[Funny] Funny Pictures! (Keep em clean, folks!)

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GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
I like Tea Party Jesus's message. Maybe it should be a real religion.

Anyway, more dumb youngsters:


Added at: 14:30
And here's a young scout going for his Forever Alone merit badge!

 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
That sounds like something I heard when taking Arabic 101 back in the university: because Arabic script does not usually show vowels, some phrases appear as identical lines of consonants. If memory serves, one such phrase was "A king rules a kingdom", or something of that effect, which in Arabic appears as 'mlk mlk mlk'. One documentary about Islam even suggested that because of this tendency in classical Arabic, some passages of the Qu'ran can be taken to mean multiple things: you just use different vowels between the consonants. I don't know if that's true, though...
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

I should point out, though, that if you read that story out loud to any Chinese speaker, they'd go "huh?"

Firstly, the form of writing they use in the story is archaic, similar to how Shakespearean English might be hard for someone in modern times to understand.

Secondly, because Chinese contains so many homophones, you often have to deduce the meaning of what you hear through context. And no one would be expecting a context of "guy who eats stone lions."
 
Terrik

Terrik

Maybe YOU aren't.

As a side note "Context is king" is the only reason I can somewhat understand chinese music lyrics. You don't realize how important tones are until they're gone.
 
Just Me

Just Me

North_Ranger said:
That sounds like something I heard when taking Arabic 101 back in the university: because Arabic script does not usually show vowels, some phrases appear as identical lines of consonants. If memory serves, one such phrase was "A king rules a kingdom", or something of that effect, which in Arabic appears as 'mlk mlk mlk'. One documentary about Islam even suggested that because of this tendency in classical Arabic, some passages of the Qu'ran can be taken to mean multiple things: you just use different vowels between the consonants. I don't know if that's true, though...
Click to expand...
I don't know the truth either, but I heard the same stuff (missing vowels, differnet meaning) about hebrew language and the bible.
 
Dirona

Dirona

Just Me said:
I don't know the truth either, but I heard the same stuff (missing vowels, differnet meaning) about hebrew language and the bible.
Click to expand...
<comparative religion geek>
In biblical Hebrew there are very few words that consist of the same consinant combinations (eg. pretty well all nouns and verbs are 3 'letters' and I can't think of any that are spelled exactly the same, but it's been a while so I'm a bit rusty on my vocab), so there are fewer issues with determining at least the general meaning. Verb tenses are often modified not only by the vowel pointing (added later, as you correctly pointed out), but also through addition to or modification of the existing consonants - that said, it is not always the case and there can be considerable complexity in determinng the verb tense. The lack of spaces bewteen words and no punctuation can be an issue if dealing with really old manuscripts and scraps; though there are some indicators in the text itself, a lot of that is (educated, usually) guesswork. Of course, you alsways have the standard translation issue where one word can have various differently nuanced meanings, but that I think is more a language issue in general and not limited to any one specific text or language.
</comparative religion geek>

Also, there has been a lack of teh funneh in here recently.
 
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