Zompist Bboard Again

Vijay wrote: ↑Tue Nov 05, 2019 12:07 pm I just found a North Korean song whose title was translated into English as "This Is Offensive!"

It actually means "It's War."

Vlürch wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2019 6:47 am

Vijay wrote: ↑Tue Nov 05, 2019 12:07 pm 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 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2019 8:42 amMaybe, depending on what you mean. They could have plausibly translated it as "This Is An Offensive!"

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2019 11:02 am 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."

Pabappa wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2019 3:01 pmmaybe 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?

alynnidalar wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2019 8:29 am From a native English speaker? Where’s she from? That’s quite interesting usage!

Vlürch wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:01 am

Vijay wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2019 8:42 amMaybe, 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?

hwhatting wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:36 am 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 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 5:41 pm "Now I'm diding home"

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

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 12:09 am

Vijay wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 5:41 pm "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.