has displaced the etymological meaning of "not credible" so thoroughly from incredible that the author felt the need to reach for something else.