Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 February 25

= February 25 =

"Da mache ich nicht mit!"
It's me once more... What would be an idiomatic translation (referring to an expression of refusal to participate in a venture)? Always grateful for your proposals--Hubon (talk) 04:43, 25 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Samuel Goldwyn would say "include me out", but I wouldn't recommend that other people use that expression, unless they know exactly what they're doing.... [[image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 06:26, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * So I guess count me out would be the proper version... Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:51, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Or "Don't include me!" if you wanted something less Americanesque. Alansplodge (talk) 10:14, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * "I'll have no part in this", although that is likely a somewhat higher register. I think "Count me out" is a good suggestion. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:41, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, it has the ring of a Victorian melodrama about it. This page suggests "Not my scene", which sounds like something out of the summer of love to my English ears.  Alansplodge (talk) 10:45, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The literal translation appears to be "do it without me". 81.147.142.155 (talk) 13:05, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Au contraire, I suggest the literal (= word for word) translation would be "It do I not with". --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:13, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yoda lives! Clarityfiend (talk) 23:54, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Da is more "there" than "it". --Trovatore (talk) 23:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * In this case "Da" is short for "Dabei". "Thereby I make not with" looks like something I might have heard in 5th grade more than once ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:15, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I've heard people split the dabei's and darum's, too, in addition to the verbs. "da wird mir schlecht von", "da mach ich nicht mit bei" etc. Not sure if it's a Northern thing or a ghetto thing, but I like it Asmrulz (talk) 02:07, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That is not the literal translation, that is a mistranslation. A literal translation recognises that "mache .... mit" is a form of the verh "mitmachen" = "take part", so it would be something like "It do not take part in it". (or "there"). --ColinFine (talk) 17:20, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Two points:


 * Da has many meanings.  The context will indicate the one being used in any particular sentence.
 * Looking in my German dictionary under mitmachen, the phrase is translated as both "that's not my scene" and "count me out".  It quotes another phrase, da kann ich nich mitmachen.   The translation given is "I can't go along with that."   Remove the auxiliary verb and you have "I am not going along with that", which is as literal as you are going to get. 81.151.101.90 (talk) 09:46, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks to all of you for your kind proposals! Now there would be another question of style I would like to ask for your opinion to [← Is this the right preposition here?]: "I couldn't find anything useful in this respect on the web." — Is this sentence correct in terms of the positions of its last constituents? It somehow sounds wrong to me...--Hubon (talk) 16:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
 * like to ask for your opinion of  or like to ask for your opinion on . Yes, I consider in this respect on the web good. There are other positions in the sentence where you could move in this respect or on the web to, but it is fine as you have it. —Stephen (talk) 16:47, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Ambonese - Amboyna
In Talk:Ailanthus, I raise a couple of questions about the derivation of the Ailanthus tree's name, but I think those questions would better be answered by someone familiar with the language: (1) Is Ambonese Malay the Ambonese language from which the word is derived? (2) Is "Amboyna" (the language mentioned in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica's Ailanthus article) the same as Ambonese Malay? For what it's worth, our Amboyna disambiguation page does not yet mention the language. Thanks. Peter Chastain  [¡habla!]  12:47, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * See here. See also Ambon in the same dictionaries. It seems Ambon, Amboina, Amboyna are just variants of the same name of the island. Ambonese is derived from the former, an allegedly more proper variant. Amboina, Amboyna seem to be archaic obsolete variants. Though as you can see it is possible the name of the plant is derived from some other Malay-Polinesian language from or around the island.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)