Two shirt for twenty dollar
April 16, 2007 10:38 AM
A question about languages.
Speakers of certain (non-English) languages often display certain idiosyncratic errors when they speak English. For example:
Chinese speakers often leave the "s" off plurals, in both spoken and written English ("two shirt for twenty dollar").
Russian speakers tend to omit articles ("it is nice car").
(Note, I'm not talking about the "What's-a your name-a" kind of thing that stereotypes Italians. I mean grammatical errors and foibles, rather than odd pronunciation.)
So the questions:
1. What is it that makes particular language speakers make particular errors? I'm guessing in the above examples that it's something to do with the way Russians use articles, and Chinese pluralise (though the lack of "s" doesn't seem to affect Italians, for example).
2. More examples, please.
3. What errors do English speakers typically make when speaking other languages?
Speakers of certain (non-English) languages often display certain idiosyncratic errors when they speak English. For example:
Chinese speakers often leave the "s" off plurals, in both spoken and written English ("two shirt for twenty dollar").
Russian speakers tend to omit articles ("it is nice car").
(Note, I'm not talking about the "What's-a your name-a" kind of thing that stereotypes Italians. I mean grammatical errors and foibles, rather than odd pronunciation.)
So the questions:
1. What is it that makes particular language speakers make particular errors? I'm guessing in the above examples that it's something to do with the way Russians use articles, and Chinese pluralise (though the lack of "s" doesn't seem to affect Italians, for example).
2. More examples, please.
3. What errors do English speakers typically make when speaking other languages?
What is it that makes particular language speakers make particular errors?
Grammatical differences between the person's native language and English.
And even the Italian "stereotype" you talk about comes from differences between the person's native language and English -- it's just that's pronunciation/word construction differences rather than grammatical differences.
posted by occhiblu at 10:59 AM on April 16, 2007
Grammatical differences between the person's native language and English.
And even the Italian "stereotype" you talk about comes from differences between the person's native language and English -- it's just that's pronunciation/word construction differences rather than grammatical differences.
posted by occhiblu at 10:59 AM on April 16, 2007
English speakers often get the genders wrong in other languages (there's even a few usernames in MetaFilter with this kind of mistake, like iguanapolitico. The iguana is a "she" an "politico" refers to male "politician/political subject."
posted by micayetoca at 11:00 AM on April 16, 2007
posted by micayetoca at 11:00 AM on April 16, 2007
What is it that makes particular language speakers make particular errors?
It's aspects of their native language's grammar/syntax surfacing in the translation. Pretty much what you've guessed.
More examples, please.
I've occasionally heard native-French English speakers use male/female pronouns for objects that don't have a gender in English. French nouns have genders and there are gender-specific articles, but English only has gender-specific pronouns. Thus resulting, sometimes, in "The table, she is nice" or similar odd phraseologies.
Also, I've heard native-French people say "my hairs" instead of "my hair", in reference to the stuff on top of their heads. Again because, in French, it's plural.
posted by CKmtl at 11:08 AM on April 16, 2007
It's aspects of their native language's grammar/syntax surfacing in the translation. Pretty much what you've guessed.
More examples, please.
I've occasionally heard native-French English speakers use male/female pronouns for objects that don't have a gender in English. French nouns have genders and there are gender-specific articles, but English only has gender-specific pronouns. Thus resulting, sometimes, in "The table, she is nice" or similar odd phraseologies.
Also, I've heard native-French people say "my hairs" instead of "my hair", in reference to the stuff on top of their heads. Again because, in French, it's plural.
posted by CKmtl at 11:08 AM on April 16, 2007
What is it that makes particular language speakers make particular errors? I'm guessing in the above examples that it's something to do with the way Russians use articles, and Chinese pluralise (though the lack of "s" doesn't seem to affect Italians, for example).
You seem to answer your own question. What else are you specifically asking? A matrix of what features each language have that others don't would be pretty large. Or are you looking more for something like "Slavic languages are unique in how they do/lack X, so new speakers will usually make a mistake when they do X?"
