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From: cohen.izzy on 17 Dec 2005 19:04 Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote: > I believe that regardless of the languages, people have trouble > with idioms when going from one language to another. That's because the idiom itself is a target language-ification of a foreign source-language expression. For example: "(he has) an axe to grind" is the transliteration of a German phrase: "Acht(ung) Grund" meaning "pay attention/beware/ be aware + reason/basis/grounds". Beweggrund = "motive". This phrase is said when someone has an ulterior motive. The large majority of English idioms (Type 1) result from the direct transliteration of a foreign phrase into common English words (such as cats, dogs, sacks, bags). The foreign phrase is usually "plain text" (Type 1a) but is sometimes a metaphor (Type 1b). "Kick the bucket" is probably an example of Type 1b. Using 3 for the Semitic letter aiyin at a time when the aiyin had a velar G/K-sound as in 3aZa = Gaza, Semitic 3aGaV B'3a:DeN means "make (physical) love in Paradise". This euphemism for dying transliterates as KicK BucKeT. A minority of English idioms (Type 2) are the translation (not transliteration) of a Type 1 idiom in a foreign language. The foreign idiom may be a transliteration of (pun on) a phrase in the same foreign language (Type 2a) or another foreign language (Type 2b). The most famous Type 2a example may be the idiiom "(escape by) the skin of my teeth". This is a translation of the Hebrew in biblical Job 19:20 where (again giving the aiyin a G/K-sound) Job says: B'3oR SHiNai, literally "by the skin of my teeth". This is a pun on the Hebrew word B'QoSHi, which means "barely, hardly, with difficulty". An example of Type 2b is "count sheep !" to go to sleep. Using @ for the Hebrew letter aleph, this is a translation of the Hebrew pun S'PoR TZo@N (literally, count sheep !) on the Latin phrase "sopor sond" (sleep soundly/deeply). Compare English soporific, a substance that induces sleep. For more examples, do a Google search on < idioms Hebrew "izzy cohen" > ciao, Israel "izzy" Cohen
From: Lee Sau Dan on 18 Dec 2005 00:38 >>>>> "blmblm" == blmblm <blmblm(a)myrealbox.com> writes: blmblm> Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but you sound a bit defensive blmblm> here, so -- I don't mean this as a put-down of non-native blmblm> speakers. It's just that in my experience there's a class blmblm> of "mistakes" -- call them "unidiomatic usage" -- that are blmblm> commonly made by people who learn a language as adults, blmblm> but rarely if ever made by people who learn the same blmblm> language as children. Can you give any examples for English? blmblm> The examples I've noticed: People whose native language is blmblm> Russian or Chinese often are shaky about articles. At blmblm> least one person I know whose native language is Chinese blmblm> has trouble with singular/plural, and he claims it's blmblm> because Chinese doesn't really make that distinction. blmblm> (You'll be able to confirm whether I'm remembering this blmblm> right.) I think he also has trouble with verb tenses, blmblm> which you mention later. And how come I don't have such problems NOW? blmblm> In English, what I've noticed is that people whose first blmblm> language doesn't have articles ("a", "an", "the") really blmblm> have no idea how to use them >> Then, I should have no idea of how to use them, either. My >> mother tongue has no articles. My mother tongue even doesn't >> distinguish singular from plural. And it doesn't modify verbs >> depending on whether an action takes place at present, or took >> place in the past. blmblm> Okay, I made a mistake not saying "most people" or "many blmblm> people" -- clearly you're an exception. But I think "many blmblm> or most" is true. Most people in Hong Kong speak Cantonese (which has no articles at all) all the time but learnt English in school. They don't seem to have too much problems using the articles. And many of them can handle tense and plural marker pretty well -- mistakes are only occasional. blmblm> Native speakers "just know" when to use these little blmblm> words. >> They have to learn it. blmblm> Sure. But they don't learn it by studying rules. I'm blmblm> fairly sure about this: I think I also use articles blmblm> properly, but I certainly don't have in my head a list of blmblm> explicit rules about when to use them -- the right usage blmblm> just "sounds right" to me. I think this is how childhood blmblm> language acquisition works -- whatever usage you hear a blmblm> lot as a child comes to "sound right". So there's some blmblm> kind of mental model in the back of the brain (built by blmblm> some process that's outside the person's conscious blmblm> awareness or maybe control), but it's not a set of blmblm> explicit rules. When I hear people talk about rules for blmblm> when to use articles, they