Spiritual but not Religious

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

But there are absolutes, are there not?

Sure, but language makes them unspeakable in descriptions.

AMBIGUOUS Language CANNOT describe absolutes except linguistic ones that are circular.

A=A

Nice, but it describes nothing.

Snore. 

[Stargazer]

On 1/13/2024 at 3:56 AM, mfbukowski said:

Sure, but language makes them unspeakable in descriptions.

AMBIGUOUS Language CANNOT describe absolutes except linguistic ones that are circular.

A=A

Nice, but it describes nothing.

Snore. 

<I don't know why I'm responding to you on this, other than I started typing and this is what occurred. I'm probably talking gibberish. The following contains references the German language, which if I am not mistaken, is known to you.>

But pretty much all we have is ambiguous language. And each one of us carries around a personalized version of whatever language we happen to think in.

In English, if I say "I know that God lives," what do I mean? It's in my head what I mean, but you can only know what I mean if we are in the same frame of reference. And if you think you know my frame of reference, you may, but you may not.

In a General Conference address in April 1971 (“The Spirit Beareth Record”), Elder Boyd K. Packer said that he had heard one of his fellow Q12 quorum members say: "I know that God lives; I know that the Lord lives. And more than that, I know the Lord." In English, we have only one word for "to know", and that is, of course, "to know." If you look at a thesaurus, you might find other words to approximate it, but there it is. "Know" has is a less common connotation, used in the Bible as a euphemism for something one would not normally associate with our relationship to deity.

In German, however, there are two "knows." Wissen and kennen. There's also another one, erkennen, which in obsolete German means the same thing as the "know" in "And Adam knew his wife..." This form and meaning of the verb is still found in the German Bible -- both the Einheitsübersetzung and the Menge translation, which is the Church has started using.

So the above sentence from Elder Packer is translated as "Ich weiß, dass Gott lebt; Ich weiß, dass der Herr lebt. Und darüber hinaus kenne ich den Herrn."

Kennen of course is used for personal acquaintanceship. And is less ambiguous than English, when it comes to personal relationship. You kind of don't need context to understand it, like you do in English. Other languages are more precise than German in this connection. An extreme example might be ithkuil. Which I don't think anyone speaks, but it is extremely precise. Apparently.

What I'm trying to say is that if we cannot truly be absolute in our expression because of our ambiguous language, then true communication is impossible to us. 

But absolutes still exist.

I recall hearing someone report their philosophy professor claim "There are no absolutes!" Whereupn the professor did a double-take and said, "Oh my gosh, I just uttered an absolute!"

 

 

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

What I'm trying to say is that if we cannot truly be absolute in our expression because of our ambiguous language, then true communication is impossible to us. 

But absolutes still exist.

Yep, I agree.

Hebrew makes the same distinctions as the German regarding "know", and that fact is highly important in the bible, obviously.

And that prof should have known that even relativism is only relatively "true", whatever that means.

There has never been a definition of "true" upon which all philosophers have agreed, and perhaps that IS an absolute!

And yes, universal ambiguity IS a major problem in..... uh.... alleged "communication", like, ya dig?

That's why the hippies used "like" so much.

It's like every sentence, like uses it, can ya like dig it?

I mean like "have".

I have gone to places where they have nothing, have you? I didn't have enough bread though to have all their stories. But most had enough to get by- usually I don't have to do that because I have used other words that had the same meaning. 

I hope you have that down, it has to be hard, but not like a diamond. You would have to be, like stupid, to think so. 

But in some places, you can dig diamonds. Have a shovel? 

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Yep, I agree.

Hebrew makes the same distinctions as the German regarding "know", and that fact is highly important in the bible, obviously.

And that prof should have known that even relativism is only relatively "true", whatever that means.

There has never been a definition of "true" upon which all philosophers have agreed, and perhaps that IS an absolute!

And yes, universal ambiguity IS a major problem in..... uh.... alleged "communication", like, ya dig?

That's why the hippies used "like" so much.

It's like every sentence, like uses it, can ya like dig it?

I mean like "have".

I have gone to places where they have nothing, have you? I didn't have enough bread though to have all their stories. But most had enough to get by- usually I don't have to do that because I have used other words that had the same meaning. 

I hope you have that down, it has to be hard, but not like a diamond. You would have to be, like stupid, to think so. 

But in some places, you can dig diamonds. Have a shovel? 

After watching a video about the Melanesian language, Tok Pisin (see HERE), I was intrigued to see the Book of Mormon in that language. I just got a copy yesterday (of course it's available online), and it's very intriguing. I bring this up because Tok Pisin has what could be called a small vocabulary and a simple grammar, and thus some words fill many more uses than words generally do in English. It seems to be highly contextual.

! Nephi 1:1 (1 Nefai 1:1)

Quote

Mi, Nifai mi bin kamap long gutpela papa mama olsem na mi bin lainim liklik long olgeta save long papa bilong mi, na mi bin lukim planti pen long laip bilong mi, tasol, Bikpela bin laikim mi tumas long olgeta de bilong mi, ye, mi bin gat bikpela save bilong gutpela pasin na ol tok hait bilong God, long dispela as mi mekim rekot long olgeta samting long taim bilong mi.

I don't know why I posted this -- but it was really interesting to me, and I wanted to share.

[Calm]

14 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

After watching a video about the Melanesian language, Tok Pisin (see HERE), I was intrigued to see the Book of Mormon in that language. I just got a copy yesterday (of course it's available online), and it's very intriguing. I bring this up because Tok Pisin has what could be called a small vocabulary and a simple grammar, and thus some words fill many more uses than words generally do in English. It seems to be highly contextual.

! Nephi 1:1 (1 Nefai 1:1)

I don't know why I posted this -- but it was really interesting to me, and I wanted to share.

