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Shakespeare
Message
From
28/02/2021 03:02:49
Dragan Nedeljkovich
Now officially retired
Zrenjanin, Serbia
 
 
To
27/02/2021 22:12:44
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Education
Title:
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01678589
Message ID:
01678630
Views:
38
>A number of years ago I remember running Japanese text through a Japanese-to-English translation software and ended up getting something that read like "Yoda-speak". In Star Wars the character Yoda is noted (at least in the English language version) for speaking with words in peculiar order (as if he's speaking in English but using grammar of a different language). Simlary translation going the other way ended up reading like a jumbled mess.

Or, if they wanted to do it right, had to translate yodaspeak as some century old variant of the language, because when translated directly, it sounds quite normal, a bit quaint - putting the verb in the end of the sentence has gone out of fashion at least six generations ago. But it's not odd or hard to understand.

Actually, english has to have strict order of words, as the semantic value of many of them is positional, them having no morphology makes sentence lose sense if the order is disturbed. Not so in slavic languages, the words carry their meaning along and positioning only changes the emphasis and nuances of meaning. Example:

Ja nisam ugasio svetlo - I did not switch off the light.
Ja svetlo nisam ugasio - I did not switch off the light, implies "did something else to it"
Ja svetlo ugasio nisam - I did not switch off the light, with a bit of poetic rhythm, emphasis on did not.
Nisam ja ugasio svetlo - it was not I who switched off the light.
Nisam ja svetlo ugasio - it was not light that I switched off (if light is emphasized), or it was not switching off that I did to the light (if verb is emphasized).

back to same old

the first online autobiography, unfinished by design
What, me reckless? I'm full of recks!
Balkans, eh? Count them.
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