Sokath, his eyes uncovered [1]

[cellio]

One of the things that's hard about learning English from the outside (and, I presume, hard about other languages) is how much of common usage is idiom and analogy. This thought came to mind during a meeting today with exchanges like the following (in fairly rapid succession):

Developer: What about $problem?
Tech Lead: We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Developer: Are you saying the build manager is God?
Developer 2: Watch out for the lightning bolts.
Developer: We'll burn that bush when we come to it.

Product Manager: Ok, we'll include your feature in the product but only as a secret alpha-release utility.
Developer: So it's in the product, but I can't fix bugs.
PM: Right.
Developer: I feel like the white trash with the half-built cars on the overgrown lawn.
PM: True, and you're in my neighborhood now. Maybe I should rethink that.

Maybe you had to be there.

[1]

Comments

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

I've got no problem with a language with a few (or even many) of these types of phrases - see my query/comment above re learning Mishlei. My problem is re how there could be a language composed of only these types of phrases. And if the language has regular phrases made up out of component words, how come the adults seemed to have no access to them?

You're right in that the idea seems based in a real phenomenon. My problem was that it was carried too far for it to be realistic to me. I'm perfectly willing to accept that for most people this would be a minor plot nitpick at most, but as someone who went on to get 2 degrees in linguistics I found it to be a bit too large for proper suspension of disbelief. (I'm also one of the people who both applauded and groaned at the idea of a linguist as part of the crew for Enterprise, because it made a lot of sense and because I was sure they'd get the science wrong, which they did.)

[cellio]

Fair enough -- it does strain credibility even to this non-linguist. The transporter is probably comparable for a physicist. :-) (This is why I treat Star Trek as fantasy, not science fiction -- it's easier to hand-wave around magic than science.)

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Ah. For me, with my more limited knowledge of physics, I can tell myself that they're making stuff up beyond the border of what we now know (as long as they don't use a term that I recognize well enough to know when it's used correctly/incorrectly). With linguistics, I've got much more knowledge and anything used incorrectly tends to jump out at me and wave.

[cellio]

The more you know about a field, the easier it is to be dragged out of your suspension of disbelief, alas. For me, it's usually computer stuff. To continue with Trek and languages, consider the univeral translator. It's software; it ties into the ship's computer. How does this allow you to have a translated face-to-face conversation with an alien -- and even if you say that there's some sort of speaker involved but they don't show that step on-screen, what about when crew members are trying to covertly blend into lower-tech societies? Completely illogical as science, so I mentally reclassify it as a magic spell and move on.

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

*g* Yeah, that's about how I deal with the translator: it can't work, but we'll ignore that for the sake of the story. (For me this doesn't feel like a reclassification as "magic", but that's another story.)

I think the difference for me with this episode is that the translator usually isn't a major plot point, but in this episode language (and the translator being IMO inconsistent) is a very major plot point.