Do you have the reverse translation?  What it becomes when translated back into English?  With a small vocabulary that would be even more interesting, imo…especially for those of us who can’t read Tok Pisin

[Stargazer]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

Do you have the reverse translation?  What it becomes when translated back into English?  With a small vocabulary that would be even more interesting, imo…especially for those of us who can’t read Tok Pisin

I wish I did! Unfortunately, my primary tool for this is Google translate, and Tok Pisin is not one of the languages it covers. The Glosbe translator yields very poor results.

 

[Calm]

1 minute ago, Stargazer said:

I wish I did! Unfortunately, my primary tool for this is Google translate, and Tok Pisin is not one of the languages it covers. The Glosbe translator yields very poor results.

 

Poor results in that it doesn’t make sense or that it isn’t a good translation of what the Tok Pisin says?  If it doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful as that indicates how a limited vocabulary can alter meaning drastically.

The Book of Mormon has a small vocabulary iirc for a work its size…

I wonder if any studies have been done on how small vocabularies affect quality of translation. 

[mfbukowski]

Oops

 

Edited January 18, 2024 by mfbukowski

[Stargazer]

18 hours ago, Calm said:

Poor results in that it doesn’t make sense or that it isn’t a good translation of what the Tok Pisin says?  If it doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful as that indicates how a limited vocabulary can alter meaning drastically.

The Glosbe translator (which I had never used before) produced what seemed like a very rough approximation of what the passage meant, up to the point of starting to repeat the same phrase over and over again. It was essentially useless.

18 hours ago, Calm said:

The Book of Mormon has a small vocabulary iirc for a work its size…

Tok Pisin has a smallish vocabulary. It seems to take more words to express the same thoughts in English, or perhaps it's just complex concepts require more words. Here's a comparison I ran into in the Wikipedia article on the language. The first sentence of the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights in both languages (the article also shows the second sentence):

English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Tok Pisin: Yumi olgeta mama karim umi long stap fri na wankain long wei yumi lukim i gutpela na strepela tru.

Interesting isn't it? "Yumi olgeta" appears to correspond to "All human beings" as per "You and me altogether", and is also used for the third person plural "they." "Mama karim" seems to be "mama carry him" for "born". Clearly "fri" is "free". I know that "na" is "and". "i" is the predicate marker, and not a word, per se.

It seems to be that the vocab of Tok Pisin is adequate enough for the Book of Mormon. My copy in the language has no page numbers, but when I compare the size of the book with a copy in German, the TP version is only 2/3rds as thick -- with the same font and size, though the TP copy has thinner paper. 

18 hours ago, Calm said:

I wonder if any studies have been done on how small vocabularies affect quality of translation. 

I imagine that studies have been made. I asked this question using Bing's AI: 

How do languages with small vocabularies affect quality of translation?

And got this:

"Languages with small vocabularies can affect the quality of translation in several ways. For instance, a language with a limited vocabulary may not have words that correspond to certain concepts or ideas in another language. This can lead to inaccurate translations or translations that do not convey the intended meaning of the original text. Additionally, a language with a small vocabulary may have words that have multiple meanings, which can also lead to ambiguity in translation."

[Stargazer]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Oops

 

Oops?  

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Oops?  

Deleted a post. 

[Rain]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

The Glosbe translator (which I had never used before) produced what seemed like a very rough approximation of what the passage meant, up to the point of starting to repeat the same phrase over and over again. It was essentially useless.

Tok Pisin has a smallish vocabulary. It seems to take more words to express the same thoughts in English, or perhaps it's just complex concepts require more words. Here's a comparison I ran into in the Wikipedia article on the language. The first sentence of the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights in both languages (the article also shows the second sentence):

English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Tok Pisin: Yumi olgeta mama karim umi long stap fri na wankain long wei yumi lukim i gutpela na strepela tru.

Interesting isn't it? "Yumi olgeta" appears to correspond to "All human beings" as per "You and me altogether", and is also used for the third person plural "they." "Mama karim" seems to be "mama carry him" for "born". Clearly "fri" is "free". I know that "na" is "and". "i" is the predicate marker, and not a word, per se.

It seems to be that the vocab of Tok Pisin is adequate enough for the Book of Mormon. My copy in the language has no page numbers, but when I compare the size of the book with a copy in German, the TP version is only 2/3rds as thick -- with the same font and size, though the TP copy has thinner paper. 

I imagine that studies have been made. I asked this question using Bing's AI: 

How do languages with small vocabularies affect quality of translation?

And got this:

"Languages with small vocabularies can affect the quality of translation in several ways. For instance, a language with a limited vocabulary may not have words that correspond to certain concepts or ideas in another language. This can lead to inaccurate translations or translations that do not convey the intended meaning of the original text. Additionally, a language with a small vocabulary may have words that have multiple meanings, which can also lead to ambiguity in translation."

I looked tok pisan up after these last few posts because my inlaws served in Vanuatu. My husband and father-in-law traveled there later. It was interesting to hear them talk about the Bislama that was spoken.  Found this. Amazing about all the dialects.

"You maybe wondering what these languages are. Or where they come from. Google them! They are certainly from the region of Melanesia. Bislama belongs to Vanuatu-that is our national language. Pidgin is widely spoken by the Solomon Islanders and Tok Pisin for Papua New Guineans. Did you know that this region of Melanesia harbours the 10 percent of the worlds indigenous dialects? Interestingly, Vanuatu has 110 different dialects that the locals speak. Solomon Islanders have at least 70 tribal languages that are spoken. Papua New Guinea has over 700 different dialects with a population of over 7 million people in the country."

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

 

The eternal Buk/Buch= Birch/Beech tree from which plates would be cut, or the bark would be used, to make "BOOKS".