Friday, 4 December 2015

What's the opposite of Indonesia? Poland!


I don't know the original source, but this came into my Facebook feed from Languages Around the Globe. And it's beautiful.

8 comments:

  1. Imagine if you're not paying attention and you raise one of these flags upside down. International incident. BTW: is the TAK=NO and TAK=YES trying to claim that in Indonesian "tak" means no and in Poland "tak" means yes? Seems improbable -- but no more improbable than the mirror-image flags.

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    1. Yes, that's what it's claiming, and google translate seems to agree (though it gives me 'not' for Indonesian).

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  2. For me, this reinforces my belief that not only do we all come from the same cradle of civilisation but also did speak the same language. This kind of diametrically opposite meaning could only have happened through sheer deliberation.
    Imagine this scenario - Man A and team are fed up with Man B and team that are all 'Tak' men to Man Z. So Man A decides to move away and ordains that 'Tak' is now the new no.

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    1. and then tribe A moved as far as they could on the same landmass\continent, ending up in Southeast Asia from Europe.

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  3. That's absolutely not how I would interpret it.

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  4. as an indonesian i might say, "tak" is not the only word we use to say No.

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  5. Plot twist: in Polish we also use word "No" for Yes, a confirmation (though less often than "Tak")

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