Likewise the mistakes English speakers make depend on the language they are trying to speak, of course. If they are speaking Romance languages they tend to mess up genders and also confuse verbs ser/estar (in Spanish) since they are covered by one verb in English. Also they tend to phrase things as [adjective][noun] instead of the [noun][adjective] which is the more natural word order in the Romance languages. And so on and so on...
posted by vacapinta at 11:10 AM on April 16, 2007
You seem to answer your own question. What else are you specifically asking? A matrix of what features each language have that others don't would be pretty large. Or are you looking more for something like "Slavic languages are unique in how they do/lack X, so new speakers will usually make a mistake when they do X?"
Likewise the mistakes English speakers make depend on the language they are trying to speak, of course. If they are speaking Romance languages they tend to mess up genders and also confuse verbs ser/estar (in Spanish) since they are covered by one verb in English. Also they tend to phrase things as [adjective][noun] instead of the [noun][adjective] which is the more natural word order in the Romance languages. And so on and so on...
posted by vacapinta at 11:10 AM on April 16, 2007
Americans who try to learn Japanese tend to be pedantic about making all their sentences complete, including all the parts of speech. In Japanese you generally leave parts out of sentences if they can be deduced from context, which is why many correct sentences consist only of single words. (That can happen in English, too, but only if it's an imperative. The rest of the time it's only in response to a direct query. Such is not the case in Japanese.)
Americans also tend to massively overuse pronouns in Japanese. (Not to mention using the wrong ones.)
Americans commonly have extreme difficulty with keigo, formality, in Japanese and often use inappropriate levels of formality. I have an American friend who works as a Japanese translator. He once lived in Japan. He's been married for 20 years to a Japanese woman, and they visit her family in Japan regularly. By any normal standard he would be considered fully fluent. But every time they go to Japan, he first spends a lot of time practicing his Japanese so that he doesn't accidentally talk like anime, or talk like a woman (i.e. his wife) -- which is different from how men talk. He always is scrupulously formal because it's always better to err on the side of formality. And despite all that, apparently his in-laws still laugh at his mistakes.
Even the Japanese have trouble with counters. Most foreigners thoroughly botch those routinely.
The use of "s" after a noun to form a plural is an example of what is known as "inflection". Not all languages are inflected, and people who grow up in non-inflected languages can have trouble with proper use of inflections. I don't know specifically about Chinese, but in Japanese there's no general-purpose mechanism for indicating plurals. It's usually implied by context. (There are some specific ways it can be done, such as the -tachi suffix indicating more than one person.)
[This is the point where Languagehat shows up and yells at me for playing on his lawn.]
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:11 AM on April 16, 2007
Americans also tend to massively overuse pronouns in Japanese. (Not to mention using the wrong ones.)
Americans commonly have extreme difficulty with keigo, formality, in Japanese and often use inappropriate levels of formality. I have an American friend who works as a Japanese translator. He once lived in Japan. He's been married for 20 years to a Japanese woman, and they visit her family in Japan regularly. By any normal standard he would be considered fully fluent. But every time they go to Japan, he first spends a lot of time practicing his Japanese so that he doesn't accidentally talk like anime, or talk like a woman (i.e. his wife) -- which is different from how men talk. He always is scrupulously formal because it's always better to err on the side of formality. And despite all that, apparently his in-laws still laugh at his mistakes.
Even the Japanese have trouble with counters. Most foreigners thoroughly botch those routinely.
The use of "s" after a noun to form a plural is an example of what is known as "inflection". Not all languages are inflected, and people who grow up in non-inflected languages can have trouble with proper use of inflections. I don't know specifically about Chinese, but in Japanese there's no general-purpose mechanism for indicating plurals. It's usually implied by context. (There are some specific ways it can be done, such as the -tachi suffix indicating more than one person.)
[This is the point where Languagehat shows up and yells at me for playing on his lawn.]
