Silly words

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scarampella

Well, even under in depth analysis of the worst scum's slang I know I cannot find a single german word that matches this ...words. The language you're referring to must either be austrian or moron.

 

I believe it is moron.

'Dingleberry'

 

Minger
Poodle
Diddle
Biggus Diccus
Kerfuffle
Tiddle
Kevin (i pity anyone with that name)

 

Arab and Islam

 

there were to arabians and one fez... it sounds much funnier on swedish couse there fez is fart... it goes like this:
Det var två araber och en fez.

 

Ragusa:

Farvfigneugen (sp) is the term used for VW sales a about 2 decades ago (I age myself). It means something like 'joy of driving'

Ungahoya comes from the Strauss Opera 'Salome'. Her father (who has been trying to sleep with her the entire Opera) is disgusted when Salome starts having sex with John the Baptists' decapitated head. He cries out "sehr Ungahoya" which I think means 'abomination'

I don't think Strauss' lyricist wrote in Moron, I'm pretty sure it is German.

I'm sure there is a moron here somewhere who can verify this

[ August 31, 2002, 02:48: Message edited by: scarampella ]

 

Alright Tal,

I feel challenged to defend myself here, I've pulled out the libretto for the opera so I can get the spelling exact. (one would never know we were surrounded by such spelling experts by reading these boards)
King Herod says in GERMAN:

"Sie ist ein Ungeheuer..."

which is translated as "she is a hideous monster"

Not only does language change rapidly with time, but you might want to take into consideration many language based arts use language of antiquity, not everyday words, so just because someone speaks German doesn't mean they know every German word in history Tal.

I thought this word sounded silly because it SOUNDS the way I spelled it - UNGAHOYA.

I will drop the Farfgneugn since it has been too long since that ad was out and obviously everyone here from the US is either too young to have seen it or too old to remember anything

 

Tal
_________________________________________________
"Ragusa is German so if those words were remotely German, he'd know. Even I know that they aren't,"

"And certainly anyone speaking German will know what Ungeheuer means"
__________________________________________________

What's up with that?

first you tell me it couldn't be German, then you claim it is obvious.

ungahoya: abomination
ungeheuer: monster

doesn't seem like that far a stretch of the imagination

I disagree about language transformation. At least where I live words are changing with every generation. Last century people spoke English quite differently than they do now.

 

Actually, scarampella, while english word usage and sentence structure have changed considerably, most words themselves have not changed much in the last 100 or even 200 years. Now, first off, contextual nouns such as computer, printer, disk, or internet are obvious exceptions. As are outdated nouns relating to outdated technological things, such as penwiper. Those words don't count as they refer to specific things within a temporal (or cultural if you want) framework.

Things like person, woman, man, house, science, monster, abomination, book, widow, sky, sun, and thousands of other common nouns, as well as verbs, haven't changed at all. The introduction of standardised spelling a few hundred years ago has obviously had a major impact on how people spell them, but the meaning has been maintained.

The major changes have been in word usage, and in the structure of sentences; current english writing is of a very informal structure, as opposed to the highly stylised and formal structure of the 1800's. Various phrase formations, such as using the word 'one' to refer to the third person individual (e.g., 'One does not wish oneself to be counted amongst that group') are considered to be outdated. Yet, the word 'one' still retains the same meaning: the numeric digit 1; an individual; a single unit, etc.

Still, english does change much more rapidly than other languages, but that is more in terms of new words (think of the thousands of technical terms for objects that would not have existed even 50 years ago). Slang, however, changes extremely rapidly.

So, yes it would be quite true to say that "Last century people spoke English quite differently than they do now". However, stating that the actual words have and are changing with each generation is not true. Unless you are refering to slang, or words that refer to objects, concepts or ideas that simply didn't exist before.

BTW - Some other silly sounding words: plethora, galoshes, gazeebo, and (one of my favourites) mukluks

[ September 01, 2002, 03:44: Message edited by: Gnolyn Lochbreaker ]

 

Thank you Lochbreaker, you have added a little much needed something to the conversation.

