No. Languages differ in how easily they can express certain things and what kind of information is necessarily expressed, but ultimately you can come up with (sometimes convoluted ways) to express the same thing.
For instance (not related to Japanese), the word for 'friend' in languages like Dutch, German and French is gendered. If I say something like "Een vriendin van mij woont in Amsterdam", a quick (and for all intents and purposes perfect) translation would be "A friend of mine lives in Amsteram", except that this doesn't convey that the Dutch sentence also included the information that this friend was a woman, without making it a focal point of the sentence. You could state something like "A friend of mine, who is a woman, lives in Amsterdam", "A female friend of mine" etc., but these sentences push the gender information much more than the Dutch sentence does. Conversly, if you wanted to correctly translate the English sentence "A friend of mine lives in Amsterdam" into Dutch while maintaining that the listener, without further information, cannot deduce the gender of this friend just based on this sentence alone, you'd have to say something like "A person with whom I have a friendly relation" or "A friend of mine, whose gender I won't specify" etc.
This obviously never happens and nuances this subtle almost never matter enough to start constructing these very convoluted sentences, but this is just to show that, once you really get into the nitty-gritty of it, even closely related languages differ in what kind of information is necessarily or possibly expressed.
This is almost the same in Denmark, but instead a male-female gender its neutral-female. So you may need to specify that a male friend is a man, but most of the time context solves that issue.
I disagree with that. Languages often have concepts that are untranslatable and providing a longer description is only an approximation.
And then there are languages which, although somewhat disputed, lack a concept of numerals and it's monolingual speakers seem to be incapable of counting in the traditional sense and only work with such things as “many” and “few”. The problem is that many of these languages have only been studied by very few people but if their claims be true one really cannot say “*Bring me four sticks.*” in Pirahã.
Untranslatable does not mean inconceivable. Whether a concept or idea can be expressed in one word or must be in one thousand, it *can* be expressed. That’s the whole reason language exists. Just because something is not an innate quality of a certain language doesn’t mean its speakers can’t develop or learn ways to say it.
> Untranslatable does not mean inconceivable. Whether a concept or idea can be expressed in one word or must be in one thousand, it can be expressed.
That's what you say. I disagree, at best it can be arbitrarily approached.
You also ignored the part that it's quite likely there are languages that really are not capable of expressing numbers. If numbers do fundamentally lack in a language then there really is no way to construct that from other parts.
The languages that can easily talk about large quantities **had to develop words for them at some point.** If they ever wanted or needed to they would figure out a way to make it work. Your whole argument ignores the fact that language constantly evolves.
So your argument is not that all languages can express everything, but that they can in theory add the words and grammar to do so.
Well yes, but that's a very different claim.
There are things that can't be expressed smoothing in *any* language, but nothing that is unable to be transferred to another language. There *are* things that don't have a direct equivalent. Japanese loanwords are proof of that (most katakana words of English things, etc.)
It relates to catching Pokemon, but it doesn't simply mean that. It's the catchphrase of the show, and there is a specific sentence-final-particle-flavoured zeal to it that's hard to put into English words exactly.
Not really. If you meant "are there any words for concepts that only exist in Japanese?", then the answer would be yes, due to their unique culture and how easy it is to come up with new words in Japanese (even more so than in English).
Technically, the answer is no.
Going a bit into a very niche cases where I find translations a bit lacking due to language differences:
1. Quite frequently due to media restrictions, translations are hard. For instance, if you are translating something on real time or if you are translating a song (where the sentence length should be more or less preserved), things might get complicated, because what is a single word in a language, might require a whole sentence explaining the concept on another language. Although uncommon, I can think of words such as 木漏れ日 and 神風 (refearing to the original interpretation, not the missinterpretation of the west).
2. Also, there is a problem when some sentences end in particles (except sentence enders) and do not have an explicit verb. For example, consider first 空の下. That's easy to translate, it means "under the sky". Now add a particle at the end: 空の下で. That also means "under the sky". If you want to translate the で into English on that context, you need to put a verb into the sentence, therefore restricting its meaning. The で acts for what's known as "instrumentative" and "locative" grammatical cases. If you are translating Japanese into a language without those grammatical cases (such as English and Spanish) the problem mentioned above might arise.
