Let's find some missing words. Here's an example:

eat : feed :: drink : ?

Notice that there's no word (that I know of) for giving someone a drink and having them drink it, in the same way there's a word for giving someone food and having them eat it. There might be some fancy word of Latin or Greek origin, but notice that the three words given are native words; I'm mainly focusing on native word stock. One might possibly argue that when people are eating, they're usually also drinking, so there's often no need for such a distinction. But I don't think it can be explained away this easily.

If anyone can think of missing words, I'd like to see them. I'm also interested in knowing if there are languages that have these missing words in their own word stock. I'm especially interested in how Esperanto handles them, since it's apparently a very logical (and I assume consistent) language as far as word construction.

Let's find some missing words. Here's an example:

eat : feed :: drink : ?

Notice that there's no word (that I know of) for giving someone a drink and having them drink it, in the same way there's a word for giving someone food and having them eat it. There might be some fancy word of Latin or Greek origin, but notice that the three words given are native words; I'm mainly focusing on native word stock. One might possibly argue that when people are eating, they're usually also drinking, so there's often no need for such a distinction. But I don't think it can be explained away this easily.

If anyone can think of missing words, I'd like to see them. I'm also interested in knowing if there are languages that have these missing words in their own word stock. I'm especially interested in how Esperanto handles them, since it's apparently a very logical (and I assume consistent) language as far as word construction.

You should probably carry your search over to German. Eat: feed derives from essen: fressen.

You should probably carry your search over to German. Eat: feed derives from essen: fressen.

Ja, aber das gleiche Wort auf Deutsch wird auch vermisst:

essen : füttern :: trinken : ?

Füttern is "to feed". Ein Baby füttern; to feed a baby. I think this word is even a cognate of "feed". Compare the umlaut in the German-English pair Fuß/Füße and "foot"/"feet" to the same in the hypothetical pair *Fut/füttern and "food"/"feed".

Fressen means "to eat"; however, I think it's more voracious and ravenous in connotation. Look at the translation (http://www.dict.cc/?s=fressen).

Partial coverage by "water" - as in "water the animals".

We've lost a couple of singular pronouns, recently - "thou" has been absorbed into the formerly plural "you", and soon "they" will fill the void of the non-gendered singular third person that the academics tried to fill with "he", by fiat.

English vocabulary is huge and growing, partly because missing words are simply lifted from other languages. Nomination: we need a term for subtle patterns signifying the presence of mind or complex organization, at the edge of comprehension or description - from the Hawaiian: hei hei, as "he has a hei hei eye" for someone who can spot the difference between ordinary ocean bottom debris and the camaflauge efforts of an octopus around its den.

Fressen means "to eat"; however, I think it's more voracious and ravenous in connotation. Look at the translation (http://www.dict.cc/?s=fressen).

Can also translate to feed, but in the sense of "I saw the lions feed off a plump gazelle" rather than "I fed the lions".

I'm especially interested in how Esperanto handles them, since it's apparently a very logical (and I assume consistent) language as far as word construction.

manĝi: to eat
manĝigi: to make eat, i.e. to feed
trinki: to drink
trinkigi (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.com/translation/Esperanto/trinkigi): to make drink, i.e. to water

Although you can build words using those rules, there are often alternatives. Nutri: feed, nourish; sounds better than manĝigi to me.

Esperanto has its own inconsistencies (http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/index.html). For a language more firmly (and formally) grounded in logic, try Lojban.

We're going partying tonight after we're all fed and watered...

Usually applied to animals, but I've heard it used for humans as well. Implication of "watered" is ANY drink.

eat : feed :: drink : ?

eat : feed :: drink : suckle :shake:

English is a pragmatic language. We tend to retain or create words we need and ignore or lose those we don't. Unlike Esperanto, whose rigid paradigm of suffixes and prefixes guides us into forming words just because we can, regardless of need.

Apparently, we anglophones don't feel a pressing need for a word meaning "to provide liquid sustenance to," so we haven't bothered to find or build one. Of course language shapes thought, so an outsider might say instead that we happily limp along without the concept since our language provides no easy way for it to pop into our heads.

That said, "to water" seems to have become established--at least in America--due to its connotation from Frontier days, when water was not easy to find. The press routinely refers to popular bars--even those frequented by such august personages as professors and judges--as "watering holes."

Notice that Esperanto's rigid paradigm is breaking down: I see the word konatuloj used universally for "acquaintances," when the grammatically proper word is simply konatoj. * Sigh * The last thing our beloved tongue-twisting internacia lingvo needs is more syllables! You can tell that despite UEA headquarters being in Holland, Esperanto is an Eastern European phenomenon, where "more syllables!" is as sincere a cry as "more cowbell!" in American rock music.

Partial coverage by "water" - as in "water the animals".

Yeah, but I don't think of it as a word that can be applied to humans in formal, or even semi-formal, speech. It could just be my dialect, though.

manĝi: to eat
manĝigi: to make eat, i.e. to feed
trinki: to drink
trinkigi (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.com/translation/Esperanto/trinkigi): to make drink, i.e. to water

Interesting.

We're going partying tonight after we're all fed and watered...

Usually applied to animals, but I've heard it used for humans as well. Implication of "watered" is ANY drink.

I suppose this works. It doesn't seem to be something someone who spoke my dialect would say, but it could possibly be a native feature of the English language that gradually gained an informal feel.

eat : feed :: drink : suckle :shake:

I suppose that works if you think of "feed" in the sense of "I saw the lions feed off a plump gazelle" rather than "I have to feed the lions". But I was thinking of the latter sense.

That said, "to water" seems to have become established--at least in America--due to its connotation from Frontier days, when water was not easy to find. The press routinely refers to popular bars--even those frequented by such august personages as professors and judges--as "watering holes."

If this is true, then I find it odd that we wouldn't have this usage (as far as I know) in my corner of Oregon of all places. But I don't travel much, so who knows.

bartend
quench (I quenched my thirst)
serve (admittedly usually with an object, but then feed would often have an object. though not with kids who are talked about like they are animals.)
slake (for oneself)
pour (I poured)
nurse (as in the above 'suckle')
buy (as in 'I'm buying' in bars, etc.)

When it is medically necessary, a person is hydrated via an intravenous supply of liquid.

Perhaps hydrate is a reasonable word here.

bartend
quench (I quenched my thirst)
serve (admittedly usually with an object, but then feed would often have an object. though not with kids who are talked about like they are animals.)
slake (for oneself)
pour (I poured)
nurse (as in the above 'suckle')
buy (as in 'I'm buying' in bars, etc.)

Bartend the baby? No.
Quench the baby? No. But maybe quench the baby's thirst. But it's not the same.
Serve the baby? Serve it food, you mean?
Pour the baby? You can pour the baby a glass of water, but that's analogous to dishing the baby some food.
Nurse the baby? Can you nurse your 10-year-old son when you're the father?
Buy the baby? Buy it a drink, but that's not the same.

I'm talking about a word that's syntactically identical to "feed".

Maybe a dictionary definition of "feed" will help out here. This is what I'm thinking of: "To give food to; supply with nourishment: feed the children." I'm looking for a word that means to give drinks to.

When it is medically necessary, a person is hydrated via an intravenous supply of liquid.

Perhaps hydrate is a reasonable word here.

Not really, since we're talking about plain feeding people, but with liquids. Plus, "hydrate" isn't a native word. It's an interesting thought though.

Do other languages have a word for it? Is it a common concept in human societies? Do we feel a need for it out in real life? It would be difficult to look up in a bilingual dictionary since there's no English word to index.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

English is amazing in this way that it is missing words for very basic concepts. Try Cul-de-sac, for example.They have to use the French to describe a road with one end closed.

