[Multilingual Monday] Incorrect Linguistic Assumptions
It's short and quick, but I'll admit: I've been busy trying to recover old files and almost forgot completely about the fact that today is Monday.
I had Hebrew class tonight, and we needed to translate the sentence, "My wallet was stolen." My wallet is easy enough -- הארנק שלי, haarnak sheli, "the wallet of mine". But then came "was stolen", and one student guessed היה גנב, haya ganav. That is to say, she used haya, "(it/she/he) was" and ganav, the participle (and present tense verb) form of "steal". Sadly, in this case, the sentence would more likely be parsed as, "My wallet was stealing", and came the lesson for today: do NOT try to use English logic in another language, like Hebrew. The correct translation in this case, then, would be הארנק שלי נגנב, haarnak sheli nignav, "My wallet was stolen," using the nif'al verb construction (which -- only sometimes -- makes a passive verb in Modern Hebrew).
Still, it's not uncommon from speakers of one language to assume its linguistic rules will work in another -- we've all been guilty of this at some point! --and thus you develop some linguistic stereotypes. A Japanese stereotype of an American speaker will usually have "私は", watashi wa, "I am" (and other pronouns) repeatedly in a sentence as several American learners of Japanese DO aassume that a needed pronoun in an English sentence must also be used in a Japanese sentence (and this isn't helped by textbooks for a learner of the language!). Slavic speakers of English may be stereotyped to have poor grasp on when to use articles since their native language lacks them -- either not using them at all, or overcompensating and using them all the time. Though my Hebrew teacher's English is generally fine, "Hebrew-isms" will still leak into his English, thus causing (for example) him to refer to the sides of a polygon as a "rib," reflecting the same word used for both "side (of a shape)" and "rib' in Hebrew, צֶלַע, tsla.
I'd love to hear what you guys have to say -- have you ever been caught trying to apply English rules to another language? What linguistic stereotypes have you come to notice?
I had Hebrew class tonight, and we needed to translate the sentence, "My wallet was stolen." My wallet is easy enough -- הארנק שלי, haarnak sheli, "the wallet of mine". But then came "was stolen", and one student guessed היה גנב, haya ganav. That is to say, she used haya, "(it/she/he) was" and ganav, the participle (and present tense verb) form of "steal". Sadly, in this case, the sentence would more likely be parsed as, "My wallet was stealing", and came the lesson for today: do NOT try to use English logic in another language, like Hebrew. The correct translation in this case, then, would be הארנק שלי נגנב, haarnak sheli nignav, "My wallet was stolen," using the nif'al verb construction (which -- only sometimes -- makes a passive verb in Modern Hebrew).
Still, it's not uncommon from speakers of one language to assume its linguistic rules will work in another -- we've all been guilty of this at some point! --and thus you develop some linguistic stereotypes. A Japanese stereotype of an American speaker will usually have "私は", watashi wa, "I am" (and other pronouns) repeatedly in a sentence as several American learners of Japanese DO aassume that a needed pronoun in an English sentence must also be used in a Japanese sentence (and this isn't helped by textbooks for a learner of the language!). Slavic speakers of English may be stereotyped to have poor grasp on when to use articles since their native language lacks them -- either not using them at all, or overcompensating and using them all the time. Though my Hebrew teacher's English is generally fine, "Hebrew-isms" will still leak into his English, thus causing (for example) him to refer to the sides of a polygon as a "rib," reflecting the same word used for both "side (of a shape)" and "rib' in Hebrew, צֶלַע, tsla.
I'd love to hear what you guys have to say -- have you ever been caught trying to apply English rules to another language? What linguistic stereotypes have you come to notice?