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Topic: Sheep Translation... (Read 2390 times) |
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Johno-G
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Sheep Translation...
« on: Jan 13th, 2003, 2:20pm » |
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Translate "greenish-brown female sheep" into a sentence that makes sense.
(and could people who knew the answer before they read this post please refrain from giving the answer away - mild hints only please, if you really want to put something up!)
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Garzahd
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #1 on: Jan 13th, 2003, 4:41pm » |
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>Eww ewe?
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #2 on: Jan 13th, 2003, 11:59pm » |
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I know the answer, and it is rather romantic. In a ovine sorta way.
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #3 on: Jan 14th, 2003, 12:03am » |
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Here is the answer, duly hidden.
I love you. To which the common reply is baa.
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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. <Ben Franklin>
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BNC
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #5 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 1:27am » |
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Mind explaining that to someone (me  ) whos mother language is not English?
Thanks
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redPEPPER
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #6 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 3:41am » |
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From another non native English speaker:
Greenish brown = olive
Female sheep = ewe
olive ewe = I love you (phonetically)
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wowbagger
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #7 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 4:17am » |
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This answer is probably intended.
However, I can't quite agree on the phonetic equality. Even when using Merriam-Webster, I end up with different sounds for the "o" in "olive" and the "I".
Apart from that, one could also argue that "olive" when referring to colour is generally defined as "yellowish green" rather than "greenish-brown" (with the exception of OALD in the context of skin).
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BNC
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #8 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 7:54am » |
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10x, redPEPPER.
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redPEPPER
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #9 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 1:09pm » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 4:17am, wowbagger wrote:| I can't quite agree on the phonetic equality. Even when using Merriam-Webster, I end up with different sounds for the "o" in "olive" and the "I". |
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And as a person who speaks English as a foreign language, I've got to say that it appears that americans seem to consider vowels as optional decorations, which are often pronounced indiscriminately with the same muttered neutral sound 
I could write "a luv ya" and still be understood. And I don't need vowels in the word "wrkbnch" because, even if you try to pronounce it as I wrote it, you'll still be pretty close to the actual pronounciation.
A lot of the spelling mistakes that I encounter are done by replacing a vowel for another. They are interchangeable  My favorite (read: the one that aggravates me the most) is probably "definately". It seem like half of America spells it that way. And a good part of the other half spells it even worse 
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towr
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #10 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 2:05pm » |
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In some languages the vowel aren't written down at all, are hardly.. I think that's the case in Hebrew and Arabic..
Most of the information in words comes from the consonants, vowels are just what carry the consonants in speech..
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redPEPPER
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #11 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 2:33pm » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 2:05pm, towr wrote:| In some languages the vowel aren't written down at all, are hardly.. |
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You mean or hardly. I know it sounds the same but...
Quote:| Most of the information in words comes from the consonants, vowels are just what carry the consonants in speech.. |
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I think it might depend on the language. Chinese comes to mind as a language that's fond of vowel sounds. But chinese writing has nothing to do with the way the words are pronounced, so it's hard to talk about vowels and consonants.
What was the topic of this thread again?
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BNC
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #12 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 2:50pm » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 2:05pm, towr wrote:In some languages the vowel aren't written down at all, are hardly.. I think that's the case in Hebrew and Arabic..
Most of the information in words comes from the consonants, vowels are just what carry the consonants in speech.. |
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As far as I know, Hebrew has a way to insert the vowels (above / below the text). It is used mainly for kids that can't read well yet. Adults read without it. Arabic doesn't even have the option.
You can try writing English without vowels as well. I think it would be readable. Just use a character (say *) when a word begins or ends with a vowel.
Example:
Y* cn tr* wrtng *nglsh wtht vwls *s wll. I thnk *t wld b rdbl. Jst us * chrctr (sy *) whn * wrd bgns wth * vwl.
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towr
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #13 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 2:55pm » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 2:33pm, redPEPPER wrote:
You mean or hardly. I know it sounds the same but... |
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it's very, very late here.. My spelling is bad enough when I'm fully awake, but it get's worse as the day progresses..
Quote:| I think it might depend on the language. Chinese comes to mind as a language that's fond of vowel sounds. But chinese writing has nothing to do with the way the words are pronounced, so it's hard to talk about vowels and consonants. |
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You can look at vowel and consonant as being more a proporty of phones, than grafemes..
I think in Chinese the change is most important, if the tone goes up, or down, or up and down etc, and not really the vowel itself.. But I'm not really familiar with the language, so I may well be wrong..
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Icarus
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #14 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 5:53pm » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 1:09pm, redPEPPER wrote:
And as a person who speaks English as a foreign language, I've got to say that it appears that americans seem to consider vowels as optional decorations, which are often pronounced indiscriminately with the same muttered neutral sound
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Mind if someone whose native language actually IS english (american style) enters this discussion?