The Hungarian word for the OP's concept is Itat (give somebody to drink), the English equivalents are: lush, prime, water (animals)...

Another concept: Schaudenfraude...:D

Yes, it is an emotion that people feel, other languages use, and English is missing it...

English is a pragmatic language.

Maybe so, but much less pragmatic then other ones. Here is an example using the same verb, what the OP was looking for:

Leitattam a csajt : I gave/bought so much alcoholic beverage to the girl that she became drunk.

See how pragmatic other languages can be??? ;)

Another concept: Schaudenfraude...:D

Yes, it is an emotion that people feel, other languages use, and English is missing it...

Sadism is the derivation of pleasure as a result of the suffering of others. We do have a word for it. But yeah, I guess I can see your point.

And it's Schadenfreude.

Yes, it is an emotion that people feel, other languages use, and English is missing it...
Well no. English was missing it. So we stole / adopted it :D Schadenfreude and cul-de-sac are now English words, as used by English speakers and listed in English dictionaries

(All flexible languages do this, of course :p)

Maybe so, but much less pragmatic then other ones. Here is an example using the same verb, what the OP was looking for:

Leitattam a csajt : I gave/bought so much alcoholic beverage to the girl that she became drunk.

See how pragmatic other languages can be??? ;)


its kind of scary that its such a common occurrence that a phrase that short has been developed.is there a verb "to get a girl drunk"?!

its kind of scary that its such a common occurrence that a phrase that short has been developed.is there a verb "to get a girl drunk"?!How much shorter can you get than "I got her drunk"? That's only four syllables. You can also put it in slang: "I boozed her up." Still four syllables.

Do not knock English for various words that are missing. Including words borrowed from other languages, it has well over twice the words of any other language. to give a few examples.It is richer in words relating to motion than any other language, including: Fast, slow, leisurely, rapid, quick, swift, speedy, fleet, hasty. It also includes commonly used phrases like: Bat out of hell, at breakneck speed, flat out, and others.

Some languages have to say not so fast instead of go slower.


Ignoring words coined by the paint & cosmetic industries which number in the hundreds (maybe thousands), English is richer than most (all other?) languages in words for various colors, including: Red, blue, green, yellow, orange, black, white, gray, purple, violet, brown, tan. It has a surprising number of words for red hues: Red, pink, vermillion, scarlet, maroon, & crimson (I think there are others).

In addition to the above are some words not commonly used and nouns used as color words.: Beige, fuchsia, ruby, turquoise, aqua marine, gold, lime, et cetera.

Oddly enough, somebody once told me that Russian does not have as many color words as English, but it includes a word for some color not expressible in English as a single word.BTW: It is interesting that for culture related reasons, some languages have more words for certain concepts than others. For example: Some languages have a large set of words for family relationships. Hebrew and some Semitic languages have words for mother’s brother, father’s older brother, father’s younger brother, and other relationships requiring a phrase in English & most other languages.

Note that some of these words are due to various customs. For example: In some cultures, a father’s older brother has authority over you, but his younger brothers, and your mother’s brothers do not. A single word (uncle) is not sufficient for certain cultures.

How much shorter can you get than "I got her drunk"? That's only four syllables. You can also put it in slang: "I boozed her up." Still four syllables.


its not a matter of how short it is,its just that there seems to be a specific VERB for that action.

Do not knock English for various words that are missing. Including words borrowed from other languages, it has well over twice the words of any other language.Not quite. Chinese has just as rich a word stock. Since it's an analytic language people argue over the definition of a "word." But a quick inspection of the Fenn Five Thousand, a student dictionary considered to cover only an elementary vocabulary, shows an average of no fewer than five compounds for every root-word or morpheme. This means that every literate person is presumed to be familiar with 25,000 words. Counting han zi (kanji) that only scholars know, there are something like 75,000 single-syllable morphemes. At only two compounds each this would put Chinese modestly ahead of English. Adding in the explosion of new words both languages had to coin during the 20th Century, it's anybody's guess. But in my opinion Chinese and English have no serious competition for being the world's most adaptable and expressive languages.

And I give the vote to Chinese because it does it all without borrowing from other languages, something which is virtually impossible due to phonetics. Constructions like wei ta ming, "only it heals," for "vitamin," are so rare they would probably all fit on one page. The practice whose name escapes me, of following the formation pattern of another language using one's own vocabulary, is so much easier: shi you, "stone oil," for "petroleum" from the same words in Greek and Latin; dian hua, "electric speech," for "telephone," not quite the same formation as our Greek coinage but just as good.Some languages have to say not so fast instead of go slower.Someone recently posted a translation of a news article from his native language into English. They had used the awkward construction, "make [something] fall from his hand," suggesting that the original language has no word for "drop."English is richer than most (all other?) languages in words for various colorsIn Spanish, you have to say color de café, "coffee-colored," for such a basic color as brown.

Red seems to have been the earliest color name adopted by our tribal ancestors. Many of the Indo-European languages have a word beginning with R, inherited from a common source named after the rose.Some languages have a large set of words for family relationships. Hebrew and some Semitic languages have words for mother’s brother, father’s older brother, father’s younger brother, and other relationships requiring a phrase in English & most other languages.In Chinese, "older brother" and "older sister" are different morphemes than "younger brother" and "younger sister." Agglutinated with the morpheme for "cousin," they indicate "older male cousin," "younger female cousin," etc. The morpheme for "son" is easily agglutinated with a numeral to show the order of birth. Am I the only one old enough to have seen those quaint, racist Charlie Chan detective movies in which he kept refering to his "number one son"? That is just a literal translation of the more logical syntax of Chinese, like "Chinaman" and "Chinatown."Note that some of these words are due to various customs. For example: In some cultures, a father’s older brother has authority over you.In Chinese, your mother's mother is "external grandmother," your grandmother from outside the family.

Do not knock English for various words that are missing.

We are not knocking, we are discussing. Rather intelligently. What is surprising to me that certain BASIC words for simple concepts are missing from English, that are present in other languages. Cul-de-sac would be like one.

The number of words depend on circumstances. The eskimos have like 20+ different words to describe different snow conditions, it is rather obvious to see why. People who live next to the ocean have more words for winds and water conditions, than those who live inland. Etc.etc.

As it was mentioned, in English there are no special words for certain family relationships , and that is quite common in other languages....

Russian: есть - кормить, пить - поить. I.... As much as I grope for the logic in the word construction here, I fail to grasp it.

Someone here mentioned colors in English language. Those names for colors don't make sense to a good portion of English speakers. Dear gods, "fuschia" doesn't make sense to me.

....Red seems to have been the earliest color name adopted by our tribal ancestors.... The visible sprectrum of sun light is smoothly continuous. Thus its division into distinct colors is purely a man-made cultural division.

Consequently, you should not be surprised to learn that many cultures have done it differently from that common in the interacting global culture now dominating the Earth. A few cultures made no division, only had words for "light" and "darker" but almost all cultures had at least a word for one (or more) colors. Interestingly, in all cultures that have any color names, the color of blood, (red in English) always has a name, even if it is the only color word in the culture.

Many cultures did not have separate names for the colors we in English call green and blue. Some cultures had many more "primary color names" than we have in English. - I.e. a divison of the continuous solar spectrum as distinct (from their POV) as our green is from blue. Yellow is the most narrow color band/ division in English and this also seems to be the case in most cultures. I believe this has to due with the response curves of the three detectors in the human eye. BTW, gold fish and many insects see more colors than humans do. Gold fish have four different color receptor in their eyes - From their POV all humans are "color blind." Bees can see way out into the UV. All the flowers humans see as "white" have very unique colors to the Bee. (Presumably the ones currently giving nectar are the most "beautiful.")

