NoSuchPlace comments on Open Thread: March 4 - 10 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (391)
Translating the article Entropy, and Short Codes, there is a part where Eliezer writes about how words for categories are created, and (if I understand that correctly) the most frequently used categories are likely to get the shortest words.
The specific examples are: "furniture", "chair", "recliner". The shortest one is "chair", because that one is most frequently used in speech. Word "recliner" is too specific, it refers to a rare set of objects, so people will use it rarely. On the other hand, "furniture" is too general; people will usually want to be more specific than that, so people will use this word also rarely.
Unfortunately, this example does not work completely well in Slovak translation. I am curious about other languages. Please give me examples, and also the number of syllables (which is sometimes not completely obvious for those who don't speak the language). Use the same order of words (from most general to most narrow) as in the English example. Here are the data I already have:
English: furniture (3), chair (1), recliner (3)
Slovak: nábytok (3), stolička (3), sklápacie kreslo (5)
German: Möbel (2) Stuhl (1) Liege (2)