Comments on: Above taker

By: kragil

kragil — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 11:13:44 +0000

Me again,

in German “übernehmen” can mean “to acquire/ absorb”, like Oracle did Sun.

By: Bart

Bart — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:35:04 +0000

English also has ‘abovetaker’ but it is called overtaker. And it doesn’t mean entrepreneur of course.

By: buzz

buzz — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:34:08 +0000

In Chinese?entrepreneur is ????”?”have two part?and the “?(human,people)” is on the above? Maybe this is an answer.

By: vespas

vespas — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:04:03 +0000

doesn’t undertaker mean funeral director?

btw in greek we use ?????????????? (epihirimatias) from ??? (on/above) and ???? (hand) so we are almost there

By: Martijn Faassen

Martijn Faassen — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:35:14 +0000

Not surprisingly given the relatedness of the languages, “ondernemer” in Dutch is like “Unternehmer” in German.

English of course has “undertaking”.

“onder” (like “unter”) can indeed mean “among” in Dutch as well though that definitely not be the first meaning one would think of. It pops up in phrases like “life among the natives” and such.

Which original meaning the “onder” in “ondernemen” (“to undertake”) refers to I don’t know.

By: balint

balint — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:20:19 +0000

According to the Hungarian Etimology Dictionary (ISBN 963 7094 01 6), in Hungarian, “vállalkozó” (1883) is the only right word for entrepreneur.

It comes from the root váll (1372), meaning shoulder, so vállal (1603) literally stands for “take something on your shoulder” (vállal[koz(ik)] = he/she undertakes), …like Atlas with the Globe

By: Alpha

Alpha — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:02:37 +0000

In Bulgarian, the word is “???????????”, which literary means “before taker”.

By: Eitan

Eitan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:34:47 +0000

So is a between-taker a middle-man?

By: Priit Laes

Priit Laes — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:14:00 +0000

Not much success with finding a language with “overtakers”, but in Estonian the literal translation of entrepreneur means “advance-” or “forth-taker”.

By: Andrew Pendleton

Andrew Pendleton — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:09:48 +0000

For what it’s worth, English has “overtake,” as well, which is roughly “above-take” (paralleling the “undertake” == “below-take” comparison).

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:31:07 +0000

Well, if you entreprendre well, you’ll hopefully surprendre people too, right?

By: Kragil

Kragil — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:51:48 +0000

No no, it’s still thought provoking and interesting.

Big-Gs new dict has more: http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=de|en&q=unter&hl=en

I guess German is frustratingly complex in certain cases ..
I just hope you still enjoy your time in Munich.

By: Nat Friedman

Nat Friedman — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:29:32 +0000

Oh, I didn’t realize that. That makes my post make no sense anymore.

By: Kragil

Kragil — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:25:50 +0000

Well, “unter” in German can mean “among” or “in between” too.

That’s my nitpick of today

By: Pádraig Brady

Pádraig Brady — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:19:10 +0000

Receivers can be considered as undertakers as well

By: mkie

mkie — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:17:42 +0000

The German “Unternehmer” is from the verb “unternehmen” (German for under-take, venture etc.).

By: Nat Friedman

Nat Friedman — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:06:15 +0000

Good point, English uses “under-take” as well.

By: jeff

jeff — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:02:12 +0000

In French, entreprendre is a verb, just like “to undertake” in English… Actually, if English did not borrow the word entrepreneur, I guess they should simply have said “undertaker”. It would have made sense to me. But that word probably already exists or doesn’t sound sophisticated enough

I’m not aware of a language that uses “overtaker” though… well maybe conquistador in Spanish