You are right, slang is mostly what I was referring to, and America, being such a young country (relatively) has changed the language radically in the last few centuries. But, slang cannot be dismissed easily, as it often works its way into the mainstream rather quickly.

 

Fahrvergnügen means joy of driving
You can make very long words in german, i like that, it can be a very exact description. But it sounds funny to people talking english. Though the english is influenced by the old anglosaxons (old germans).
Ungeheuer is very nice because it has the meaning of very or enormous if you write it in small letters. ungeheuer blöd (little comment).
What about Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskartenkontrolle or Dunstabzugshaubenreparaturfirma or
Kinderkrankenschwesternhäubchen, Müttergenesungswerk.
By the way are you able to pronounce a german "ü"? English people are very funny when they try to talk german.

 

"Fruitcake" now that makes me giggle!

 

TAL-I guess we could continue this forever the topic is an interesting one but it would be more fun it it didn't seem like an argument. (Maybe we are getting a little off topic as well?)

I guess I haven't been very clear about what kinds of changes to the language I mean. Originally, since no one seemed to know the word I wrote, I thought it possible it wasn't used anymore. So, mostly the type of change I am speaking involves spoken language, or popular language. For example, if someone said 'get me a faggot' a hundred years ago it would mean something very different than today. The word hasn't changed and it still exists but people today would think something other than a bunch of sticks tied together. As well, there are words we don't use anymore like "thou, would'st, foresooth, gadzooks, hepchick (which is a noun),..." and if I spend my afternoon thinking about it I'm sure I could come up with some most of us may not even remember.

With the advent of the 30 sec. news flash, language structure is changing as well. Often the verb is dropped entirely from the sentence i.e. "man dead, news at eleven". Who knows how pervasive this kind of change will be. Maybe people will not really talk that way, but I am often amazed by my fellow Americans inability to form a sentence. Take our illustrious Pres. Bush as an example.

 

Tal: I said myself that we're dropping old words.

Scara: Is it possible we agree? Or are you one of those types who must be the only one right all the time?

Tal: "And the only reason no one recognized those words was because there weren't any Germans around. "

"Ragusa is German so if those words were remotely German, he'd know."

Scara: get your story straight.

Tal: (And because they were spelled wrong, so even those like me who know only a bit of German couldn't look them up in a dictionary.)

Scara: ungahoya: abomination
ungeheuer: monster
doesn't seem like that far a stretch of the imagination

If I had even a remote knowledge of German I could have figured that one out

Tal: It being used on TV and radio news is only the logical extension of providing news in a concentrated form. However, this is an exception, since it's not used anywhere else, and as such a rather poor example to give.

Scara: You have not proven this as a poor example to give. That is merely your opinion and contrary to what you might think, yours is not the only one. There are courses in our best Universities whose curricula centers upon the media and its affect upon culture, including language. I recently read an editorial in the LA Times which concerned itself with this very topic.

Slang, BTW very much fits into our discussion as it is a part of language and demonstrates an element of how language changes with time. A few years ago Californians voted on whether to teach classes using Ebonics which is a kind of black American street language. It was voted down, one reason being people do not want to legitimize the changes they have made to our language.

Alas, I waste my breath though. And to think all this is the result of me misspelling a word in a language I don't even know. I can't imagine what might befall were I to misspell an English word

 

"Shimmy", makes me laugh.
And i'm not even going to get involved in this discussion.

 

the name "bobby", no offense to guys who responds to that name. it's funny to me because of an old local commercial about a canned good product (meatloaf... i think). it involves "bobby baboy" ("baboy" is pilipino meaning "pig") courting "becky baka" ("baka" is pilipino for cow). it was a hilarious commercial. and also an indonesian acquaintance told me that "bobby" means pig in indonesian.

...although "bob" doesn't have the same effect on me.