| English students send English speakers to the dictionary | |
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| Aug 28, 2007 17:01 |   |
 | Most English people think I have a HUGE vocabulary however emails from my Chinese friends frequently send me to the dictionary to look up words! Consider this word "catholicon" which I found in another post today. I had to look it up to learn it meant "a universal remedy; panacea." Often seeing these uncommon words sets me to rolling on the floor in laughter! This must be a function of looking a word up in a Chinese to English dictionary and seeing 5 or 6 possible words...and the writer picking the first word presuming it to be the "best" word because it was first. ...but then I do the same thing when trying to translate my English thoughts into Chinese. I'd be willing to bet the English to Chinese dictionary comes up with some real "doozies" too! Let's share a few of these doozies just for fun :-) |
| Aug 28, 2007 17:45 | #1 |
| This is not exactly what you're looking for, but my favorite was a shoe store with a Chinglish sign that said "desire for comfy." That's actually pretty good, for something that doesn't make sense! :-) |
| Aug 29, 2007 04:47 | #2 |
| "This must be a function of looking a word up in a Chinese to English dictionary and seeing 5 or 6 possible words...and the writer picking the first word presuming it to be the "best" word because it was first. " Yes, Griz, you are totally right!! |
| Aug 29, 2007 10:32 | #3 |
| ...but sometimes the choices can be very funny.... ...and informative... I have learned many new words in the English language that I thought were mis-spellings by the English student!!! :-) |
| Aug 30, 2007 02:16 | #4 |
| Sometimes not always the first word is the most proper. Thus, I will make a comparison and choose the best. I have learned many new words in the English language that I thought were mis-spellings by the English student!!! :-) Why, Griz? Maybe some of them adopt the British words. For example, traveller (British) and traveler (American). |
| Aug 31, 2007 13:05 | #5 |
| My girlfriend sent me to my old English grammar book yesterday. It was over the use of pronouns. My gal was telling me about her elder brother and kept referring to her brother as SHE. ...so I wrote her a little email about he-him-his/she-her-hers... Chinese does not have gender-based pronouns like English, I guess. It must be a difficult concept to grasp if you've grown up without common gender references. Watching her work so hard to learn English is interesting. She cannot make some of the sounds of English - just as I cannot make some of the sounds in Chinese. ...at least we are in it together! In this morning's call we worked on the ts sound in cats. I wish I knew enough Chinese to tell her that it is just like the sound in...this or that character. |
| Oct 5, 2007 10:59 | #6 |
| She's done it again with the word: addlepated. I never saw that word, although when I looked it up, I knew the root word. 1) Befuddled; confused 2) Eccentric; peculiar 3) Senseless It is a lot of fun re-learning your own language! :-) |
| Jun 18, 2008 11:10 | #7 |
| She's done it again!!! Today she asked me about glede eating our ducks and chickens. I said, g - l - e - d - e ??????? So I looked it up.... glede - bird of prey According to dictionary.com it is from Middle English, from Old English glida with Indo-European roots. :-) |
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