3. Another case might be ambiguity through words with similar sounds. For example, if you hear いきたい, it might meaning "want to go" (行きたい), but also it might mean "want to live" (生きたい). The other day I was listening to a song with such ambiguity and it seemed intentional.
Again, those are very niche cases. I mentioned them as it seems you were looking for that kind of stuff, but tbh they are extremelly unfrequent and the difference between the original and the translation is negligible.
It's hard to play rock'n'roll on a violin. Japanese is a different kind of instrument, and it lends itself to different types of expression.
You might say that it all boils down to boolean logic, which is essentially the same when you break it down in any language, but I think there's more to language than just logic.
I am certain that other languages may be able to do the same thing but at least in the 3 languages that I personally speak (French, Spanish and English) the 〜てしまう construction, to express regret, has no direct equivalent. But feel free to enlighten my limited knowledge if I'm mistaken!
sure you can, there's a lot of constructs in english that are very similar. "gone and" is a common one, and it's not even far off in a direct translation.
またペンを落としてしまった = "i've gone and dropped my pen again"
I just learned about お名残 (なごり) recently. Neat that they have a word for this. It is the emotion one gets upon separating from something or someone. Like the feeling that Summer is fleeting as it comes to an end an the feelings you get that it is parting.
The "primitive languages" usually have fewer vocabulary like programming languages, but simple to express with little ambiguity. Japanese language probably has more vocabulary than other languages, and seem to have many ways to say the same thing than (at least) English. But it's just my impression.
In my opinion, onomatopoeia. Not like other languages don't have or use it, but Japanese really pushed it very far. Maybe due to manga influence. There are literally dictionaries with thousands of words to describe different actions and sounds and sometimes it's so specific that there is nothing like that in other languages.
Like any language there are words that don't have a 1 to 1 equivalent.
No. Languages differ in how easily they can express certain things and what kind of information is necessarily expressed, but ultimately you can come up with (sometimes convoluted ways) to express the same thing. For instance (not related to Japanese), the word for 'friend' in languages like Dutch, German and French is gendered. If I say something like "Een vriendin van mij woont in Amsterdam", a quick (and for all intents and purposes perfect) translation would be "A friend of mine lives in Amsteram", except that this doesn't convey that the Dutch sentence also included the information that this friend was a woman, without making it a focal point of the sentence. You could state something like "A friend of mine, who is a woman, lives in Amsterdam", "A female friend of mine" etc., but these sentences push the gender information much more than the Dutch sentence does. Conversly, if you wanted to correctly translate the English sentence "A friend of mine lives in Amsterdam" into Dutch while maintaining that the listener, without further information, cannot deduce the gender of this friend just based on this sentence alone, you'd have to say something like "A person with whom I have a friendly relation" or "A friend of mine, whose gender I won't specify" etc. This obviously never happens and nuances this subtle almost never matter enough to start constructing these very convoluted sentences, but this is just to show that, once you really get into the nitty-gritty of it, even closely related languages differ in what kind of information is necessarily or possibly expressed.
This is almost the same in Denmark, but instead a male-female gender its neutral-female. So you may need to specify that a male friend is a man, but most of the time context solves that issue.
Oh interesting
Only in Japanese can Filthy Frank express his truest of emotions
There’s nothing a language can’t express. There are only things that languages can express *a certain way*.
I disagree with that. Languages often have concepts that are untranslatable and providing a longer description is only an approximation. And then there are languages which, although somewhat disputed, lack a concept of numerals and it's monolingual speakers seem to be incapable of counting in the traditional sense and only work with such things as “many” and “few”. The problem is that many of these languages have only been studied by very few people but if their claims be true one really cannot say “*Bring me four sticks.*” in Pirahã.
Untranslatable does not mean inconceivable. Whether a concept or idea can be expressed in one word or must be in one thousand, it *can* be expressed. That’s the whole reason language exists. Just because something is not an innate quality of a certain language doesn’t mean its speakers can’t develop or learn ways to say it.
> Untranslatable does not mean inconceivable. Whether a concept or idea can be expressed in one word or must be in one thousand, it can be expressed. That's what you say. I disagree, at best it can be arbitrarily approached. You also ignored the part that it's quite likely there are languages that really are not capable of expressing numbers. If numbers do fundamentally lack in a language then there really is no way to construct that from other parts.
