{"id":5638,"date":"2009-06-20T17:45:28","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T17:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2009\/06\/20\/more-babbling\/"},"modified":"2009-06-20T17:45:28","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T17:45:28","slug":"more-babbling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/20\/more-babbling\/","title":{"rendered":"More Babbling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Through the filter of time … a repost that may still be interesting to you from two years ago. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Admit it. Once you discovered Alta Vista’s Babel software you did this: You entered a phrase to translate from your native language to some other language, then translated it back again to see what would happen. Or, you translated it through several different languages.
\n
\nWhether you’ve done that or not, via Rosetta Rants,<\/a> we have this site<\/a>, which will translate your phrase through one of two pathways. One is via French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The other includes Japanese, Chinese and Korean.<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples of results, with the original, the Indo-European run, and the Indo-European-Asiatic (Asiatic is not a language group, I quickly add) run. I tried to pick phrases that might have meaning in an imagined historical context, in order to exploit deep connections among these langauges. Perhaps this is a way of building language phylogenies? (Linguists: I know, I know, this is stupid. Don’t send me nasty emails.) You’ll also note a bit of playing around with Broca’s area…
\n
\nThe cow is in the pasture.<\/strong>
\nthe cow is in the grass
\nWith the gram that the cow interests
\n
\nThe lion eats the lamb.<\/strong>
\nThe lion eats the lamb.
\nThe lion eats the lamb.<\/p>\n

The lamb is eaten by the lion.<\/strong>
\nThe lamb eats of the lion.
\nThe lamb eats the lion.
\n
\nHow many goats must I provide to marry your daughter?<\/strong>
\nI must make how many goats available, the end to marry to its son?
\nIf \u00c3\u00a3. 6\u00c3\u00a1. for the connection and the girl, one does not occur little
\nshutdowns?<\/p>\n

The river is wide, but my bow is strong.<\/strong>
\nThe river is extended, but my elbow is strong.
\nThe river is extended, but my elbow is strong.<\/p>\n

Was that a Neanderthal I saw you down at the club with last night?<\/strong>
\nWas Neanderthal, the one that I have yesterday from engolido with the
\nassociation with tonight?
\nLower it has east Neanderthal, sees yesterday with this association to
\nbe uniform era?<\/p>\n

Conclusions? 1) “The lion eats the lamb” vs. “The lamb is eaten by the lion” is a valid test for Broca’s aphasia; different languages use slighly different arrangements of brain parts. 2) The practice of goats as bride price is not universal; 3) Other than the small confusion of “bow” and “elbow” we now know that bow-size anxiety is a deeply organized human trait; and 4) The range of Neanderthals did not extend into eastern Asia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through the filter of time … a repost that may still be interesting to you from two years ago. Admit it. Once you discovered Alta Vista’s Babel software you did this: You entered a phrase to translate from your native language to some other language, then translated it back again to see what would happen. … Continue reading More Babbling<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[181],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-1sW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}