[Mageia-dev] "Hear, hear" usage

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Oliver, *,

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Oliver Burger
<oliver.bgr at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 12. Januar 2012, 22:43:54 schrieb Florian Hubold:
>> > On 01/12/2012 04:17 PM, Johnny A. Solbu wrote:
>> >> As far as I understand, that is a common British thing to do when one
>> >> agree
>> >> with the current speaker.

Thanks for the explanation :-)

>> Well, directly translating this phrase into german, it has another meaning.
>> Used in colloquial language, it means something like ironically saying
>> "well, look at that" or "enough with this nonsense" but also in the form
>> Johnny used it.
> You must have a different dirct translation than me. Directly translating it
> into German makes no sense at all :D

It does make sense, as the exact same phrase "Hört, hört" exists in
German - but just like Florian I know the double-meaning that can both
mean full approval (as the English meaning), but is also used as "look
at that guy, he is deconstructing his own argumentation/he is making a
fool of himself/the topic".
The double-meaning probably is depending on geographical region. (like
for example "Matz" in regional dialect - I know it as a (positive)
term for a self-confident, boldfaced/fresh/cheeky girl, while just
50km westwards it is a rather harsh curse word for a "mean/angry
bitch")

> But you should never translate anything directly between languages...

Sure - but if you don't understand a phrase/saying, all you can do is
to directly translate it and see whether you can make sense of it. In
this case it was ambiguous (at least for me), as the tone of the
voice, the other sources of information were missing.
It's like the phrase "Der Lehrer sagt mein Vater ist ein Esel" -
without the missing punctuation this sentence can have two rather
different meanings. No problem when you hear it, but when you read it
like that you can only guess who called whom a donkey.

And that was my point - what works perfectly fine in real life, in
direct interaction - might not work as well when you only have text
written on screen - so thanks again for clearing up the dust from this
expression :-)

ciao
Christian