GoogleTranslate and Dutch

[Laurence Horn]

On Feb 12, 2012, at 6:10 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:

> It's kuronbo or kurombo, with a long "o" at the end. 黂ã≠„åˇ .

No relation, I trust, to "Ay caramba!"

LH

>
> There was a thread on this: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa
>
> The word can also mean tanned person, however.
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA
>
> On Feb 12, 2012, at 2:33 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> Since users of Google Translate are able to make modifications to it
>> with greater ease than they can to Wikipedia, if I find a translation
>> that I know to be incomplete or incorrect, I don't hesitate to take
>> steps.
>>
>> Why complain? GT isn't the OED. It's meant to be only helpful, not definitive.
>>
>> BTW, cross-referencing among translations into languages other than
>> English can be helpful, unless you're monolingual in English, as can
>> googling the word.
>>
>> E.g., dekkids ago, I read in EBONY that _kurambo_ was the
>> Japanese-language equivalent of "nigger." Naturally, having grown up
>> in the United States, I had no reason to accept an assertion by some
>> random black dude about a language as exotic as Japanese as fact. Over
>> the years, I'd been unable to verify this in the usual lexical sources
>> or even on this listserv. When GT became available, it was no help.
>> So, I googled _kurambo_ and found out not only that this word is
>> indeed used to mean "nigger," but also that, in Japlish slang,
>> _(numba) ten_, in addition to meaning "the worst," means "Jew,"
>> punning on the fact that _ju_ [dZu:] is the Japanese word for "ten,"
>> in one of that language's counting systems. Back in the '60's, a white
>> acquaintance who'd been stationed in Japan in the Air Force told me
>> that this was the case, but, because of his own, over-the-top
>> anti-Semitism, I thought that he might well have just made that up
>> himself and then attributed it - or even taught it; youneverknow - to
>> the Japanese.
>>
>> So, if you GT _kurambo_, you will now find "nigger" as a translation,
>> based on my research.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org