RE: Die Voegel

["Peschier, Jarno" <jpeschier@saralee-de.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: T. Mike Keesey [mailto:tmk@dinosauricon.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 3:29 AM
> To: The Dinosaur Mailing List
> Subject: Die Voegel
>
>No we're looking for a german equivalent to "avian" (adjectival form). I
>find it hard to believe that there isn't one ("avisch"?), although I guess
>that's Anglocentric thinking for you.
>
>So there's no good way to translate "non-avian dinosaur"? ("unvogelischer
>dinosaurier"?)

Not as far as I know (and exactly the same in Dutch, which I do know for
sure), without sounding overly artificial. People would probably know what
you meant, but initially you'd get some pretty funny stares.

I think the main problem here is that of all modern languages, English has
to largest vocabulary of all. There are so many words possible in general,
everyday (or even more scientific!) English that are not readily
translatable in lots of other languages without resorting to "artificial
funny stuff" or multi-word descriptions.

I don't have any references for this, but I seem to remember the difference
in vocabulary count between English and (say) French, German or Dutch,
ranges in the "10.000's ball park" (something like 1E5 or 2E5 more words in
English than most other languages, on average).

And for most of these we seem to have to thank old Billy Shakespear for
"just making up words" that simply did not exist when writing his plays but
are part of normal English now because of it. ;-)

The capacity of the human mind to juggle different concepts and names for
those concepts around never really ceases to amaze me...

With mesozoic greetings,
Jarno Peschier (dinosaur@jarno.demon.nl)

P.S. This problem is also the main reason I, as a computer programmer, like
to get my software, hardware (like my PDA and cell phone) and technical
books in (the original) English or when I have the option configured to show
English as much as possible. The Dutch translations you get, while
undoubtably necessary for the general public that really doesn't know
English that well (my grandfather and his cell phone or PC come to mind for
instance), tend to just look silly, cumbersome, etc. to me.