The article is written on the assumption that Google Translate is as good a reference as any when it comes to insults - which is very bold. Western culture is not so disparate and there are words for “geek” in French, mainly “intello” and which infact short for “intellectual”.
“Geek” was not translated, not because it has no translation, but because it is now commonly used in the French language, and I’d bet the reason is similar for other languages.
Anyway, well written article but based on a stupid assumption.
The crown prince thing is the official story but the more you look into it, the harder it gets to believe said story, hence the conspiracy theories. One of the rare cases where conspiracy theories may not be outlandish.
You know things are bad when the leader of 12,000 men tried to get one guy in order to surrender to him. Based on Bucha, I understand why they didn’t want to surrender to the Russians.
Revenge and justice are two separate things and only one of those brings humanity forward. The whataboutism is pretty dangerous when it comes to justifying the former.
Yeah, I think even the most fervent USSR hater should be able to acknowledge their heavy losses in WW2. They may not have won the whole war themselves or anything, but they did make many sacrifices for those battles.
I’d even go so far as to say that if one’s opinions were to lead one towards disrespecting their dead, who were just defending their homes, then one may have an unusually strong personal bias.
I’m insulted how little effort the author put into supporting his thesis.
“Streber” in German is a common insult if you’re good in school, and it often meant social death in class. Sure, geek and nerd have become commonplace and are used as German words now, but that’s also because if you are one your English is good enough and it’s just easier to use the short word from another language that pretty much all geeks and nerds use than to use the German one.
It has actually not really the negative connotation that the English word has, it feels more like a name for a subculture, like goth.
Geek and nerd had negative connotations when geeks and nerds were commonly poor, but then things shifted and, notably with the rise of the Information Age, being a geek and/or nerd turned into being useful in becoming wealthy. Now it is a compliment.
True of all insults, really. Same reason, for example, words with associations to slavery are considered insults. Or those related to the sale of sexual favours. The implication is that one is poor. Any words you can throw at someone who is rich will be something most people will want to wear as a badge of honour.
Chinese have similar words for “nerd”: “书呆子”, literally translated to “book doofus”. However, It is not used nearly as common as “geek” and “nerd” in English.
It also has a much thinner scope. It only refers to people who are too dogmatic about theoretical knowledge, yet lacks real world skills.
Same thing in (some variants of) Spanish. You have ñoño, someone who is always trying to outperform the others academically, usually it’s those who make a huge effort without seeing proportional results for it.
But we have very few insults for intellectual or smart people. Practically none I can think of.
oh no, a lot of the time, “book dufus” actually need to be well-versed in theoretical knowledge, I doubt “people asking stupid question at the end of the meeting” fit that description.
I’m talking about the people who get caught up on little details and hypotheticals which are irrelevant, just asking “what if” for the sake of it and wasting everyone’s time
it's interesting you narrow the definition like that, because i think that's really the original definition of nerd.. like if you asked someone in the 50's in the US, that's what they would have described.. someone who takes theory to anti-social extremes.. but like you said, it seems to cover a lot more now, or at least get used a lot more..
and i love how literal "book dufus" is, that's great
I think the way you translate Chinese characters into English loses level of sophistication of the characters. For example, “医院” is definitely more sophisticate than “health park”, despite character has these meanings.
“书呆子” really is as simple as it can get.
Also common items typically have more approachable names.
For example, “医院” is definitely more sophisticate than “health park”
such as the real characters being 醫院. you could spend a while dissecting (pun not intended) all of the characters that make up “medicine” and its rich etymology
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