Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Member |
Anytime I read articles about North Korea it always seems like they release some wacky statement in English full of run on sentences. Like this one below I just pulled from Reuters: "In the hearts of artillerymen ... there was burning desire to mercilessly retaliate against the warmongers going ahead with their joint war exercises," KCNA said. "He (Kim) ordered the KPA Strategic Force to keep highly alert as required by the grim situation in which an actual war may break out any time, and get fully ready to promptly move, take positions and strike so that it can open fire to annihilate the enemies." My question is - is this how Korean sentence structure actually works? Are they just taking something that makes sense to them and doing a direct translation to English? Or would this sound just as wacky in Korean as it does in English? | ||
|
eh-TEE-oh-clez |
Probably a little bit of both. Vietnamese is similar. If I'm at home and talking to my parents, it's very simple syntax and vocabulary. I can understand almost all the conversations that are going on among my parents friends. But I can't understand the news, or when anyone gives a speech. I can't understand the Priest when I go to the Vietnamese language mass either. I use the comparison that "formal Vietnamese" is like Americans using Shakespearean English for all of our formal interactions. Yes, it's technically English. Yes, many of the same words are there, but there are some syntax and word choice differences between common English and Shakespearean English. So, I bet the syntax and vocabulary has been gussied up for the official Korean statement, and then it sounds even wackier because of the translation to English. | |||
|
Objectively Reasonable |
I suspect anything inspired by Li'l Kim or the DPRK "press" sounds bat-shit crazy no matter what language it's in. | |||
|
Coin Sniper |
I'm pretty sure that is written well ahead of time and they're just reading cue cards. Probably while looking down the barrel of gun to assure they don't make a mistake. Pronoun: His Royal Highness and benevolent Majesty of all he surveys 343 - Never Forget Its better to be Pavlov's dog than Schrodinger's cat There are three types of mistakes; Those you learn from, those you suffer from, and those you don't survive. | |||
|
Member |
Kimbonics. It happens when everyone is afraid to say, "That's wrong." _______________________________ NRA Life Member NRA Certified Range Safety Officer | |||
|
| Res ipsa loquitur |
Korean is one of the most difficult languages for a native English speaker to learn to speak (the written language, in contrast, is quite easy to learn). When you take the difficulty of the language, the cultural differences between the US and Asia, and couple that with the "Hermit Kindgom" mentality, you get your weird translations IMO. __________________________ | |||
|
Corgis Rock |
Watched Nat Geo's "Inside North Korea" last night. A foreign doctor was doing cateract surgery (one eye, 1000 people, 10 days) When the bandages were removed the first thing they saw were photos of the Kim's. No thanks to the doctor, only to "Great General." The team was almost kicked out when their photographer lay on the ground to get a photo of a Kim stature. This country has been ruled by the Kims and they have built a massive cult of personality around themselves. There is no outside news, do questions permitted. The labor camps hold thousands, and their families, forever. Yes, they do speak and think that way. There was a video run on state media that showed America. The stuff was lifted from some of our hurricane damage. Instead of coffee we drank water melted from snow. For us it's a joke. For the North Koreans, its deadly serious. “ The work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation is slow, laborious and dull. | |||
|
Lost |
I don't know Korean but I know that it uses the same grammatical structure as Japanese, and yes you do tend to build ultra huge sentences with long dependent clauses within clauses before you finally get to the actual subject/topic-marker-verb. | |||
|
| His diet consists of black coffee, and sarcasm.  |
 Why is it that every picture you see like this, everybody is taking notes? I'd hate to be the guy that forgot his notebook. | |||
|
| Member |
That makes sense. And egregore, you cracked me up this morning. Thank you. | |||
|
| stupid beyond all belief  |
I have been wanting to learn korean and vietnamese. Need to hit up duolingo again.... Also, all i could think of was this when you posted about mass in vietnamese mixed with the OPs post on Korea.  What man is a man that does not make the world better. -Balian of Ibelin Only boring people get bored. - Ruth Burke | |||
|
| Freethinker |
Some of that sounds like typical Asian Communist poster or slogan propaganda speech. We don’t hear much out of Vietnam or China these days, but at one time long tirades of the sort that consisted of “All workers and peasants eagerly unite in the righteous struggle against running dog lackeys of oppressive American imperialism” coupled with a string of other nouns and adjectives was common for both regimes. I think that sometimes the translations also affect how such phrases come across. The original might have had one word that referred to both peasants and workers or to “eagerly unite,” but which do not have corresponding single word equivalents in English Although I’m no expert on the Korean language, I did study it and don’t recall such run-on sentences being the norm for ordinary speech. ► 6.4/93.6 “Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.” — Plato | |||
|
| Member |
Only one fat guy in all of North Korea! Jim | |||
|
| Member |
This is a good point and would explain a lot of the weirdness if they just have guys in a room trying to do direct translation rather than creating a statement in English. I know some of the very high up people go to school in the West, but most of the propagandists probably don't learn their English that way. | |||
|
| Doveryai, no proveryai.  |
I got have to say +1 on this one.  As to the OP, it is just bad/poor translation.
.)))*"((((((( *¨*•.¸¸❤¸¸.•*¨*•♫.♥.♫ •*¨*•.¸¸❤¸¸.•*¨*•♫.♥.♫ •*¨*•.¸¸❤¸¸.•*¨*•♫.♥.♫ •*¨*•.¸¸❤¸¸.•* >>> o <<< .\___~___/ Get some, then get some more ... ST10 Success in handgun marksmanship is about operating the pistol, not hitting the target. - Bruce Gray Knowledge is power, ONLY when you share it. - Me NRA Life Member | |||
|
| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
In North Korea, he isn't just their political leader, but he's supposed the be the chief executive of everything. So, he (and the dictators before him), will visit all the factories and give suggested improvements on how everything is supposed to be run. Everyone else dutifully takes notes. He may not know a thing about cheese making, submarines, or computers, but he's going to tell people how to do their jobs in any case. | |||
|
Web Clavin Extraordinaire |
Not to be pedantic, but the sentences as quoted in the OP are not run on sentences in English. One has a few extra phrases, the second is compound-complex and perhaps a tad long, but neither is a run on. ---------------------------- Chuck Norris put the laughter in "manslaughter" Educating the youth of America, one declension at a time. | |||
|
| Member |
So he's a lib? | |||
|
Striker in waiting |
You jest, but communist dictatorship is the natural endgame of what we call liberalism/progressivism these days. -Rob I predict that there will be many suggestions and statements about the law made here, and some of them will be spectacularly wrong. - jhe888 A=A | |||
|
| Member |
(Communist) North Korean propaganda tends to use flowery, wordy statements. This is even evident in North Korea's official name: People's (not really) Democratic Republic of Korea. This results from the propaganda motive, not from anything inherent in the language. South Korean press releases are more normal in wordiness. Sentence structure is different from English, but no more wordy. Also, North Korean and South Korean culture and language have diverged since they split more than 50 years ago. Basic conversation can be understood across the divide, but it will sound weird and some modern words will have different roots. | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
© SIGforum 2024