[Multilingual Monday] The Partitive, Plus "Smartass"!

[aadroma]

It's a two-for-one today!

First up: the partitive case. Just what is this? I've first noticed this in Basque:

Ez dago libururik. "There are no books."
Badago lanik? "Is there any work?"

The suffix -ik (or -rik after a consonant) can translate to "any" in a positive sentence or as "none" in a negative sentence. Rather than having a separate

Comments

[gorkabear]

I can provide smartass translations to spanish and catalan for what's worth:

We distinguish two aspects. If you want positive connotions, although a litttle tongue-in-check, spaniards use "listillo" (from listo=smart) and espavilado (which is more a translation for "resourcefu"). In Catalan there's an exact translation "eixerit", but it's not common in our everyday language.

On the negative side, spaniards use the word "sabihondo". It's almost an insult and used mostly for people who think they know everything but in the end they do not. The catalan equivalent is "saberut"

[bitterlawngnome]

http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/7/lfg02chisarik.pdf

what do you mean by "smartass" though? someone who really is smart and doesn't shut up about it, or someone who isn't smart and doesn't shut up about it?

[aadroma]

Wow, that's fucking AWESOME. I kinda figured, if the partitive was in Finnish, that it would exist in Hungarian, and sure enough. Fascinating stuff!!! Thank you!

Hehehe, that's the problem with the translation -- how do YOU interpret "smartass"? In my experience it implies someone being belligerent with some sort of sarcasm.

[bitterlawngnome]

well there's "kluge" used ironically - someone who's clever but unwise

[muckefuck]

That's funny because contemporary German distinguishes between klug which means "wise" or "clever" and clever which means "clever" but in a somewhat pejorative sense--something like "savvy" or "sly" in English. It was often said Helmut Kohl, for instance, that he was not klug, but he was clever. (As anyone would have to be to survive in party politics for as long as he did.)

The closest German equivalent I can think of to "smartass" is Klugscheißer.