[Multilingual Monday] Literally

[aadroma]

I've had a lot on my mind because of my upcoming move this weekend, and thus this particular Multilingual Monday article.  Upon writing the last post about what was happening, I had a brain fart and had to look up the word "to move" in Hebrew, which I then caught when I saw "זז", zaz, listed, and went, "... wait, that's not right."  Of course it's

Comments

[theotherqpc]

i can't think of any contexts other than changing locations in which the Chinese word ban1 is used (though it could be used for objects as well as people).

[sfopanda]

Are you talking about strange English verbs as in the "nose run" and "feet smell" variety, which become absurd when translated literally into other languages?

[aadroma]

Well those too, but less obvious ones were more of what I had in mind (like "move", which one doesn't even think about being more idiomatic, usually).

[jawnbc]

Good luck with the move néné! En français ca veut dire «je me démeure»--I am moving over--or «je vais me démeurer» I'm gonna move over. Whereas «Je bouge» more accurately describes moving one's body to and fro--dancing most often.

«Bouge d'delà» therefore means "move that thang" or "work it!"
:)

[dr_tectonic]

Well, apparently, Ubyx is a more idiomatic language than most. Wikipedia sez: "I love you translates literally as I see you well; you please me is literally you cut my heart."

Which I bring up mostly as an excuse to mention Ubyx, because when I randomly ran across it, I immediately thought "ohmigod, Roger has GOT to learn this language!"

It has EIGHTY-THREE consonants and only TWO vowels!

It has quadripersonal verbs! (They have to case-match subject, direct object, dative object, and benefactive!)

Gender appears only in the second person!

There's a verb-prefix for indicating that something is done out of, into, or with regard to, a fire!

It's ergative, even!

It is the most awesomely weird language I have ever heard of.

(Although !Xóõ, which has 31 vowels and 77 consonants, most of which are clicks, is pretty crazy, too.)

P.S.: Hope your move goes well!

[muckefuck]

"I love you translates literally as "I see you well"

Still not as idiomatic as the usual Dutch expression, which is Ik hou van je, literally "I hold of you". I hold what? No idea.

[muckefuck]

One of my all-time favourite examples is a Spanish expression heard by my sister-in-law, vacunar la carpeta. These are both false friends; a carpeta is actually a notebook and vacunar is "vaccinate", not "vacuum". (Ironically, though, this may in the meantime have become an acceptable bit of computer jargon!)

She also reports being baffled in one of her Spanish literature classes in college because the other students were talking about two characters teniendo sexo. In Spanish, sexo is biological sex, so it's something that everyone has all the time. Tener sexo is not a euphemism for having sexual relations (except probably in Spanglish).

When I was in Germany, we used to translate literally between English and German just for laughs. "Hi!" become "Hoch!" and "Bye!" became "Einkauf!" I asked people "Wie ist es am hängen?" and one of my good friends loved to say, "Geh ein Kopf, mach mein Tag!"