The things you learn: Teich vs. See

[pne]

Apparently, the difference between a "Teich" and a "See" (masculine) in German is that a "Teich" is man-made.

That's not something I think I ever knew; I think I made a distinction more along the lines of English "pond" vs. "lake", i.e. purely by size rather than by origin.

I also didn't know that a "Tümpel" is characterised by drying out occasionally rather than carrying water all the time; for me, it was also merely a word for a small body of standing water. (And part of my passive vocabulary, at that.) Then there are also "Weiher", which is even less familiar a word to me.

Comments

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Tümpel

Does it have an English cognate? For me, a standing body of water that dries out occasionally is a billabong in English, but is even more specifically a body of water formed as a cutoff from a river or stream.

(Sorry, I just find these finely differentiated lexical sets fascinating.)

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I understand all these words in the same way as you. Perhaps the question of artificiality is what distinguishes "See" and "Teich" in some more technical jargon but I find it hard to believe that it's supposed to be the everyday meanings of those words. I can't imagine anyone talking about a small pond as a "See", just because it is natural.

still bodies of water in German

[pne.livejournal.com]

Does ["Tümpel"] have an English cognate?

I don't know.

a body of water formed as a cutoff from a river or stream.

Apparently, that's an "Altwasser" -- also a word I had never heard of before. (Or "Altarm".) Literally, "oldwater" and "oldarm" (as opposed to "old water" in the "blackbird" vs. "black bird" sense).

(Sorry, I just find these finely differentiated lexical sets fascinating.)

According to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stillgewässer:

- a "See" (cognate-wise "sea", but better translated as "lake") is deep enough that there are temperature layers which get mixed up only a couple of times a year. They're usually at least 8-10 m deep. Plants grow only near the edge.
- a "Flachgewässer" ("shallow body-of-water") is shallower than that, and the water gets mixed up frequently, sometimes even daily. Swimming plants can, therefore, have their roots reaching down to the bottom of the lake and can, theoretically, occupy the entire surface of the body of water. Flachgewässer are further sub-classified into:
- "Weiher", which are Flachwasserseen ("shallow-water seas") which always have water. Very big ones are also called Flachseen ("shallow seas").
- "Tümpel" are shallow bodies of water which periodically dry up and typically have a very strongly(?) changing level of water. They can be of natural or man-made origin. A "Salzlacke" (salt "lacke") is a special case of a "Tümpel". [Apparently, bodies of water called that (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salzlacke) only occur in a small area in Austria.]
- a "Lache" ("lake"), "Lake" ("lake"), or "Pfütze" ("puddle") carry water only episodically. [I associate "Lache" with a puddle of blood, or perhaps with a spill. I don't know the word "Lake" except in the combination "Salzlake" - salt "Lake" - which is a kind of salt-in-water solution used to conserve food: brine?. "Pfütze" is the normal word for "puddle", and I associate it only with very small bodies of water made by rainfall or, perhaps, spillage, which dry up fairly quickly.]
- a "Teich" ("pond"?) is a man-made body of water whose water level can be regulated artificially, so that it can also be drained completely.
- a "Söll" (never heard of that word) is a Weiher or Tümpel that was created from former Toteis ("dead ice") during an Ice Age.
- an "Altarm" or "Altwasser" are meanders which have lost their connection to the original river.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Exactly. If you've read much cognitive linguistics, you know that looking for the minimal "necessary and sufficient" criteria distinguishing two categories is a fallacy when applied to natural language. Prototype theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory) argues that speakers have a mental ideal tied to the word Teich which includes among its features both modest size and artificiality. The farther a real life example diverges from that ideal, the less likely they are to use the word "Teich" and the more likely they are to choose another, such as "See". Scientists may shoehorn these terms into the system of classical categories inherited from Aristotle for their own technical purposes, but that has no bearing on general usage.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The Grimms argue for a Romance etymology of Tümpel, citing such forms as Provençal toumpel and Italian tonfano. This might help explain why it appears only in Austrian placenames.

