Better understanding of the word "interpret".

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by pljames, May 26, 2013.

  1. pljames Registered Member

    Messages:
    83
    Fraggle Rocker,
    I now understanding the word "interpret", better. To me all words have different meanings and can be understood differently by each person, hence interpretation. Be it body language spoken or written each has it's own way of understanding or interpreting what was read spoke are understood individually. Is there a interpreted forum you would lead me to too better get involved in interpreting how to write and read interpretative meanings? English is not a perfect language or the people who use it, but the language itself has properties that can be used to get as close as possible to be understood within reason. This is where I want to go and be. I Sincerely apology for my stupidity and arrogance for judging you and the system called interpretation. I see a whole new way and light to use it. Thank you. Paul
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    That is a huge exaggeration. The very concept of a language community is that everyone interprets words the same way. Sure, words change meanings slowly over the decades, and they might be interpreted slightly differently in different regions, social classes, professions, etc. But the basic meanings are well established and we all accept them by unconscious consensus. If this were not true, the wonderful, unique gift of speech that our species has would not be very valuable for communication. It would just be a bunch of people making interesting noises.

    Absolutely not! If 1000 people listen to a speech, only one or two of them will come away with a significant misunderstanding, and the most common reasons are:
    • Not paying close attention (e.g., due to lack of interest)
    • Not understanding the subject matter
    • A strong emotional bias (e.g., a Muslim listening to a speech about Christianity)
    • Low intelligence or other psychological problems.
    You need to understand that language works only because we all really do interpret what we hear or read the same way, or at least 99.9% the same way. We'll disagree about the accuracy, truthfulness, importance, implications, etc., but not the basic meaning of the sentences.

    I think your entire focus, as explained in your many posts, is simply wrong. You're looking for something that isn't there! If you have trouble interpreting what people say and write, I am positive that the problem is not in the speech and writing. The problem is at your end, and that's where you should be looking for improvement.

    What exactly would a "perfect language" be??? English has an enormous vocabulary (only Chinese and French can rival it in number of words). It is easy to adapt to new technologies, politics, social trends, etc. (Again, Chinese has this same advantage, and this time I would say that Chinese is slightly better. French is not quite so adaptable.) It is a very compact language, packing a lot of meaning into a small number of syllables so it can be spoken slowly, making it easily understood by foreigners, people in noisy circumstances, etc. (Again, Chinese is even better with seven syllables for every ten of ours, and French is the equal of English by this measure.)

    English, Chinese and French all have one major flaw: the written language is atrocious. The relationship between sound and spelling is a big joke--and Chinese doesn't even have a phonetic alphabet.

    As I said, I think you're looking in the wrong direction. There are lots of things wrong with our language--with every language--but consistency of understanding is NOT one of them!

    People more consistently interpret things they SEE much more differently and inaccurately than things they HEAR. It's been demonstrated many times that eyewitness testimony is so unreliable in criminal trials that it should be outlawed. Less than 50% accuracy!

    If our understanding of speech were this bad, civilization could never have been invented--much less science!
     
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  5. rcscwc Registered Senior Member

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    Fraggle, purpose of a written language is indeed to convey the same information to all the readers. But even there the same words sometimes do mean differently in different context. I have examples from Sanskrit language, but their import would be lost on you. Sorry there.
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    We have the same phenomenon in English.

    A cape is a sleeveless garment that fastens around the neck, as worn by Batman. A cape is also a piece of land that juts out into the sea, like Cape Horn, at the stormy tip of South America, or Cape Cod, a popular tourist resort extending from the eastern end of Massachusetts. No one confuses these two words! Our brains are big enough and fast enough to choose the right meaning from context instantly.

    The cat, Felis silvestris lybica, is (according to Scientific American magazine) the most popular domestic animal in the world. A Cat is also an affectionate term for a Caterpillar Tractor, a gigantic earth-moving machine. Again, no one ever mixes them up.

    Green is the color of most leaves, at least on this planet. Green is also a slang term meaning "naive or inexperienced." These are actually the same word, with the slang term derived from the idea that only young plants are green; as they age they turn darker. Yet, even in this case, no one has trouble determining which meaning is meant... instantly.
     
  8. rcscwc Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    721
    Take Green Turf.

    Could be a good fresh vibrant field of grass or a Golf Link.

    Now in Sanskrit there is NAV. Means either 9 or new. KAMBAL means blanket.

    Now NAV KAMBAL could mean either nine blankets or a new blanket. Exact meaning of course depends on context. Sometimes on intent too.

    A major problem can arise in cross language interpretation.
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    People who invent names have to be careful to avoid misunderstandings. "Green turf" is not a phrase that comes up in normal conversation, because:
    • All turf is green so the phrase is redundant.
    • The word "turf" itself is not common in everyday speech. It's used most often in specific contexts, such as athletic fields (routinely used for a horse racetrack), or the popular restaurant menu item "surf and turf" which means a combination of seafood (animals who live in the "surf" or ocean) and beef (animals who live on the "turf" or pasture). Fortunately Americans don't eat horsemeat (although we feed it to our dogs when nobody's looking) so that additional dimension of confusion doesn't come into play.

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    No one will mistake the proper meaning in any of these contexts. If you just say to your girlfriend, "Would you like to go out into the turf with me?" she won't have any idea what you mean, since no one uses the word that way. Now if you just walked her out of the back door of your house and there are five acres of prairie behind you, well then of course she'll understand, but she'll still think you speak English very strangely!

    "Turf" is more often used in slang to mean "territory," such as the six or eight blocks in a city that a particular street gang controls and refers to as "our turf"--and in cities with street gangs you can be sure that it's all concrete and there's no grass there! It's also used even more metaphorically, such as "Linguistics is my turf. Don't try to tell me that Kurdish is a Semitic language!" (I actually had to write that in a letter to the newspaper this morning. They thought that the Kurds are Arabs, so they couldn't understand the ethnic conflict in Iraq!)

    Anyway, back on topic, if the builders of a golf course decide to name it "Green Turf," everyone will realize that it is a proper noun (a name, spelled with capitals), not a common noun (in lower case).

    The words for "new" and "nine" were obviously rather similar in Proto-Indo-European. They both start with N in most of the I-E languages. In Latin, "new" is novus and "nine" is novem, so as the words are inflected for grammatical purposes, they can be easily mistaken.

    Of course! No two languages categorize the universe in quite the same way. Chinese has separate words for "older brother" and "younger brother," but it does not distinguish between "man" and "woman." If it's important, you have to actually say "male person" or "female person."

    I have not studied the Hopi language personally, but I have been told that the way the Hopis regard and discuss time is so different from our way that it requires considerable effort to understand.
     

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