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:11 AM on April 16, 2007
About counters: there was a Japanese game show where contestants would be given the name of something and have to count some of them, which meant they had to remember the proper counter and know which of the number words to use. If they got it wrong they'd be roughed up by a couple of sumo wrestlers.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:17 AM on April 16, 2007
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:17 AM on April 16, 2007
I have quite a few foreign-born friends who say "thanks be to God" for something instead of "Thank God" because that's how it's worded in their language. And the ol' Yugoslavian ex used to always speak with little quirks such as "I'm tired like dog" instead of "as a dog." and "I don't feel for eating." instead of "I don't feel like eating." And of course my favorite was "My central hair is broke." instead of "My central air conditioning is broken." Yep, we had quite the Lucy/Ricky comedy routine going on.
Some arabic speakers will talk to you and say "yeah" before saying your name. Well, you think they're saying "yeah" but actually they're just forgetting that in English you don't have to say "ya" before all proper names as is done in Arabic.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:29 AM on April 16, 2007
Some arabic speakers will talk to you and say "yeah" before saying your name. Well, you think they're saying "yeah" but actually they're just forgetting that in English you don't have to say "ya" before all proper names as is done in Arabic.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:29 AM on April 16, 2007
One mistake that I know I often make when speaking Dutch (I'm a native English speaker) is that I always use certain superlatives according to the rules of English rather than of Dutch.
eg, in English you cannot say "beautifuller" or "difficultest"; you say of course "more beautiful" or "most difficult/hardest". In Dutch the best way to say "the most beautiful" is literally "the beautifullest", which feels wrong to me because you can't say that in English.
Obviously I know that it's correct in Dutch, but when speaking you may unconsciously follow the rules that you are used to in your native language. (Apparently it's not uncommon for English speakers to avoid those particular words in Dutch, YMMV.)
posted by different at 11:32 AM on April 16, 2007
eg, in English you cannot say "beautifuller" or "difficultest"; you say of course "more beautiful" or "most difficult/hardest". In Dutch the best way to say "the most beautiful" is literally "the beautifullest", which feels wrong to me because you can't say that in English.
Obviously I know that it's correct in Dutch, but when speaking you may unconsciously follow the rules that you are used to in your native language. (Apparently it's not uncommon for English speakers to avoid those particular words in Dutch, YMMV.)
posted by different at 11:32 AM on April 16, 2007
As said above, we make mistakes in foreign languages because we tend to literally translate what we say in our mother tongue into a foreign language.
One mistake that native English speakers always make in French is when they say how old they are. In English, you say "I am 22" so they translate it literally by "Je suis 22". It doesn't mean anything. French speaking people say "J'ai 22 ans" ("I have 22 years"). Obviously, French people make that same mistake.
This is because people follow the word order of their own language when they speak another one (it's called a calque). Like for expressions. They can't always be translated literally. For example, it's raining cats and dogs in English but it's raining ropes ("Il pleut des cordes") in French. This kind of mistake is usually very cute.
posted by celine at 11:33 AM on April 16, 2007
One mistake that native English speakers always make in French is when they say how old they are. In English, you say "I am 22" so they translate it literally by "Je suis 22". It doesn't mean anything. French speaking people say "J'ai 22 ans" ("I have 22 years"). Obviously, French people make that same mistake.
This is because people follow the word order of their own language when they speak another one (it's called a calque). Like for expressions. They can't always be translated literally. For example, it's raining cats and dogs in English but it's raining ropes ("Il pleut des cordes") in French. This kind of mistake is usually very cute.
posted by celine at 11:33 AM on April 16, 2007
I still find myself referring to people as "the James" or whatever, because I find a lot of the rules governing articles in English to be very arbitrary. I leave them out now and then as well -
"I'm going to library." My native tongue is Bosnian.
I notice in Hungarian that a common mistake for English speakers to make is to say the equivalent of "three flowers" ("három virágok"), where -ok indicates plural, even though a Hungarian would say "három virág," ("three flower") presumably because the "three" ("három") is enough to indicate plurality. And Hungarians often mix up "he" and "she," when speaking in English, because they only have one word for both.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 11:35 AM on April 16, 2007
"I'm going to library." My native tongue is Bosnian.