It is probably hard for you to think of blue as the same color as green. - this just goes to show how strong language is on your ability to form concepts. If you are typical you think that blue is somehow very different from green, but it is only an artifical subdivision. Some other parts of the spectrum, you consider all to red (various shades), actually different in wavelengths by greater amounts than blue differs from green yet they are all "red" to you.

Certain BASIC words for simple concepts are missing from English, that are present in other languages. Cul-de-sac would be like one.Basic simple concept??? I must have been 25 before I ever heard the term used and I had to ask what it meant. In America it's just a fancy-schmancy word for what had always been called a "dead end." It was coined as an advertising gimmick by real estate agents, because nobody wants to live in the house at the end of a dead-end road. Calling it a cul-de-sac raises the hope that you'll find a really stupid buyer and he'll pay more for it. However, regardless of what you call it, it's still the least desirable house on any street. You get headlights coming in your windows, the sound of cars braking, turning and reaccelerating, and the traffic activity right outside your front yard where your children and dogs are playing. It's similar to coining the term "sanitation engineers" for janitors. They're still janitors, and they still live in houses on dead ends.Those names for colors don't make sense to a good portion of English speakers. Dear gods, "fuschia" doesn't make sense to me.It's a Venus-Mars thing. Women have names for all those colors and they can actually see the difference between Ecru and Navajo White.

If you spell fuchsia right, you can look it up. :) It's the name of a flower and the color of that flower, just like rose and violet.

Also note that people in the US tend not to think horse meat is suitable meat to eat. We also do not like to eat "pig meat" but easily do so as we call it "pork" - Same as "beef", instead of "cow meat" is OK for eating. We lack a suitable restuarant word for horse meat, but the French do not. (I do not speak French, so can not tell it to you.) Thus the French eat much more horse meat in restuarants than Americans do.

Again, as in my last post, I am trying to show how the language you have controls your concepts and attitudes.

Let's find some missing words. Here's an example:

eat : feed :: drink : ?

Notice that there's no word (that I know of) for giving someone a drink and having them drink it, in the same way there's a word for giving someone food and having them eat it. There might be some fancy word of Latin or Greek origin, but notice that the three words given are native words; I'm mainly focusing on native word stock. One might possibly argue that when people are eating, they're usually also drinking, so there's often no need for such a distinction. But I don't think it can be explained away this easily.

If anyone can think of missing words, I'd like to see them. I'm also interested in knowing if there are languages that have these missing words in their own word stock. I'm especially interested in how Esperanto handles them, since it's apparently a very logical (and I assume consistent) language as far as word construction.feed comes from food, so giving someone something to drink would mean we have to find a similiar word as food for drink.

We could say that we are watering someone (but that is more often applied to plants), which brings us to the question if there are any word that applies to what can be drinken, as for what can be feed (like food), well, we have drink, I made him drink we can say. "I drank him", would perhaps be the appropriate phrase? Or perhaps if we use the same technique for food as for drink, it might be "I draught him".

always been called a "dead end."

Dead end is just as good. Although I would rather call it sackstreet. It expresses exactly what it means, only one way in and out just like a sack (cul-de-sac, zsakutca).

Here is another expression, that is missing from English: Bon appetite!!

Most other cultures say something before starting to eat and I don't mean a prayer. It is basicly acknowledging that everyone is present and ready to start to eat. Even "Let's eat!" would do it.

Billy T: You assume that the French consider horse meat to be normal fare because they have a word for it.Again, as in my last post, I am trying to show how the language you have controls your concepts and attitudes.Perhaps they have a word for it because they consider it normal fare.

BTW: It is interesting that many of the English words for the meat we eat are French derived, while the words for the animal are Anglo Saxon. It is evidence that a French culture conquered and ruled the Anglo Saxon culture. The household servants had to learn the Lord's name for the food he ate. They kept the words for the animals because the Lord seldom bothered with the raising and slaughter of the animals.

Here is another expression, that is missing from English: Bon appetite!!Everyone I know just says, "bon appetit." English is still a borrowing language. Everyone says, "bon voyage" too. People say skal, nazdar, prosit, lechaim, salud, and a dozen other foreign words before drinking, more often than "to your health." And "gesundheit" is almost as common as "bless you" for sneezing in the Eastern U.S.

Billy T: You assume that the French consider horse meat to be normal fare because they have a word for it. Perhaps they have a word for it because they consider it normal fare....Not quite so, at least not my intent to comment which came first: word or eating habits.

I doubt either was clearly "first". My point is and was that what we consider proper is made possible by incorporating suitable words. Without the words, it is much more difficult to have the concepts, ideas etc.

Switch to my color example. Without separate words blue and green, we would probably not consider them separate colors*, just different shades of one color (bleen? or some single word name). Words reflect out thoughts and ideas and greatly control them - I am not commenting on which comes first.
----------------------
*Just as we consider more widely separated wavelengths all red, just different shades of red.

English is amazing in this way that it is missing words for very basic concepts. Try Cul-de-sac, for example.They have to use the French to describe a road with one end closed.

Not just English. As an Optometrist who speaks pretty good Spanish, I do a lot of exams on Spanish speaking patients.

For some reason, there does not seem to be a word for "squint" in Spanish. This is quite annoying and strange. Spanish speakers squint as much as everyone else, but have no word for it.

If there is one, it's definitely not in common usage as I've asked scores of bilingual patients how to say it.

PS When I was a kid, we called Cul de sacs "dead ends". "Dead End" is a perfectly natural word for a road with one end closed, although I usually expect a "cul de sac" to have an enlarged circular end rather than just ending.

FR: That is exactly the point, that you have to use a French word instead.

Here is a list of words, although I might not agree with all of them:

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/missing_words_english.shtml

The French version of the OP's request would be:

saoulant : making one get drunk (or "tiring" in slang)

Do you have a word in English for hole in the ice?

Do you have a word in English for man-made hole in the ice?

Do you have a word in English for a hole in the ice made by animals?

Do you have a word in English for hole in the ice?

Icehole?

FR: That is exactly the point, that you have to use a French word instead.Uh, no. The point is that we have taken the French word and made it an English word. Surely a member of the Linguistics Forum understands that our language's rich vocabulary is largely the result of taking words form other languages, rather than the evolution of our native Germanic wordstock. Pick a paragraph at random from any scrap of paper lying on your desk and highlight the words that are not of Anglo-Saxon origin. Here's mine:Ever since World War II, the United States has used its military and economic superiority to promote a stable world order that has, on the whole, kept the peace and spread the prosperity.Without our foreign words, we would still be in the Stone Age. Even fundamental, everyday words like "use," "very," and "question" are French. The French conquered England in 1066 and ruled the country for centuries. In fact, there is no discontinuity in that rule and it has been argued that today's Royal Family is simply the latest in an unbroken line of Anglo-Norman rulers. Somewhere along the way the ruling class began speaking English instead of French, but the structure of the society did not change abruptly. As a result, English overflows with words of French origin.

