Random memory

[pne]

I remember when I was in Greece as a missionary and a French or Italian missionary would ask me what a certain English word meant and I'd reply with a synonym—for example, I remember explaining "cliff" with "precipice".

The Americans wondered why I was explaning a simple word with a complicated one, and I was amused at that :).

The reason is, of course, simple: the "complicated" words have a Romance origin, so they're likely to have a cognate in French or Italian.

(For a similar reason, one of them told me that he had a much easier time remembering "injection" than "shot"; he also liked to use words such as "facilitate" which aren't that common in spoken English IMO.)

This would probably be the case even more for German, which has fewer Romance-derived words than English; Romance loans, therefore, tend to be even more "educated" than in English, where a Romance word is often the common expression. For example, someone talking in German about a "Possibilität" would sound high-brow or pretentious, whereas "possibility" is a "normal" word in English. (The usual German equivalent is "Möglichkeit", which might be translated into English as comething like "canliness".)

On the other hand, compounds from Germanic morphemes sometimes sound funny to me as well—for example, the Dutch "hoeveelheid" for "quantity" amuses me, since I'd understand it as "wieviel-heit", which makes sense but just sounds… quaint somehow because of its simplicity and transparent derivation. Perhaps like a word a child would create. (German wouldn't usually use "Quantität", though, but has a separate word: "Menge".)

Comments

Re: synergy

[christine.livejournal.com]

Heh.. but it isn't only (or even primarily) a corporate word. I've heard it less in the the corporate context, and more in an interpersonal context. Again, this may be due to my professional choices, but I've only used synergy to mean the coming together of two people (i.e. social worker and client) or groups (agencies, community centers, what have you) to perform some task or provide a service that neither would be able to do alone.

I guess social workers just speak a slightly different language.

Re: synergy

[pne.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a good use of the word, to the best of my knowledge.

Yay people who use it in its intended meaning! I didn't know they existed. (But then, I've never had much to do with social work.)