Well, you know you can get really "high" on beer, and it's fun to pull one "over" on people on April Fools' Day. Words change meaning over time. It is the nature of language. The study of linguistics is too complex to go into any depth online. Entire college degrees are based on the subject. There is the additional problem of dealing with colloquial speech which will not translate at all as word for word. For example if you were to say Obama was "behind the eight ball", it would be wrong to translate that in a culture that has no concept of pool or of that colloquial phrase. In Irish Gaelic you would say "Dia Duit" to say hello, which literally means "God at you". Then there is "nil splanc agat" or "he has no spark", the meaning of which is probably clear. Then there is of course "uisce beatha" or "fire water" or in English "whiskey". Every language has literally thousands of these little gotcha combinations. Brian On Wed, April 15, 2009 2:37 pm, JK wrote: > I'm afraid I don't understand how wherewithall relates to this. > > If you gave me another example of where über is used within a word and > the meaning is changed, that would be helpful. > > Thank you for the Thode suggestion, I'll check into it > > JK > > D.L. MacLaughlan-Dumes wrote: >> On Apr 15, 2009, at 12:15 PM, JK wrote: >> >>> I'm not sure why I'm getting a different result this time, but the >>> engine at http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt >>> now gives me "opposite" for gegenüber >>> >>> But it still gives me approximately for gegen and over for über. >> >> That's because the compound word now has a different combined meaning >> not found in the two root words. This happens in English too (which >> is Germanic language after all), e.g. "wherewithall". >> >>> This doesn't make any sense that the two words joined have changed the >>> original meaning of both. >> >> The original meaning of the two separate words has not changed. >> Combining them together does change the meaning of the new combined >> word. It's a very common semantic phenomenon. >> >> If you plan to delve more deeply into German records and newspapers >> I'd recommend investing in a paperback German-English dictionary. Any >> good one will do; Ernest Thode's German-English Genealogical >> Dictiomnary has been particularly helpful to me. Online translators >> like Babelfish and Google's translation tools are not 100% reliable, >> as you've seen. >> >> Regards, >> D.L. MacLaughlan-Dumes >> http://sakionline.net/familypage >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message > >