I realize that other languages do just fine without word borrowing. The Chinese are forced into it by phonetic incompatibility and the Germans do it out of sheer cussed chauvinism, but it works for both of them. But other highly respected languages do it our way. Japanese is full of Chinese words and even the Romans adopted entire glossaries of Greek words. I appreciate the structure of a language that allows its people to adapt to the changes around them by using their own vocabulary, but I'm only an amateur linguist and I don't know that a real linguist, much less an anthropologist or any other scholar, would agree with the importance I place on that ability.Here is a list of words, although I might not agree with all of them:The compiler of this list appears not to be a native speaker of English.patte. We have the word "paw." It specifically refers to the last two joints in the front or rear foot of a mammal with real toes rather than hooves or flippers: the phalanges and the knuckles. Anyone who has ever owned a dog or seen a nature documentary knows this common English word. gueule, bouffet. Someone will have to patiently explain to me why animals don't "eat" with their "mouths" the same as we do. I understand that Germans use fressen to mean "eat in the gross manner of an animal," but we're just not as fussy about table manners in America. The distinction is largely lost on a people who eat folded slices of pizza with their hands while watching TV. We use "wolf" as a verb, meaning "to eat large chunks of food hurriedly, as if to avoid sharing with scavengers." We talk about "the lion's share" of a limited quantity of food. We "pig out" when we eat too much because it tastes good. Amusingly, to "eat like a bird" means to eat very little, coined in an era when people didn't know that some birds eat three times their body weight every day. We have no shortage of words for eating taken from the animal kingdom. gibier. Most of us go our entire lives without eating the meat of a game animal so this word is useless to us. tartine has two syllables. "Slice of bread" has three. In context, such as in the kitchen, we can shorten it to "slice." What can the French do? tartiner . . . ecoeurant. Yes, Francois, we all know that the French are obsessed with food and their language has a million words for growing, handling, stocking, selling, buying, mixing, blending, sauteing, braising, preparing, serving, eating, and criticizing it. Over here we just "scarf" pizza while we're doing something else. We make fun of Frenchmen because they talk about food the way we talk about women: "Save the whites, maybe you'll make a little meringue later on the side." chaine. We call that a stereo, dude. Again, this person is not very familiar with American English. telespectateur. Why are those five syllables superior to our five syllables, "TV audience"? Because it's one word? Try explaining that to a Chinese, for whom the whole concept of a "word" is a little fuzzy. lunettes. "Replace the glasses of the glasses"? Where did he see that? In the instruction manual for a Japanese product, translated into English? That is just flat wrong! We call them the "lenses."This list is bogus. There are too many errors, and even more lapses in knowledge. Perhaps this person knows French, but he does not know English.The French version of the OP's request would be: saoulant: making one get drunk.That is not how any speaker of English would ever say it. Once again, this was compiled by someone who has only studied English in school and does not speak it conversationally. We say, "get him (or her) drunk." It's only three syllables. Perfectly concise.

The link provided by Syzygys is both interesting and basically correct, although Fraggle Rocker might be correct in his comments on a few of the examples. There is no doubt that French, with a far smaller vocabulary, has quite a few words with no single word translation to English.

Fraggle Rocker: I am not sure you are correct in your comment relating to paw for patte. Paw does not seem to be a translation for patte, which I assume refers to the entire limb and is applicable to animals which do not have paws.

BTW: Does French have words for paws and hooves?

Until I noticed the preface to the link provided by Syzygys, I accepted your assertion that Chinese has about the same number of words as English. Now, I am not so sure.

Is there some disagreement relating to what is actually a word in Chinese? For that matter, I assume that the word count for a language does not count plurals of nouns and all the tenses of verbs in the tally.

Since I did not understand some of your remarks about Chinese, I wonder if what you referred to as words are accepted by linguists in general.

Perhaps the author at that link is a chauvinist who does not think about oriental languages.

I encountered a missing expression in English while trying to order a sandwich.
The menu had multiple categories and supposedly I was to select a few of them. As an awfully inexperienced sandwich-orderer I had the gist of asking the sandwich-maker how in general to order a sandwich, but I encountered a stumbling block from which I was left with several options:

"How do people order a sandwich?" (awkward)
"How do I order a sandwich?" (embarrassing)
"How do they order a sandwich?" (who? where?)

In this context I think the Spanish se would be most aptly suited for this situation, such as "?Como se piden un (noun)" The pronoun se is completely generalized, a form I have not encountered or been able to successfully replace idiomatically or rhetorically in English.

Another contrast in which Spanish describes more accurately is the well-known case (at least among linguists) of the demonstrative pronouns, esto-eso-aquello. In English, this is roughly translated as this-that-"that one way over there." When speaking English people would have to resort to context, implicit references, mood, body language, etc. when referring to an object far removed from the interlocutors as opposed to one easily mistaken that is nearer. Occasionally humorous references have to be accompanied, but usually needs a first mistake on the receiver's end to realize, "oh, that." The presence of three levels of demonstrative pronouns in Spanish as opposed to two in English probably minimizes this ambiguity.

Let's find some missing words. Here's an example:

eat : feed :: drink : ?



Regarding this first post, I tend to support Granty's "quench" as the closest word that comes to satisfying the analogy. But yes, it is not perfect, since quenching usually means to satisfy thirst rapidly, and would sound awkward if suddenly used generally.

I am not sure you are correct in your comment relating to paw for patte. Paw does not seem to be a translation for patte, which I assume refers to the entire limb and is applicable to animals which do not have paws.If patte refers to the entire limb, then why are we calling it a limb instead of a leg? In English we refer to all the limbs of quadrupeds as legs. Only bipeds have arms. It seems to me that using a different word for a dog's leg and a human's leg is just as unnecessary as having a different word for a dog's mouth and a human's mouth or a dog's act of eating and a human's act of eating. It's been more than a century since we discovered that Homo sapiens is just another species of mammal. We can safely use the same terminology for our physiology as for other mammals' physiology, without confusing anybody. French and German are hanging onto obsolete vocabulary, something we see no need for. Just as they hang onto obsolete grammatical paradigms like verb conjugation and noun gender.Until I noticed the preface to the link provided by Syzygys, I accepted your assertion that Chinese has about the same number of words as English. Now, I am not so sure. Is there some disagreement relating to what is actually a word in Chinese?Disagreement? Disagreement! Dian means "electricity" and hua means "speech." Dian hua means "telephone." Is it one word or two? Xiao means "small" and gou means "dog." Xiao gou means "puppy." One word or two? Got that? Okay now: Shi means "stone" and you means oil. Shi you means "petroleum." Hey that's not compound, you say, that's one word. Well do you realize that it's simply a literal translation of scientific Latin "petro-oleum"? Okay, you're pretty sure about those, are ya? Then how about this one: Dong means "east" and xi means "west." Dong xi, is it one word or two? How about after I tell you that dong xi means "thing"? Chinese is full of compounds whose etymology is utterly unclear. It's not that we can't define a "word" in Chinese. The whole concept of "word" may not even apply to the language.I encountered a missing expression in English while trying to order a sandwich. The menu had multiple categories and supposedly I was to select a few of them. As an awfully inexperienced sandwich-orderer I had the gist of asking the sandwich-maker how in general to order a sandwich, but I encountered a stumbling block from which I was left with several options: "How do people order a sandwich?" (awkward) "How do I order a sandwich?" (embarrassing) "How do they order a sandwich?" (who? where?)Once again, your source is simply unfamiliar with spoken English. We say "How do you order a sandwich?" "You" is universally used as an impersonal pronoun. And yes it's ambiguous, it's not obvious if you're asking the listener how he does it or how everybody does it. But we're never confused, we always understand. Your source is not even familiar with the formal way of saying this: "How does one order a sandwich."One" is the "proper" equivalent to French on and German man, but we seldom use it except in writing. You really don't have a very good source about English usage. Whoever it is, you should stop listening to him or her; he doesn't know our language very well.In this context I think the Spanish se would be most aptly suited for this situation, such as "?Como se piden un (noun)" The pronoun se is completely generalized, a form I have not encountered or been able to successfully replace idiomatically or rhetorically in English.Your source knows less about Spanish than English. Se is the dative case of the reflexive pronoun, meaning "oneself." It's a broken declension, there is no nominative case. Se habla español literally means "Spanish speaks itself." It's just as silly as our way of asking a vegetarian, "How do you order a hamburger?" And ambiguity pops up. You're not supposed to use that construction when you're talking about people, but it happens. I see advertisements saying, "Se cuidan niños." They mean to say, "Child care is available," but they're saying literally, "Children take care of themselves." The first time I saw that I really had a hard time figuring out what they were telling me. Are Mexican children more self-sufficient than American children?Regarding this first post, I tend to support Granty's "quench" as the closest word that comes to satisfying the analogy. But yes, it is not perfect, since quenching usually means to satisfy thirst rapidly, and would sound awkward if suddenly used generally."Quench" is not the right word. You don't quench a person the way you feed a person. You quench a thirst or a fire.