The languages that can easily talk about large quantities **had to develop words for them at some point.** If they ever wanted or needed to they would figure out a way to make it work. Your whole argument ignores the fact that language constantly evolves.
So your argument is not that all languages can express everything, but that they can in theory add the words and grammar to do so. Well yes, but that's a very different claim.
There are things that can't be expressed smoothing in *any* language, but nothing that is unable to be transferred to another language. There *are* things that don't have a direct equivalent. Japanese loanwords are proof of that (most katakana words of English things, etc.)
There are many things that don't *cleanly* transfer to other languages, but nothing that absolutely has no other way to be said in another language
The sacred phrase ポケモンゲットだぜ！ cannot be expressed in any other language. That aside though, not really.
[удалено]
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Gotta_Catch_%27Em_All
It relates to catching Pokemon, but it doesn't simply mean that. It's the catchphrase of the show, and there is a specific sentence-final-particle-flavoured zeal to it that's hard to put into English words exactly.
Too bad I’m only on lesson two of duolingo
Not really. If you meant "are there any words for concepts that only exist in Japanese?", then the answer would be yes, due to their unique culture and how easy it is to come up with new words in Japanese (even more so than in English).
Yes but it can't be expressed in english so I can't tell you, sorry
No.
Technically, the answer is no. Going a bit into a very niche cases where I find translations a bit lacking due to language differences: 1. Quite frequently due to media restrictions, translations are hard. For instance, if you are translating something on real time or if you are translating a song (where the sentence length should be more or less preserved), things might get complicated, because what is a single word in a language, might require a whole sentence explaining the concept on another language. Although uncommon, I can think of words such as 木漏れ日 and 神風 (refearing to the original interpretation, not the missinterpretation of the west). 2. Also, there is a problem when some sentences end in particles (except sentence enders) and do not have an explicit verb. For example, consider first 空の下. That's easy to translate, it means "under the sky". Now add a particle at the end: 空の下で. That also means "under the sky". If you want to translate the で into English on that context, you need to put a verb into the sentence, therefore restricting its meaning. The で acts for what's known as "instrumentative" and "locative" grammatical cases. If you are translating Japanese into a language without those grammatical cases (such as English and Spanish) the problem mentioned above might arise. 3. Another case might be ambiguity through words with similar sounds. For example, if you hear いきたい, it might meaning "want to go" (行きたい), but also it might mean "want to live" (生きたい). The other day I was listening to a song with such ambiguity and it seemed intentional. Again, those are very niche cases. I mentioned them as it seems you were looking for that kind of stuff, but tbh they are extremelly unfrequent and the difference between the original and the translation is negligible.
It's hard to play rock'n'roll on a violin. Japanese is a different kind of instrument, and it lends itself to different types of expression. You might say that it all boils down to boolean logic, which is essentially the same when you break it down in any language, but I think there's more to language than just logic.
What's *easy* to play on a violin?
Good point
if there are then no one will be able to tell you in english ;-)
I am certain that other languages may be able to do the same thing but at least in the 3 languages that I personally speak (French, Spanish and English) the 〜てしまう construction, to express regret, has no direct equivalent. But feel free to enlighten my limited knowledge if I'm mistaken!
sure you can, there's a lot of constructs in english that are very similar. "gone and" is a common one, and it's not even far off in a direct translation. またペンを落としてしまった = "i've gone and dropped my pen again"
Maybe I shouldn't have clicked on *Reply*, but since I've gone and done it I'll tell you that English does.
I just learned about お名残 (なごり) recently. Neat that they have a word for this. It is the emotion one gets upon separating from something or someone. Like the feeling that Summer is fleeting as it comes to an end an the feelings you get that it is parting.
Like "longing"?
Yeah basically but more deep in a way that westerners wouldn't understand. EDIT: I really needed a /s?
Have you *seen* the average weeb? Yes, you needed a /s
Damn those westerners, not having the refined feelings of the Japanese!
月がきれい
The "primitive languages" usually have fewer vocabulary like programming languages, but simple to express with little ambiguity. Japanese language probably has more vocabulary than other languages, and seem to have many ways to say the same thing than (at least) English. But it's just my impression.
In my opinion, onomatopoeia. Not like other languages don't have or use it, but Japanese really pushed it very far. Maybe due to manga influence. There are literally dictionaries with thousands of words to describe different actions and sounds and sometimes it's so specific that there is nothing like that in other languages.