Seite 106 [106]
OCR
HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH Working equivalence is more often found between European languages than between European and Oriental languages. According to Wong (2007), the word aggressive which has working equivalents in most (or all) European languages, has no proper equivalent in Chinese. In some areas the words of language A may seem to be in a relationship of working equivalence with the words of language B, yet on closer inspection it appears that there is no equivalence, since the system of words is so different. Thus, e.g., it is practically impossible to maintain the distinction between Hungarian főiskolai and egyetemi tanársegéd (adjunktus, docens, tanár) in English. The denotative meanings of L1 and L2 words that usually function as dictionary equivalents may also be different, i.e., the boundaries of denotative meaning may not coincide. E.g., the English word animal, e.g., in popular usage, does not include fish, birds or insects. Chickens, for example, would not be referred to as animals, but as birds. The word cup usually corresponds to csésze, but paper cup corresponds to papirpohar. The word friend is the dictionary equivalent of Hungarian bardt, yet the boundaries of the underlying concepts are different: friend may refer to people that in Hungarian would be classed as ismerés or -térs: Ez ki? - Egyik osztálytársam. Who is s/he? — A friend from school, A large number of words exhibit partial eguivalence, mainly because the words of one language segment reality in a different way from the words of another. Typically, there are one to many and many to one correspondences between any two languages, e.g. hare/rabbit — nyúl; morning — hajnal, reggel, délelőtt; cheese — sajt, túró; casual — alkalmi, lezser; dismiss — elhesseget elbocsát, nem vesz róla tudomást; knuckle — ujjperec, ujjízület, etc. An example of partial eguivalence is shown in Table 8. Table 8. Different segmentation of reality Hungarian English German Ja tree Baum Ja wood Holz erdő wood; forest Wald Lexical voids. Some L2 words and phrases do not have eguivalents in L1 and vice versa. Ihese non-eguivalences may be accidental or may be due to cultural differences. In the case of lexical voids, the concept exists in both s 104 +
