Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com>:
> And my mum made the strange remark: "You guys use all the words that I
> know. And you make them into sentences that have no meaning at all."
That's what I think when I hear Estonian spoken.
> My own finding is that repurposing old words to new concepts causes
> more confusion and misunderstanding than understanding and 'progress'
I disagree. I think it's absolutely great that we have "charm quarks"
after centuries of "electrostatic equilibria".
Finnish has a long tradition of translating fancy words into proper
Finnish, and that has contributed to more informed democratic debate on,
say, nuclear energy. We have:
suunnikas for parallelogram
puolisuunnikas for trapezoid
suorakaide for rectangle
suhde for ratio
muuttuja for variable
mahahaava for peptic ulcer
sydänkohtaus for myocardial infarction
selkäydin for spinal cord
immuunikato for AIDS
rattijuoppous for DUI
ensiapu for CPR
ydinvoima for nuclear power
sähkö for electricity
happi for oxygen
häkä for carbon monoxide
vetovoima for attraction
kiihtyvyys for acceleration
tietorakenne for data structure
viite for reference
etc etc
Here's a funny, somewhat related story. I was wondering about the
etymology of the word "glamour." I thought it must be some old borrowing
from French.
In reality, it was borrowed from Scots English, which borrowed it from
English English. The original words was "grammar," which referred to
what theology students studied in the university, ie, Latin. Only Latin
carried the proper magic, charm. The Catholic priests did their
hocuspocus ("hoc est corpus meum") in proper "grammar," or, in Scotland,
"glamour."
Would software developers be more glamorous if they used more
impenetrable jargon?
Marko
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
