[Multilingual Monday] The Repetition Game
You know, let's go ahead and try this little game, and see who I can get who'll even try it...
Those who've studied Chinese are probably familiar with the oft-taught Mandarin example for showing the differntiation of tones, 媽媽罵馬嗎?, Māma mà mǎ ma?, means, "Does mother curse the horse?" The only thing different here is the tone of the vowels, and otherwise everything is the same. Now this little example gave me an idea: in two given language, one may find that there are words that are near-identical in sound but differ in meaning -- take the vulgar English twat, and compare it to the Amharic word ጥዋት, t'wat, "morning". Obvously these two words do NOT share a meaning, but what if someone could string together the same word from multiple languages into a sentence much as the syllable "ma" is repeated in the example? Why, you would have this game then!
Here's the idea: Take a word -- it doesn't have to be an English word. My sample (and entry into this little game) initial word is "mata". The goal is to make a sentence (gramatically complete -- again, it doesn't have to follow English gammar) using my initial word (in this case, "mata") as many times as I can, in as many languages. To explain what I mean, here is my sentence:
またMarta del מטה ማታまでmata.
"Mata Marta del mata mata made mata," or "Again Marta below kills until morning." I use the word "mata" as it conveys meaning in Japanese, Hebrew, Amharic, and Spanish. I use "mata" four times, so that gives me four points. I used four languages, so that gives me another four points. In total, I get eight points. "Marta" does not get me points as it adds an extra consonant ("r").
SO WHAT COUNTS? If you have to stretch to get words to sound similar, they probably don't count. Sounds added INSIDE the initial word or removed from the inital word do not count. For example, "marta" is not a match to "mata" since the "r" sound is added; likewise, a match to "twat" will not be "toi" in French. Other changes like vowel length, stress, tone, and aspiration are allowed. That being said, this is for FUN so let's not TOO terribly anal here!! :: chuckle ::
By all means, give it a shot, and see how many points you can score!!
Those who've studied Chinese are probably familiar with the oft-taught Mandarin example for showing the differntiation of tones, 媽媽罵馬嗎?, Māma mà mǎ ma?, means, "Does mother curse the horse?" The only thing different here is the tone of the vowels, and otherwise everything is the same. Now this little example gave me an idea: in two given language, one may find that there are words that are near-identical in sound but differ in meaning -- take the vulgar English twat, and compare it to the Amharic word ጥዋት, t'wat, "morning". Obvously these two words do NOT share a meaning, but what if someone could string together the same word from multiple languages into a sentence much as the syllable "ma" is repeated in the example? Why, you would have this game then!
Here's the idea: Take a word -- it doesn't have to be an English word. My sample (and entry into this little game) initial word is "mata". The goal is to make a sentence (gramatically complete -- again, it doesn't have to follow English gammar) using my initial word (in this case, "mata") as many times as I can, in as many languages. To explain what I mean, here is my sentence:
またMarta del מטה ማታまでmata.
"Mata Marta del mata mata made mata," or "Again Marta below kills until morning." I use the word "mata" as it conveys meaning in Japanese, Hebrew, Amharic, and Spanish. I use "mata" four times, so that gives me four points. I used four languages, so that gives me another four points. In total, I get eight points. "Marta" does not get me points as it adds an extra consonant ("r").
SO WHAT COUNTS? If you have to stretch to get words to sound similar, they probably don't count. Sounds added INSIDE the initial word or removed from the inital word do not count. For example, "marta" is not a match to "mata" since the "r" sound is added; likewise, a match to "twat" will not be "toi" in French. Other changes like vowel length, stress, tone, and aspiration are allowed. That being said, this is for FUN so let's not TOO terribly anal here!! :: chuckle ::
By all means, give it a shot, and see how many points you can score!!