Interesting Vocabulary News
People often confuse with words and they try to extract meaning of the word by its etymology. For example consider trying to extract the meaning of the word pacify. People often confuse with the word pacify and pacifier. Unhappy babies are given pacifier to make them stop crying. To soothe anger or agitation or to subdue by armed action is the relevant meaning of the word pacify. Pacifist is a person who opposes war and violence generally on religious and moral grounds.
There exists a significant danger in trying to decipher meaning of words based on etymology. Etymology will not give you exact meaning of the word for every word. There exists a contradiction trying to predict the meaning of the word by its etymology. It would be better to know the meaning of the word by its root or origin.
Many people even literates think that meanings are the same in all languages and it varies according to the form in which we use it. Consider this sentence “The vodka is all right, but the meat is bad”. This sentence when translated into Russian by computer software gives out the meaning as “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. Languages are different and they need planned preparation.
There are various different and typical patterns of relationships between words in different languages. Chamois (French) = Italian camoscio, English re-proof = French re`imperme`abiliser. This confusion or ambiguity occurs when words which are related to concepts are firmly grounded into reality. Conceptual knowledge is not the same and it is never identical to our knowledge about meanings.
For example native English speakers (mother tongue) define or speak about wearing with one verb put on, whereas this is not the case with other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, etc. They have an elaborate form of representation for lower clothing, upper clothing, watches, etc. This form of understanding by English learners will make them know the intricacies and the manner in which native English speakers speak English.
English distinguishes streams from rivers but the French distinguishes rivers which run into the sea from rivers which are tributaries of other rivers. These are some of the different contexts in which English language varies from other languages. People from dissimilar cultures find learning English difficult due to problem in cross linguistic equivalences. Even words which may appear to be correct in related languages but they might be wrong grammatically in particular contexts.
