"No Word for Looting"?
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"No Word for Looting"?
1–10 of 20 posts
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#2I should probably double-check this with a Japanese first, but I think the words 「強盗」 and 「略奪」 don't mean "looting" in the sense of people snatching whatever they can from stores after a disaster. My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that 「強盗」 is forcible robbery, and 「略奪」 is the kind of looting an army or band of pirates would pull off during a raid.
Of course, words take on different (and sometimes surprising) meanings in different contexts, and I'm not a native speaker.
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#3I should probably double-check this with a Japanese first, but I think the words 「強盗」 and 「略奪」 don't mean "looting" in the sense of people snatching whatever they can from stores after a disaster. My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that 「強盗」 is forcible robbery, and 「略奪」 is the kind of looting an army or band of pirates would pull off during a raid. Of course, words take on different (and sometimes surprising)…
Yeah, and EDICT is pretty weak Japanese dictionary, IMHO. One-word translations lead to misunderstandings. Having gone to school in Japan, I found EDICT useless whereas a random paper dictionary or denshi-jisho would actually help me find the right word.
So anyway, I would not use EDICT as my sole source for "there is no word" or "the correct word is..." If I cared, I would probably read through the Japanese newspaper coverage until I found a word that seemed relevant in both dictionary definition and actual context. If there is no word for the phenomenon or it never happened, then you wouldn't be able to prove anything... but if there is a word and it did occur, then you would have something a little more solid than "I googled for Japanese dictionary and found some words in them."
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#4For maximum metareferentiality, read the comments - patio11's joke that Japanese has no word for over-preparation is cited as a similar linguistic confusion (I defended Patrick's honor, of course).
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#5It doesn't matter at all whether a language has a word for describing something. Any human language can describe all concepts that other human languages can describe.
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#6It doesn't matter at all whether a language has a word for describing something. Any human language can describe all concepts that other human languages can describe.
That's not true. There's lot of cases of particularly charged words in certain languages lacking a direct emotional analog in others. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3830521.stm for one example; Russian has many like this, too. There's even languages that aren't "complete" in the semantic sense; see: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_...
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#7Word or no Word, its part of the culture, atleast from my small sliver from way over here in the US.
Remember the scenes from 'Grave of the Fireflies'? During the fire-bombings, the boy, Sieta, would run and loot the homes of fleeing civilians. Powerful imagery indeed, but he was looting.
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#8I should probably double-check this with a Japanese first, but I think the words 「強盗」 and 「略奪」 don't mean "looting" in the sense of people snatching whatever they can from stores after a disaster. My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that 「強盗」 is forcible robbery, and 「略奪」 is the kind of looting an army or band of pirates would pull off during a raid. Of course, words take on different (and sometimes surprising)…
Yeah, and EDICT is pretty weak Japanese dictionary, IMHO. One-word translations lead to misunderstandings. Having gone to school in Japan, I found EDICT useless whereas a random paper dictionary or denshi-jisho would actually help me find the right word. So anyway, I would not use EDICT as my sole source for "there is no word" or "the correct word is..." If I cared, I would probably read through the Japanese newspape…
Do you feel the same way about Jisho (http://jisho.org/)? I generally find it handy.
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#9I should probably double-check this with a Japanese first, but I think the words 「強盗」 and 「略奪」 don't mean "looting" in the sense of people snatching whatever they can from stores after a disaster. My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that 「強盗」 is forcible robbery, and 「略奪」 is the kind of looting an army or band of pirates would pull off during a raid. Of course, words take on different (and sometimes surprising)…
Yeah, and EDICT is pretty weak Japanese dictionary, IMHO. One-word translations lead to misunderstandings. Having gone to school in Japan, I found EDICT useless whereas a random paper dictionary or denshi-jisho would actually help me find the right word. So anyway, I would not use EDICT as my sole source for "there is no word" or "the correct word is..." If I cared, I would probably read through the Japanese newspape…
I take issue with calling it "weak". EDICT is useful resource that needs sentence examples.
It certainly is far better than any e-dictionary I could find for French back when I was forced (by law) to attend French class. It definitely helped a lot when I was in college (and, admittedly, situations where I used the wrong word)
Re: "No Word for Looting"?
#10When I read the original article, I took it as a joke playing on the snowclone of "X doesn't have a word for Y".