I notice in Hungarian that a common mistake for English speakers to make is to say the equivalent of "three flowers" ("három virágok"), where -ok indicates plural, even though a Hungarian would say "három virág," ("three flower") presumably because the "three" ("három") is enough to indicate plurality. And Hungarians often mix up "he" and "she," when speaking in English, because they only have one word for both.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 11:35 AM on April 16, 2007
What is it that makes particular language speakers make particular errors?
They aren't errors in the speaker's native language. They're translating as literally as they can, but the syntax and idioms are all different.
What errors do English speakers typically make when speaking other languages?
That has a lot to do with the other language. If I had to generalize about errors I'd say that the gendered words thing is most typical, but for mistakes it would be our improper/nonexistent observance of the rules regarding social class or status - speaking 'up' vs 'down', respectfully vs dismissively, formally vs familiarly. Some languages almost have mini-dialects for each of those relationships.
posted by foobario at 11:41 AM on April 16, 2007
They aren't errors in the speaker's native language. They're translating as literally as they can, but the syntax and idioms are all different.
What errors do English speakers typically make when speaking other languages?
That has a lot to do with the other language. If I had to generalize about errors I'd say that the gendered words thing is most typical, but for mistakes it would be our improper/nonexistent observance of the rules regarding social class or status - speaking 'up' vs 'down', respectfully vs dismissively, formally vs familiarly. Some languages almost have mini-dialects for each of those relationships.
posted by foobario at 11:41 AM on April 16, 2007
I spent some time at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg where most communication is conducted in English, but most people are not native speakers. I heard stuff like this on a daily basis. The most amusing part was that sometimes people didn't even realize that they weren't speaking English like a native speaker, since they were speaking the same way all the other English speakers were. People were always shocked when a native speaker didn't know that the German pseudo-Anglicism "handy" referred to a mobile phone—it's certainly sounds much more English than it does German, after all.
posted by grouse at 11:43 AM on April 16, 2007
posted by grouse at 11:43 AM on April 16, 2007
The biggest simple grammar mistake that I routinely make with Japanese is probably the distinction between the particles wa (which indicates "topic") and ga (which indicates subject). There are some specific cases where textbooks say you need to use one or the other, which native speakers seem to ignore.
Another simple grammar mistake in Japanese that I think English speakers are prone to is differentiating between "a-" (ano, achira, asoko) pronouns and "so-" (sono, sochira, soko) pronouns. The former are used to indicate something remote from both the speaker and the listener; the latter to indicate something at the listener's location. In English, these both collapse to "there." This is the kind of thing that it's not hard to get the hang of, and unambiguous when I'm reading/listening, but I'll occasionally get them mixed up when speaking.
The whole thing with politeness levels in Japanese blurs the boundary between grammar and culture. A lot of younger native speakers need remedial instruction in keigo when they enter the working world.
posted by adamrice at 12:13 PM on April 16, 2007
Another simple grammar mistake in Japanese that I think English speakers are prone to is differentiating between "a-" (ano, achira, asoko) pronouns and "so-" (sono, sochira, soko) pronouns. The former are used to indicate something remote from both the speaker and the listener; the latter to indicate something at the listener's location. In English, these both collapse to "there." This is the kind of thing that it's not hard to get the hang of, and unambiguous when I'm reading/listening, but I'll occasionally get them mixed up when speaking.
The whole thing with politeness levels in Japanese blurs the boundary between grammar and culture. A lot of younger native speakers need remedial instruction in keigo when they enter the working world.
posted by adamrice at 12:13 PM on April 16, 2007
One mistake a LOT of my Japanese associates have made is always using "ever" as the opposite of "never". For example, when talking about an unfamiliar place, my friend would say "I have never been there", but if he had been there, he would say "I have ever been there".
I believe this misconception stems from the way the sentence would be constructed in Japanese. In Japanese, the idea "I have never been there" is expressed as:
そこに行ったことがない ("soko ni itta koto ga nai", something like "There is not (nai) a having gone there").