The American English equivalent of Altwasser is oxbow (lake). These are extremely common where I'm from (the Mississippi Basin) and can be quite large, so I don't think of these as prone to periodic drying out.

[pne.livejournal.com]

dewp linked to "bayou", which appears to be a special case of an oxbow lake.

[pne.livejournal.com]

By the way, it's interesting to compare ubykhlives's thoughts on what "billabong" means with what enwp and dewp say -- enwp focuses on the "oxbow lake" criterion, dewp on the "dries out periodically" one, so that it looks as if the two articles are describing completely different things.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

To me, "bayous" are things which only exist in Louisiana. They aren't necessarily oxbows, though, because the term is also applied to slow-moving meanders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meander) in a braided stream.

(Looking at the German version of that article, I'm pleased to note that your language has a term for the island formed by an oxbow loop: Umlaufberg.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

And I learned a third definition: That a billabong is a watercourse the periodically dries out.

[eva]

Apparently, the difference between a "Teich" and a "See" (masculine) in German is that a "Teich" is man-made.

Hm, that's new to me, too. I, probably like most native speakers, define these two things by size - although a small, natural body of water would be more of a Tümpel than a Teich. But in any case, man-made bodies of water can be "Seen"; just think of of all the "Stauseen" there are. I don't know any other word to call these, certainly none which contains "Teich".

Re: still bodies of water in German

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

a "Teich" ("pond"?) is a man-made body of water whose water level can be regulated artificially, so that it can also be drained completely.

That sounds like "reservoir" to me. That's what we call those in California, anyway. But possibly that only fits if the intention is to store water for use (as it invariably is out here, where we get no precipitation from May to October).

(deleted and reposted for bizarre typos)

[conuly]

I wouldn't call it a billabong, because that seems such a marked Australian word. Unless it's in Australia, I'd call it "a lake that's more like a puddle" or something like that.

Re: still bodies of water in German

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this!

a "Teich" ("pond"?) is a man-made body of water whose water level can be regulated artificially, so that it can also be drained completely.

In English I would use the word pool. Pool can however also be used for what you say German would refer to as Pfütze or, in your idiolect, Lache (a puddle of blood is almost always referred to as a "pool" in English).

an "Altarm" or "Altwasser" are meanders which have lost their connection to the original river.

English also has oxbow. A billabong is formed slightly differently, being comprised of a section of a river cut off by drying out rather than by the meandering process. Billabongs are usually refilled each year when the wet season allows the river to begin flowing again.

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call it a billabong, because that seems such a marked Australian word.

Oh, I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that's the word I would use, because I happen to be a native Australian English speaker (and a resident of Australia as well). If I ever personally came across something that a German-speaker would call Tümpel, it's very probable that it would be a billabong.

[conuly]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to hear an Australian use the word to describe something outside of Australia! And you're in the country, too.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that. Sounds a bit like Plato's concept of "ideas".

Perhaps this is an explanation for why I've always found learning vocabulary with a monolingual dictionary in foreign languages terrible even though my teachers always recommended using those dictionaries because they are supposed to allow you to directly think in a foreign language. But the definitions never really stuck with me, so I tried to learn them by heart and to check whether all their criteria were met in the object I was talking/writing about. I later gave up that method and went back to learning the German translations.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I believe it's also Lakoff who makes the point that the typical method of writing dictionary definitions is utterly misguided, since they always go up levels of abstraction (e.g. "Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye[.]", "The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family Rosaceae.") when they should remain at the same level or go down (e.g. "Red is the colour of ripe apples, fresh blood, and stop signs", "Apples are crisp fruits with red skins and white flesh that grow on trees"). Again, this is due to a conflict between the classical system of categories, which insists on "precise" definitions bounded by the minimal numbers of "necessary and sufficient" criteria, and the cognitive system, which is embodied, and based on gestalt perception and interaction.