We use "get the..." as a common way to fill in the verbs we lack, as in "Feed the kids and make sure to get them something to drink."

Se is the dative case of the reflexive pronoun, meaning "oneself." It's a broken declension, there is no nominative case. Se habla español literally means "Spanish speaks itself." It's just as silly as our way of asking a vegetarian, "How do you order a hamburger?" And ambiguity pops up. You're not supposed to use that construction when you're talking about people, but it happens. I see advertisements saying, "Se cuidan niños." They mean to say, "Child care is available," but they're saying literally, "Children take care of themselves." The first time I saw that I really had a hard time figuring out what they were telling me. Are Mexican children more self-sufficient than American children.

I am very aware of the reflexive se. There's a different form of se that I'm talking about, the generalized demonstrative pronoun.

The advertisement is wholly correct, under the generalized se. When it says "Se cuidan niños" it does not mean "Children take care of themselves" - unless it's meant to be sarcastic or humorous then it's just plain absurd. It means "People (in general) take care of children" or "we take care of children." Healthcare commercials rely on pathos-related rhetoric such as this. You've probably seen similar constructions for English healthcare advertisements. It is analogous to the plural form of what you said - "one takes care of children," with the 'one' being replaced with more than one. I can't make an exact fit in English - "few" and "many" introduce bias into the statement, "they" references something, "ones" is awkward and nonexistent in usage, and "people" can be replaced with "personas." It is hard to translate the general se form into English - the best fit is probably "we", so it's roughly translated as "we take care of children," but again it isn't exact either, since there is probably an equivalent form of that retranslated with the "nosotros" form, like "cuidamos los niños."

FraggleRocker: After some more Googling, there really seems to be some ambiguity in the definition of a word in the context of comparing arbitrary languages. The following posted by you is also suggestive of problems defining a word. Xiao means "small" and gou means "dog." Xiao gou means "puppy."I would tend to call that two words, but then I call housekeeping one word due to there being no interior space character. Perhaps there is a difference between house (space) keeping and housekeeping. Zsa Zsa Gabor once said:I am an excellent house keeper. Every time I get divorced, I keep the house.She obviously was not bragging about her ability to vacuum, dust, mop, clean curtains, et cetera.

BTW: How does Chinese express the concept of a small dog (EG: A Toy or Miniature Poodle) as contrasted with a large dog (EG: A Saint Bernard or a Mastiff)? Is there another word similar in meaning to Xiao?

This puppy concept brings up some interesting problems. If Xiao gou (literally small dog) means puppy, how do the Chinese express the notion of a large puppy (A Saint Bernard 2-3 months old) in contrast to a small puppy (any puppy a few days old or a Toy Poodle 2-3 months old)? Perhaps xiao xiao gou for the latter?

With reasonable definitions, it seems sage to say that English has several times as many words as languages with alphabets and similar grammatical constructs. In comparing English with Chinese, there seems to be some ambiguities and/or problems relating to definitions.

BTW: I once read an interesting essay explaining why some languages are written left to right, some right to left, and some up to down.Right to left languages were derived from a culture whose first written form was chiseled in stone on Temples, statues, or monuments. It is more efficient for a right handed stone mason to work from right to left (A mistake will not ruin a previously chisled character).


Left to right languages were derived from a culture whose first written form was cuneiform (clay inscribed with a pointed tool) or via some pen-like device on some paper-like medium (Right to left would likely smear previously written characters).


The top to bottom languages initially used a paintbrush, which encourages downward strokes.We might never know the real reasons, but the above seems to be consistent with the known histories of the early cultures which developed a written form of their language.

I am very aware of the reflexive se. There's a different form of se that I'm talking about, the generalized demonstrative pronoun.

The advertisement is wholly correct, under the generalized se. When it says "Se cuidan niños" it does not mean "Children take care of themselves" - unless it's meant to be sarcastic or humorous then it's just plain absurd. It means "People (in general) take care of children" or "we take care of children." Healthcare commercials rely on pathos-related rhetoric such as this. You've probably seen similar constructions for English healthcare advertisements. It is analogous to the plural form of what you said - "one takes care of children," with the 'one' being replaced with more than one. I can't make an exact fit in English - "few" and "many" introduce bias into the statement, "they" references something, "ones" is awkward and nonexistent in usage, and "people" can be replaced with "personas." It is hard to translate the general se form into English - the best fit is probably "we", so it's roughly translated as "we take care of children," but again it isn't exact either, since there is probably an equivalent form of that retranslated with the "nosotros" form, like "cuidamos los niños."The reflexive is almost invariably used in Spanish in place of the passive voice. No one every says, El español no está hablado en Alemania. They say No se habla el español en Alemania. The correct idiomatic translation of Aquí se habla español is "Spanish is spoken here." They even extend this to the imperative. I've seen instruction manuals telling me Llenese el tanque, meaning, "The tank must be filled."

After being away from Aztlán for a few years, the subtleties of idiomatic Spanish are coming back to me. When you actually want a reflexive construction to mean literally the reflexive mode, you use the standard subject-verb word order. If it's a stand-in for the passive voice, you put the subject last and generally omit the article. So "children are taken care of" is indeed se cuidan niños, whereas "children take care of themselves" is "los niños se cuidan. When I first saw the babysitting ad fifty years ago as a first-year student, we were a long way from covering such colloquialisms.

FraggleRocker: After some more Googling, there really seems to be some ambiguity in the definition of a word in the context of comparing arbitrary languages. The following posted by you is also suggestive of problems defining a word. I would tend to call that two words, but then I call housekeeping one word due to there being no interior space character.Yes, alphabets with spaces certainly help us with a definition of a "word." Yet it seems rather arbitrary. Why "watchdog" but "guard dog"?

But in inflected languages the inflections make the difference. Volkswagen has to be a single word because to express it in two you must use three and move them around, Wagen des Volks. Parasol is one word, otherwise it's lo que para el sol. In English, which has lost most of its inflections, it seems to be a matter of time. I'm sure in a few generations we'll be writing "userfriendly" and "costeffective." English is rapidly evolving into an analytic language like Chinese, and the definition of a word is becoming as fuzzy as in Chinese.BTW: How does Chinese express the concept of a small dog (EG: A Toy or Miniature Poodle) as contrasted with a large dog (EG: A Saint Bernard or a Mastiff)? Is there another word similar in meaning to Xiao?They can throw in the particle de, which is a degenerate of both dei, a participial formative, and di, a possessive. It is now nothing more than a placeholder for parsing sentences. If the meaning is not obvious from context, you can say xiao de gou to make it clear that you mean a small dog.This puppy concept brings up some interesting problems. If Xiao gou (literally small dog) means puppy, how do the Chinese express the notion of a large puppy (A Saint Bernard 2-3 months old) in contrast to a small puppy (any puppy a few days old or a Toy Poodle 2-3 months old)? Perhaps xiao xiao gou for the latter?We're getting beyond my modest vocabulary and experience, but I can assure you that a Chinese would have no compunctions about saying da xiao gou and xiao xiao gou for different sized puppies. With only 1600 syllables it's unremarkable for two homonyms to find themselves abutted, so there's not as much resistance to repeating a syllable as there is in our language. Wo de xiao xiao gou is not nearly as precious as "My little little dog."

gibier. Most of us go our entire lives without eating the meat of a game animal so this word is useless to us. ? Is that true, on this forum?