seem like contrived attempts to blmblm> turn this mental model into a checklist. I learnt English as a foreign language. And after having read a lot of English books, there are also sentences and usages that "sound right" and others that "sound wrong". That's just the _linguistic sense_ that has developed in my brain. No need to resort to prescriptive rules to tell whether an article should be used here, or the subjective should be used there. Just a sense. I can tell you such linguistic sense can be learnt -- even as an adult. (That's why some people advocate immersion teaching. You can only develop that linguistic sense of a language after extensive exposure.) Of course, when I read a sentence composed by a classmate and found it wrong, I could just tell him it's wrong without giving him a comprehensible reason. Just that "I feel it wrong" or "that 'sounds' incorrect" won't be satisfactory. Further, I have to let him know why my suggested corrections would "sound right". In this case, my knowledge of the grammar rules and terminologies helps. It complements my linguistic sense and enables me to "explain" to the classmate why that sentence was wrong. (This is why I think native speakers aren't automatically good language teachers. They lack a devise for them to 'explain' to their students _how_ their native language works. The linguistic sense in their brain is a subconcious knowledge, and cannot be used to 'explain' things. They can play an advisory role, though.) blmblm> I had this feeling when I was studying Spanish, about the blmblm> subjunctive -- native speakers "just knew" when to use it, >> English has also a subjunctive. You just aren't aware of it. >> If only the English speakers would call the subjective >> "subjective", rather than something like "unreal past tense". >> Would they? Could they? blmblm> Careful. I am indeed aware that English has a subjunctive blmblm> mood (I think the grammar people call it mood rather than blmblm> a tense). But it's not used very much -- not nearly as blmblm> much as Spanish uses its subjunctive, if I remember right. The Western Indoeuropean languages mixes the two thing: tense and mood (and also temporal aspect) together. Tense and mood are often not expressed via *mutually orthogonal* means. That makes the languages even more complicated. -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
From: Lee Sau Dan on 18 Dec 2005 00:41 >>>>> "blmblm" == blmblm <blmblm(a)myrealbox.com> writes: blmblm> People whose first language is German seem to say "since blmblm> several years [ this has been happening ]," where a native blmblm> speaker would say "for several years." And they say "That man is big" instead of "that man is tall". I don't think this is more a problem with their seriousness in learning and speaking *correct* English. i.e. a matter of attitude. -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
From: Lee Sau Dan on 18 Dec 2005 00:44 >>>>> "Peter" == Peter T Breuer <ptb(a)oboe.it.uc3m.es> writes: >> People whose first language is German seem to say "since >> several years [ this has been happening ]," where a native >> speaker would say "for several years." Peter> That's indeed german usage. The "seit" ("since") fixes the Peter> startpoint for the rest of the clause. The problem is although most Germans know that "seit"->"since", seldom of them know also that "seit"->"for" in that particular case. So, they blindly replace their "seit" with "since" in all cases, leading to the mistake. And since this mistake is made so often by their fellows, they don't feel it's wrong. Another common German-made mistake is saying "I am big/small" instead of "I am tall/short". Again, this mistake spreads among them like a plague, because their fellows feel it's 100% OK to say it that way. -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
From: Lee Sau Dan on 18 Dec 2005 00:53
>>>>> "blmblm" == blmblm <blmblm(a)myrealbox.com> writes: blmblm> This all matches my recollections of things I've read blmblm> about language acquisition in children. I'm especially blmblm> intrigued by the claims that if you don't learn as a child blmblm> to hear a distinction between two sounds, it may not be blmblm> possible to correct this later. That's claim is certainly wrong. And it is exploited by those adults who are too lazy to learn a new language. For me, the distinction between the German "ch" sound (as in "acht") and the "k" sound does not exist in my native language. But I don't have problems distinguishing them when I learnt German, and I have no problem pronouncing them. Another example: at first, I couldn't distinguish German "toll" from "*toi". These both sounded like the English word "toy" to me. But through careful observation and imitation, I have now "adjusted my ears" and I can tell them apart and reproduce them without problems. I learnt German at 28. -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee |