Re: Vocabulary concept mismatches

Mark J. Reed wrote:

>On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 07:48:27PM -0600, Herman Miller wrote:
>
>
>>One of the things that's really interesting about languages, but not
>>well documented in dictionaries, is the fact that the meanings of words
>>don't match precisely from one language to another.
>>
>>
>
>?  I'd say this is very well-documented, in bilingual dictionaries and
>in the literature in general.
>
>
>
>>             mizu
>>water   <
>>              yu
>>
>>
>
>Just considering English vs. Spanish:
>
>        be              ser, estar
>        for             para, por
>        know            conocer, saber
>
>Of course, this last distinction is also present in German, Esperanto, etc.
>English is in the minority there.
>
>Then there are sets of words where one of the meanings of one English
>word maps to two Spanish words, at least one of which maps to more than
>one English word . . . you quickly have to resort to Venn diagrams to
>sort out sets like this:
>
>        have, hold      tener, haber
>
>. . . even if you ignore the use of "haber" as a form of "be" in the sense
>of "there is".  Also in the category, but less sprouty in terms of
>semantic branches, are sets like this:
>
>        find, meet      encontrar, hallar
>
>[When you meet a person, that's encontrar.  When you happen upon an item
>("I found a penny!") that's also encontrar.  But when you find something
>that you were searching for ("I finally found my keys!") that's hallar.]
>
>
meet for the first time is 'conocer'
meet an acquaintance accidentally 'encontrarse con'
meet an acquaintance intentionally 'encontrarse con' or  'reunirse con'

At least here in Peru 'encontrar' is used for both senses of find.

David Barrow

>I don't think this is an under-investigated region.  But there are
>always all sorts of new ways you can divide things up or combine
>together when coming up with a conlang lexicon.  It seems more dividing
>up goes on than combining together, though.
>
>-Mark
>
>
>