I do not know personally, for sure, anyone who has not eaten venison, duck, grouse, goose, squirrel, rabbit, bear, elk, or moose. No doubt there are a couple, among my acquaintances, but it had to have been from choice, not lack of opportunity.

That leaves possum, coon, gator, gopher, dove, snake, etc etc among the rarer but by no means unknown meals in my neck of the woods.

But the word is still useless, as far as I can see. "Game animal meat" is not a category, in ordinary sense.

Is there an issue here, in the existence of crippling words ? Maybe there's an advantage in lacking a word that holds an inherent confusion or invalid categorisation.

Gibier?

Those of us that eat game meat call it "gamey". Gameyness depends on how well the animal was killed, cleaned, its diet, and its size. For instance, caribou is more gamey than deer, deer is more gamey than moose and moose is more gamey than musk ox or buffalo, which are more gamey than free range beef, which is more gamey than grain fed beef.

Is that true, on this forum?Most Americans live in urban areas and go their entire lives without eating food they can't buy at Safeway.I do not know personally, for sure, anyone who has not eaten venison, duck, grouse, goose, squirrel, rabbit, bear, elk, or moose. No doubt there are a couple, among my acquaintances, but it had to have been from choice, not lack of opportunity. That leaves possum, coon, gator, gopher, dove, snake, etc etc among the rarer but by no means unknown meals in my neck of the woods.I recall eating venison--fifty years ago when America was more rural. It was okay but nothing I would seek for a second taste. I've had farmed goose and it was tasty enough. I've had farmed duck and rabbit and they were terrible. When I was in Europe the family I stayed with made up a huge meal of game animals and birds that the poppa had killed with his shotgun. Very forgettable. I like pork but I have to practice cognitive dissonance to eat it without remembering how intelligent pigs are and what nice pets the small ones make. Goat meat is tasty too and goats are too cute to eat. It's natural that omnivores are the most intelligent animals because intelligence favors the opportunistic feeder. It's unfortunate that the meat of omnivores seems to be so succulent. There's no way I could bring myself to eat the meat of a raccoon or a bear. I'm not a campaigner against the practice but it's not for me. I predict that within a couple of centuries humans will stop eating the meat of warm-blooded animals, or those who do will be held in the same contempt that now applies to those who eat dog meat.But the word is still useless, as far as I can see. "Game animal meat" is not a category, in ordinary sense.Those French, they have as many words for food as the British have for politics and the Americans have for money.Is there an issue here, in the existence of crippling words ? Maybe there's an advantage in lacking a word that holds an inherent confusion or invalid categorisation.No, we seem to like them. If we can't find one, we make it up, like "near-miss," "irregardless," or "flammable."

I don't know about other languages, but some have a word for:

what-d'ya-call-it, whatchmacallit, whatsit, whatyamacallit

I think we can agree on it that NONE of the above is one word, although they are written as such...

I don't know about other languages, but some have a word for: what-d'ya-call-it, whatchmacallit, whatsit, whatyamacallit. I think we can agree on it that NONE of the above is one word, although they are written as such...I for one certainly do not agree! I doubt that the majority of the people who utter the word "whatchamacallit" are even clear on its etymology and could break it down into "what you may call it." The spelling has been conventionalized to obscure it. The Y has disappeared to reflect the strong force of palatalization in American English. I wonder if the British have this word and if so how they spell it, since they certainly could not pronounce it as we do. Perhaps your "whatyamacallit."

A whatchamacallit is the same thing as a thingamajig or a doohickey or a dingus. A whatchamacallit with a little more technology in it is a gizmo. These are all one word; the fact that one was originally a compound doesn't matter now, just as it does not matter with "birdhouse" or "watchdog."

I'm sure by the time "zounds" became obsolete, the people who said it had no idea that it was a contraction of "God's wounds."

I for one certainly do not agree!

I was betting on it! :)

Nevertheless it is obvious that those are not new words, but writing into one and shortening a rather lengthy reference. Now consider the Hungarian word of "ize", that has exactly the same meaning. Slightly shorter and a brand new word, not an abbrivation.

It can also mean a gizmo, can be a verb (usually but not always refering to copulation) and so on. I tried to look up if French or German have similar words, but I couldn't find any....

Ize: doodad, thingummy, jig, number, gizmo, whatchmacallit

Where do you buy your dictionaries that they misspell "Whatchamacallit"? Five syllables = 5 vowels.

There aren't many rules of the English language since we don't have an academy. But one of the few rules is: If there are no spaces, then it is one word.

You can argue about hyphens, but you can't argue about contiguous letters.

Period.

oksoiguessthisoneisalsoonewordright?

oksoiguessthisoneisalsoonewordright?Only if you find it in a dictionary, which means it's in common use. We get to make up words but they don't count if they don't catch on. You really don't understand how English works.

I found "whatchamacallit" in two dictionaries. That's why I keep asking you why you write it without the second A. It has a standardized spelling, at least in my country.

In America, newspapers are generally the arbiters. Their employees are in the language business, so they don't miss much that's going on in the way of word formation. They're pretty liberal about popular culture so they're more likely to legitimize a word a lot of people don't use than to ignore one a lot of people do use. If you look up an etymology, 95 times out of 100 the first recorded use of the word will be a newspaper. I think that's even true in the OED for words coined in the last century.

My point was that there was no English word for that notion, thus they just wrote it into one word and shortened it what people were saying. They could have come up with a completly different and shorter word for that notion, had they made one...

But anyway, whatever. That is one word....

" Is there an issue here, in the existence of crippling words ? Maybe there's an advantage in lacking a word that holds an inherent confusion or invalid categorisation. ”

No, we seem to like them. Whether we like them or not, there may be an advantage in not having them, no?

The question for the thread was: are we better off not having words for some things?
Most Americans live in urban areas and go their entire lives without eating food they can't buy at Safeway. OK, "most". Most Americans go their entire lives without riding a horse or paddling a canoe, as well, but nevertheless English has and keeps words useful among the other tens of millions.
I predict that within a couple of centuries humans will stop eating the meat of warm-blooded animals, or those who do will be held in the same contempt that now applies to those who eat dog meat. That may happen, in the common manner of virtues arising from necessities, but it will mark a misfortune IMHO. The disconnection of humans from the non-human world will have become an even wider gulf than it is now.

That may happen [spread of vegetarianism], in the common manner of virtues arising from necessities, but it will mark a misfortune IMHO. The disconnection of humans from the non-human world will have become an even wider gulf than it is now.Duh? Most vegetarians are motivated by a powerful connection to animals. My wife refuses to consider having a pot-bellied pig in our home because the new connection would make it impossible for her to eat pork. I have to admit I would surely feel the same way.

The popular bumper sticker from 40 years ago, "Love Animals, Don't Eat Them," argues against your thesis.