The problem with this remark is that it assumes there is an american way of pronouncing things in the first place. There is not! Southerners hardly sound as if they are speaking the same language as New Yorkers. Bostonians act like the letter R does not exist, while on the great plains, I was a teenager before I truly understood that the word "wash" does not contain an R (think of a drunk trying to say "wars").
It's not true that Americans ignore vowels or pronounce them all the same. We have very definite pronounciations for them. We just don't agree with each other as to what the pronounciations are!
On the other hand I dafinotly defonutly difanitly really agree that we need to learn how to spell "dufunetely" "defanitely" "difinitly" that word.
Concerning the riddle. No, "olive ewe" does not truly sound like "I love you", but it's close enough.
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BNC
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #15 on: Jan 16th, 2003, 10:46pm » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 5:53pm, Icarus wrote:
<snip>
On the other hand I dafinotly defonutly difanitly really agree that we need to learn how to spell "dufunetely" "defanitely" "difinitly" that word.
<snip>
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ROFLMAO 
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wowbagger
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #16 on: Jan 17th, 2003, 5:10am » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 5:53pm, Icarus wrote:| Mind if someone whose native language actually IS english (american style) enters this discussion? |
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Definitely not!
Quote:The problem with this remark is that it assumes there is an american way of pronouncing things in the first place. There is not! Southerners hardly sound as if they are speaking the same language as New Yorkers. Bostonians act like the letter R does not exist, while on the great plains, I was a teenager before I truly understood that the word "wash" does not contain an R (think of a drunk trying to say "wars").
It's not true that Americans ignore vowels or pronounce them all the same. We have very definite pronounciations for them. We just don't agree with each other as to what the pronounciations are! |
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I take your point. It's more likely a question of dialect then, isn't it?
As this thread seems to be on the verge of turning into a language discussion (yet another one!), I might just as well add the following:
When surfing the web, I often find a lot of errors on personal homepages. And I don't mean quite obvious typos, but serious grammar errors. As I don't have a homepage, I can't be sure, but do people really spend so little time on something that is meant to give others an impression of them? Apart from the potential of spreading errors, this is not advisable because in the end it shows the author's superficialty (imho).
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind errors in posts to forums like this one - I'm sure I contributed my fair share.  And I might just have seen an unrepresentative sample of homepages. Plus there's the tendency to remember cases that back your expectations much better than the others.
Quote:| Concerning the riddle. No, "olive ewe" does not truly sound like "I love you", but it's close enough. |
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Thanks for giving your opinion on that point. I know I'm rather meliculous sometimes.
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James Fingas
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #17 on: Jan 17th, 2003, 1:32pm » |
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Quote:| I know I'm rather meliculous sometimes. |
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We're all meliculous sometimes
I don't know what it is about certain people that gives them trouble with this, but I definitely know some very smart people that have trouble getting their phrases just right. They'll use "of" instead of "to", and silly little things like that. Now I've had my share of typos and grammatical mistakes, but for some people it runs deeper than that.
Part of it is a blindness to their own mistakes. When they say it one way, they can't think up another way to say it to save their life. I find that I'm a person who has to think pretty hard before I put something down in words, and so thinking up a different way to say it (to avoid grammatical pitfalls) is not so much of a stretch.
As for the riddle at hand, it takes a little bending to make it work, but in some accents I'm sure it works great (I'm thinking of a England/Cockney accent specifically). It doesn't work too well in a Canada/Toronto accent.
I think the vowels are the part of language that varies most from dialect to dialect (in English anyways). There's not as much you can do with the consonants (except leave them off or add them where they don't belong), but the vowels have a broad range of colour that you can mess around with, from a nasal "knee", to a smooth "knew". And that's before you even start on the dipthongs...
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Garzahd
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #18 on: Jan 17th, 2003, 5:25pm » |
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If it makes the non-native speakers feel any better, I'm a native English speaker and I didn't understand it either until it was explained.
I have no problems understand the lack-of-vowels sentence (btw, you forgot to * one u and one I) but the leap from /I/ to /ah/ is not one that my mind can work around.
Also... the problem as phrased seems faulty... I think the sentence "That's a greenish-brown female sheep" makes perfect sense. Even if it is a sheep that badly needs a bath.
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SWF
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #19 on: Jan 17th, 2003, 6:07pm » |
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Except for not being a sentence, I think the phrase "All of you" fits the orginal question better. This question looks like it came from a crossword puzzle, and both answers have the same number of letters.
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TimMann
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Re: Sheep Translation...
« Reply #20 on: Feb 2nd, 2003, 4:49pm » |
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on Jan 16th, 2003, 1:09pm, redPEPPER wrote:
And as a person who speaks English as a foreign language, I've got to say that it appears that americans seem to consider vowels as optional decorations, which are often pronounced indiscriminately with the same muttered neutral sound
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There's a lot of truth to that, but it's not specifically American. English tends to reduce all vowels in unstressed syllables to a neutral sound called "schwa". See http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000383.htm for a brief definition.
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