Re: CHAT: opposite of "verneinen"

Hi!

John Cowan <cowan@...> writes:
> Henrik Theiling scripsit:
>...
> It seems from what you say that "Geek" (pronounced "Giek", I suppose,
> as in English?) has been borrowed in this more recent sense, and is as
> such appropriate to me.
The only problem remains that you will limit the number of people who
understand it.  I doubt that many Germans who use the word 'geek code'
know what exactly a 'geek' in this sense is.  It's really not that
easy.  The word is limited in meaning in German and also the number of
people who understand is quite restricted.

But what would I say then?  Probably something boring like
'Programmierer'.  'Hacker' ["ha-k6]/["hE-k6] would work, too.  A
borrowing that is in wide use and understood as 'computer hacker'.

Well, translation is not easy.  Especially with borrowings, which tend
to mean something different than in the original language or to be
restricted in some way.

(E.g. 'die Mail' means 'the e-mail'.  Never 'the snail mail', which is
'die Post'.)

> > which is what I think he wanted to say when saying they 'bejahen'
> > everything
>
> Is there any obvious reason why it's "bejahen" but "verneinen"?  I had
> never heard the former verb, and coined "verjahen" by analogy.
Hmm.  It really sounds wrong.  But the explanation is a bit
complicated:

'ver-' sounds like opposite/negative/destructive/distance etc. (due to
not being very productive, the connotation is very vague).  (But not
as strongly so as 'zer-'.)

E.g. 'verjagen' is 'to scare/chase away' ('jagen' is 'to chase).

'be-' has a more positive/non-opposite connotation.  Some directional
meaning is in that 'be-', too, like stressing the character of an
answer to a question in this situation.  Very vague, those old
prefixes...  I don't know why history produced exactly *those* words,
but *'verjahen' sounds strange, like a contradiction in one word.
It's inappropriate.

'be-' also makes transitive verbs.  So you could imagine a verb
*'jahen', which simply means 'to say yes' (without a possibility to
add an object to which is replied).  Then 'bejahen' is 'to say yes
to ...'.

*'beneinen' would be more appropriate to make a regular pair than
*'verjahen', BTW.  That non-word simply sounds like 'to answer no',
just like 'bejahen' sounds like 'to answer yes'.  But 'verneinen'
seems to have a stronger negative intensity.

*'zerneinen' would be feasible, too.  It sounds like totally tearing
apart and scattering a proposition to strongly suggest that one has a
different opinion.

> Above all, of course, "Geek" alliterates with, and has the rhythm
> of, "Geist", and I wished to allude to Goethe's Mephistopheles.
Another constraint for word selection! :-) No idea which word to use
then.

**Henrik

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