Duh? Most vegetarians are motivated by a powerful connection to animals. Not an actual, physical connection, however. More of a warm fuzzy feeling of empathy. If you want to know what kinds of places are good for this or that kind of animal, how they llike to spend time, what their capabilities and interests are, what they eat and when, how they raise and care for their young, etc, your local vegetarian restaurant will prove to be a lesser source of contacts and info.

I've seen vegetarians raise dogs on meat-free diets. I've seen vegetarians try to garden next to a woods without fencing or guard, on the principle that they were willing to share with the animals with which they felt a powerful connection. I've seen vegetarians flip out over june bugs on a door screen, big moths at the window, or bats near ther heads. I've seen them argue with their dogs in English, with subordinate clauses.

The people who know and love wild ducks eat them, usually. So do the people who know and love deer, bear, squirrels, wild turkeys, and even domestic pigs, cows and chickens.

Most of the entomologists I know have eaten insects.

The view of eating as exploitation, as a violent taking with no giving, is an alienated view of the world. And as people stop raising, hunting, and eating animals these animals will vanish from their daily experience, and this alienation will increase. Actual physical connection with animals, the foundation of empathy and knowledge, will be replaced with lives devoid of animals and moved instead by squeamishness at the thought of killing and eating them; personal experience with a view of them owing more to Walt Disney or the Nature Channel on TV.

Squeamishness is not a virtue.

For a view of the future "powerful connection" of humans with animals, maybe the movie "The Bear". It took months to train the larger bear against its nature, and the shots had to be carefully set up even then, so that the smaller bear would be safe near it. For most of its viewers, that movie is their knowledge of bears. It is utter fiction, a fable or fantasy with animals as standins for human characters.

And the animal influence left will be metaphorical, and even they will fade as the metqphors lose their bases in real experience, to get back on topic: where we now use animal metaphors we will have missing words in English.

The practice whose name escapes me, of following the formation pattern of another language using one's own vocabulary, is so much easier [...]

To calque? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque)

feed comes from food, so giving someone something to drink would mean we have to find a similiar word as food for drink.

Not necessarily, but this is an interesting way of tackling the issue.

"I drank him", would perhaps be the appropriate phrase? Or perhaps if we use the same technique for food as for drink, it might be "I draught him".

"To drink" is a verb that can only take a drink as an object to me. Since "he" is not a drink, I can't drink him. "I drank him" sorta sounds like a rather poetic allusion to sex with "him".

Without our foreign words, we would still be in the Stone Age.

I would disagree. I think we could've been just as flexible even if we had not borrowed extensively from other languages, theoretically. You cite German's being able to coin words for new inventions and concepts with native stock. I don't see it as quite a leap to conclude that any other West Germanic language could pull it off too.

However, I can concede that borrowing extensively from other languages does offer a very great degree of flexibility.

Another contrast in which Spanish describes more accurately is the well-known case (at least among linguists) of the demonstrative pronouns, esto-eso-aquello. In English, this is roughly translated as this-that-"that one way over there." When speaking English people would have to resort to context, implicit references, mood, body language, etc. when referring to an object far removed from the interlocutors as opposed to one easily mistaken that is nearer. Occasionally humorous references have to be accompanied, but usually needs a first mistake on the receiver's end to realize, "oh, that." The presence of three levels of demonstrative pronouns in Spanish as opposed to two in English probably minimizes this ambiguity.

Scots makes the same distinctions as Spanish, as far as I know. They use words that are cognate to English "this", "that", and "yon/yonder". English probably used that distinction too once upon a time. I believe traces of the distinction appear in German too, and just as in Scots, the words are cognate: dieser "this", der "the/that" (but das is more recognizable), and jener "that" (but more of a pointing "that" than der is, which is usually just a definite article).

BTW: I once read an interesting essay explaining why some languages are written left to right, some right to left, and some up to down.Right to left languages were derived from a culture whose first written form was chiseled in stone on Temples, statues, or monuments. It is more efficient for a right handed stone mason to work from right to left (A mistake will not ruin a previously chisled character).


Left to right languages were derived from a culture whose first written form was cuneiform (clay inscribed with a pointed tool) or via some pen-like device on some paper-like medium (Right to left would likely smear previously written characters).


The top to bottom languages initially used a paintbrush, which encourages downward strokes.We might never know the real reasons, but the above seems to be consistent with the known histories of the early cultures which developed a written form of their language.

Wow. That really explains a lot.

Volkswagen has to be a single word because to express it in two you must use three and move them around, Wagen des Volks.

Minor correction: I think the genitive of Volk is Volkes, due to a rule that the genitive of most nouns, probably just strong ones, must be two syllables (except for the ones longer than that, I suppose). Consider: Mannes and Buches, but Vaters and Bruders.

The question for the thread was: are we better off not having words for some things?

No. It was whether there's a word to fill in the analogy: eat:feed::drink:__.

The view of eating as exploitation, as a violent taking with no giving, is an alienated view of the world. And as people stop raising, hunting, and eating animals these animals will vanish from their daily experience, and this alienation will increase. Actual physical connection with animals, the foundation of empathy and knowledge, will be replaced with lives devoid of animals and moved instead by squeamishness at the thought of killing and eating them; personal experience with a view of them owing more to Walt Disney or the Nature Channel on TV.

I don't follow. What about vegans that love and own dogs or cats? My aunts are vegetarians, and they have several dogs and cats and love them dearly.

Squeamishness is not a virtue.

Being morally opposed to eating meat, recognizing the possibility that eating another animal could possibly be ethically wrong, being intelligent enough that you can conceive this concept in the first place, is not squeamishness any more than nonviolence is acquiescence and cowardice.

And the animal influence left will be metaphorical, and even they will fade as the metqphors lose their bases in real experience, to get back on topic: where we now use animal metaphors we will have missing words in English.

This is a non sequitur to me. Surely there are many things we say whose original contexts became obsolete long ago. For example, "to write": Its original meaning was something like "to tear" (compare with German cognate reißen "to rip/tear"). In Old English, it came to mean something like "to 'scratch/tear' inscriptions (onto a surface) which are a visual representation of speech", probably an allusion to writing on bones, stones, and other things, where you have to scratch and dig in order to make writing. From that, it became simply "to write" as we use it today. The technology needed to print writing was invented (I think) in the mid 1500s or so by Johannes Gutenberg, and before that I think we had been writing on paper for a long time. We have not been writing in the original sense of the term for hundreds of years, yet even today I am "tearing" my thoughts onto my computer screen.

This probably isn't the best example, as this is properly called a semantic drift. But I don't find it too different, because both my example and your assertion involve a certain manner of speaking no longer being based in real-life experience: in your assertion, experience with animals; in my example, experience with carving your thoughts onto some surface. Contrary to what you think, there is a very real possibility that our animal metaphors will live on for a very very long time, even after we (hypothetically) stop eating meat.

Being morally opposed to eating meat, recognizing the possibility that eating another animal could possibly be ethically wrong, being intelligent enough that you can conceive this concept in the first place, is not squeamishness any more than nonviolence is acquiescence and cowardice. Not necessarily squeamishness, granted. But quite often squeamishness in fact, we observe. And therefore not necessarily virtue, either, true?

The ethical arguments against eating animals - not those against various specific manners of raising or killing animals, but those against the eating of animals in itself - have never made much sense to me, and I wonder at their persuasive powers for others. It does not seem to be based in the reasoning.
I don't follow. What about vegans that love and own dogs or cats? They have defied the animal rights arguments against pet ownership, and have thus maintained a rich, but very narrow, relationship with the non-human world.

