Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 November 23

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 23

Translation from German needed

How would you translate "Wenn ich das tue, bekomme ich Riesenärger mit meiner Freundin"?--Herfrid (talk) 15:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

"If I were to do that, I would get major grief from my girlfriend." --Viennese Waltz 15:32, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

"If I do that, I will get..." is slightly more accurate. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Google Translate says: "When I do that, I get huge trouble with my girlfriend." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:50, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

off-topic except where Wrongfilter agrees "when" is a possible but less likely translation Rmhermen (talk) 17:49, 24 November 2017 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

That is a formal false friend. "Become" and "bekommen" is another very common pairing. Tevildo (talk) 22:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Which "that" are you referring to? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:17, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

He means that "wenn" does not mean "when", it means "if" ("wann" means "when"). And I don't know why you persist in providing google translate answers to questions asking for translation. It's pointless, especially if – as in this case – perfectly good answers from actual people have already been given, and when the machine translation is actually wrong. You don't know German, so please leave this kind of question to those who do. --Viennese Waltz 08:19, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I fully agree that google translate should not be used for these questions (in particular as OP is German himself and is more interested in the idiomatic expression in English rather than understanding what the German phrase means). However, it is not wrong in this case. The conjunction wenn can be translated as "if" or "when". I prefer "if" in this case on the assumption that it has not been decided yet whether the speaker will do whatever they're supposed to do. ("Wann" is the question word, "when?") --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:32, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Presumably the OP could have already tried Google Translate, but there was no indication of having done so. Also, where does the OP indicate being a German native? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:45, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't change the point: referring to Google Translate was a useless distraction here, so please don't do that again. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:47, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

The other point is that VW shouldn't attack other editors in front of the OP. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:49, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

It's an overall good thing for other editors to be advised of constant problematic behaviour, like you, again with the Google translating. Not on the talk page, not on your user talk page, but here in public where everyone can see it. If you just stopped doing it, you would solve the problem yourself. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:29, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Showing people up does nothing except invite defensive behavior. That's why it was agreed, a long time ago, on the talk page, to not attack other users in front of the OP. Going to a given user's talk page is the polite thing to do, and is much less likely to result in defensiveness. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:57, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Advising another user of his problematic behaviour does not constitute an "attack". And I'd like to see a reference for your claim that raising issues on a user's talk page was agreed. When was anything ever agreed on the ref desk talk page lol. --Viennese Waltz 15:39, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't see how citing a well-known internet site constitutes "problematic behavior". As for the agreement, see last March or May (I forget which) in a discussion posed by Guy Macon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:57, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, but what about "... I'll get into [or have] serious trouble with my girlfriend? Wouldn't they be idiomatic, too?--Herfrid (talk) 18:19, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Models or theories or hypotheses in linguistics and impact on the brain and their philosophical bases

Besides Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis in linguistics, are there theories, models or hypotheses in linguistics and how do they impact on the brain? Also, what is the philosophical basis of linguistics and as well as what is the philosophical basis of each model, theory or hypothesis? Donmust90 (talk) 23:57, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Most working academic linguists really do not spend too much time concerned with Sapir-Whorf stuff. A more central concern of many is whether a "Poverty of the stimulus" available to children requires innateness of "Universal grammar" for successful first language acquisition to occur -- while the behaviorists of the 1950s thought that language acquisition happened through generalized stimulus-and-response conditioning, generalized pattern-matching, and other generalized learning strategies, without any real need to posit language-specific abilities of the human mind. (Of course, the behaviorists usually hated the word "mind" to start with, while their more recent competitors the cognitivists have a very different attitude...) -- AnonMoos (talk) 11:00, 24 November 2017 (UTC)