When they use words such as pounce, bitch, dog, snap, snarl, growl, paw, catspaw, catlike, puppy, wolf, heel, mangy, kittenish, purr, bark, shed, etc etc, their meanings will have depth and shade not otherwise available.

Words such as weasel, molt, skunk, game, tree (as a verb), hound (verb), rat, hawk, stoop (verb), rouse, fed up, gripe, bleat, sheepish, gobble, gabble, cluck, duck, cock, mule, bull, calf, hen, peck, henpeck, scratch, fawn, kid, saddle, bridle, owly, brood, hatch, crow (verb), snake, coil, grunt, sow and hog, piggy, etc etc will be inevitably thin and without nuance, even empty.

And in that short list we notice words now gone missing from English: the original meanings of hawk, crow, gripe, cock, brood, no longer have words in English, at least that I can come up with offhand.

When or if they try to maintain their animals on a vegan diet, they will prove themselves deranged in a specific way - from a kind of sensory deprivation.

To calque?Yes, that's the one. Thanks![without our foreign words we would be in the stone age]

I would disagree. I think we could've been just as flexible even if we had not borrowed extensively from other languages, theoretically. You cite German's being able to coin words for new inventions and concepts with native stock. I don't see it as quite a leap to conclude that any other West Germanic language could pull it off too.Well my point wasn't well stated. I just meant that most of the words that make Modern English "modern" are foreign words. As a linguistic community we seem to have chosen not to do a lot of word-building from native roots. Indeed, Dutch, Yiddish and the Scandinavian languages all tend to "calque" compound words using their own phonetic versions of the German roots. "Science" in Danish is vitenskap (he says without a Danish dictionary handy to get the spelling right). I guess if we tried that it would be something like "wisescape."

Does anybody know Frisian, the language which is alleged as being the closest relative of English?Minor correction: I think the genitive of Volk is Volkes, due to a rule that the genitive of most nouns, probably just strong ones, must be two syllables (except for the ones longer than that, I suppose). Consider: Mannes and Buches, but Vaters and Bruders.You're right. However there seems to be a trend in modern colloquial German to elide those unstressed E's. Maybe they've been fraternizing with the French too much. :)I don't follow. What about vegans that love and own dogs or cats? My aunts are vegetarians, and they have several dogs and cats and love them dearly.They have defied the animal rights arguments against pet ownership, and have thus maintained a rich, but very narrow, relationship with the non-human world.We're veering pretty far from linguistics here but what the heck, I'm more famous for my postings about dogs than linguistics. Humans and dogs created the earth's first voluntary multi-species community. It's debatable whether the Mesolithic people would have used the word "ownership" since it's generally acknowledged that dogs domesticated themselves. One school of thought says they saw the benefits of cooperative hunting, another says they probably thought they were taking advantage of us by eating all the perfectly good food we left lying on the ground. In either case, I'm not the only person who wonders, without the experience of learning to love "people" we couldn't even talk to who weren't even of the same species, whether we could ever have learned to love other humans who spoke funny languages and believed in blasphemous gods. It's quite possible that our relationship with dogs was a key step toward founding civilization. That disqualifies it as a "narrow" relationship. :)When or if they try to maintain their animals on a vegan diet, they will prove themselves deranged in a specific way - from a kind of sensory deprivation.In the grand scheme of things, diet seems to be a fairly easy evolutionary adaptation. Dogs have made a complete transition from carnivores to omnivores in a mere 15,000 years. Teeth, brain size, behavioral instincts, the whole package. About the only thing that changes faster is, amusingly enough, the one thing we humans make such a big frelling deal over: skin color. Move a human population from the tropics to the arctic or vice versa and in about 4,000 years they will change from black to white or vice versa.

Anyway, I don't think domestic animals suffer sensory deprivation from our diet fads. Especially since many of our preferred pets seem to be omnivores like dogs, parrots, and rodents. We also love the ones who have trapped themselves into the "greenest" levels on the food chain, like pandas (bamboo) and koalas (eucalyptus).

I have found another missing one: the gender-neutral reference to the 3rd person:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_245b.html

There have been attempts to introduce a new word, but none got to be popular...

I like the idea of hu: The usage is like this: "When hu goes to class hu needs to bring hum syllabus".

It is probably derived from human, but it also could be pronounced as who, thus it would make double sense... :)

I have found another missing one: the gender-neutral reference to the 3rd person. I like the idea of hu: The usage is like this: "When hu goes to class hu needs to bring hum syllabus". It is probably derived from human, but it also could be pronounced as who, thus it would make double sense.In the USA, "they" is now widely used as a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. It has recently been adopted by government agencies, so I'd say that makes its establishment official. Just yesterday I saw one of the ubiquitous Homeland Gestapo warning signs on the subway:If you see a person leaving a bag, package, or other item on the subway, politely ask them if they have forgotten something of theirs. If they say it is not theirs, or if they deliberately walk away and leave it, report the incident to a Transit Officer immediately.It's a bit awkward, but it seems to be a compromise we're all comfortable with. The "he or she" of the 1970s is even more awkward. The brief experiment with "s/he" may look good in print but there's no way to pronounce it, much less build an accusative or possessive form.

I doubt that "hu" will ever catch on. Pronounced the one way, it sounds too much like "you," and the other way it's too easily confused with "who." Still, stranger things have happened.

I prefer the Chinese pronouns, which are all gender-neutral. Somewhere along the way somebody came up with a cute way to render them gender-specific in print, but as far as I know it never really caught on.

hey here is a list, recently dugg:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2789073.ece

More from the discussion section:

http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Weird_and_Wondrful_Foreign_Phrases_that_Just_Don_t _Translate

I like this one:

"Baffona - Italian: an attractive mustachioed woman"

Have I mentioned "difficility" yet ?

Do other languages have a word for it? Is it a common concept in human societies? Do we feel a need for it out in real life? It would be difficult to look up in a bilingual dictionary since there's no English word to index.

We have one in Latvian.

Ēst (to eat) - Ēdināt (to feed) - Dzert (to drink), Dzirdīt (same as feed, but for drinking).
You can dzirdīt horses, for example.
To get somebody drunk is piedzirdīt.

We have one in Latvian.

Ēst (to eat) - Ēdināt (to feed) - Dzert (to drink), Dzirdīt (same as feed, but for drinking).
You can dzirdīt horses, for example.
To get somebody drunk is piedzirdīt.

These look like some form of forming causative verbs.

The Bantu languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages) have a mechanism to form verbs through the use of suffixes (Proto-Bantu *-î-, *-îc-, or compounded *-îcî-). In Sesotho (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesotho), the verb roots (since it is an agglutinative language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language)) would be -ja (PB *-dia) eat, -fepa (primitive)/-jesa(causative) feed, -nwa drink, and -nwesa (causative) cause to drink. Note that in both examples Sesotho uses the compounded causative (it also uses the *-î- with many other verbs -- the historical vowel causing the final consonant to change in weird ways -- but it never uses *-îc-, though I guess many other languages do).

This thread is fun (I guess), but I hope it teaches us all that languages are very varied and that not everything resembles what we have experienced. This is obvious but many people seem to simply not get it.

Personally, I love learning interesting facts about langauges, and I don't believe that there are any "better" langauges than others.

Esperanto has a universal causative suffix that can be added to any verb. Mangxi = to eat, mangxigi = to feed. Trinki = to drink, trinkigi = to cause to drink. (X stands for the circumflex over the previous consonant that I can't enter on this browser.)

Actually I just remembered that we have two words for feed - ēdināt and barot.
Ēdināt is more polite.