If you had been there you would say:
そこに行ったことがある ("soko ni itta koto ga aru", "there is (aru) a having gone there").
They just change one word from a negative conjugation to a positive. They know that "行ったことがない" means "have never been", so they try the same negative/positive switch in English, changing "never" to "ever". I've had some difficulty convincing Japanese people that this is not correct English. Apparently it's even taught in some schools.
posted by Vorteks at 12:14 PM on April 16, 2007
I believe this misconception stems from the way the sentence would be constructed in Japanese. In Japanese, the idea "I have never been there" is expressed as:
そこに行ったことがない ("soko ni itta koto ga nai", something like "There is not (nai) a having gone there").
If you had been there you would say:
そこに行ったことがある ("soko ni itta koto ga aru", "there is (aru) a having gone there").
They just change one word from a negative conjugation to a positive. They know that "行ったことがない" means "have never been", so they try the same negative/positive switch in English, changing "never" to "ever". I've had some difficulty convincing Japanese people that this is not correct English. Apparently it's even taught in some schools.
posted by Vorteks at 12:14 PM on April 16, 2007
In Chinese the first thing that marks you out as a native English speaker will be your awful tones.
When you get a bit better, you tend to over-construct sentences because you aren't familiar enough with the shorthand of natural conversation.
Not many non-natives are adept with the sentence-final particles that give so much expression to Chinese (even more in some dialects than others).
Oddly, having been formally taught Chinese, I find I'm more particular and better with measure words than some native friends - I need them to make up for my ropey accent; they can cheat with a generic “个”。
posted by Abiezer at 12:29 PM on April 16, 2007
When you get a bit better, you tend to over-construct sentences because you aren't familiar enough with the shorthand of natural conversation.
Not many non-natives are adept with the sentence-final particles that give so much expression to Chinese (even more in some dialects than others).
Oddly, having been formally taught Chinese, I find I'm more particular and better with measure words than some native friends - I need them to make up for my ropey accent; they can cheat with a generic “个”。
posted by Abiezer at 12:29 PM on April 16, 2007
A big problem that mandarin speakers face with English is gender (his/her/he/she), for them gender is either specific to a work, or more often it is implied by the context of a sentence. I have known Chinese people whose English was absolutely fantastic, and who had been speaking it for year, but would still refer to my girlfriend as a him, or make other mistakes along that same line because they dont have to think about it in Mandarin. Also with Mandarin the grammar is incredibly simple, so that is another aspect of it.
Going the other way, I would say that tones are the thing that generally cause the most problems (aside from writing), that and phrases that are derived from poetry written during the warring states period...
posted by BobbyDigital at 12:31 PM on April 16, 2007
Going the other way, I would say that tones are the thing that generally cause the most problems (aside from writing), that and phrases that are derived from poetry written during the warring states period...
posted by BobbyDigital at 12:31 PM on April 16, 2007
Wonderful answers. Please keep them coming. And yes, Question 1 does answer itself - what I really meant was please answer Question 2 then refer to Question 1.
Nice headline. It's very...um...culturally sensitive.
I'm with PJ O'Rourke on this one: if it's true, it's not... culturally insensitive.
posted by TiredStarling at 12:35 PM on April 16, 2007
Nice headline. It's very...um...culturally sensitive.
I'm with PJ O'Rourke on this one: if it's true, it's not... culturally insensitive.
posted by TiredStarling at 12:35 PM on April 16, 2007
You might also be interested in China Coast pidgin and studies of its grammar.
"Towards a..." must be the most common phrase in academic paper titles.
posted by Abiezer at 12:43 PM on April 16, 2007
"Towards a..." must be the most common phrase in academic paper titles.
posted by Abiezer at 12:43 PM on April 16, 2007
my friend would say "I have never been there", but if he had been there, he would say "I have ever been there".
Interesting. It's a perfectly understandable response to the question "Have you ever been there?" Yes! I have ever been there.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:53 PM on April 16, 2007
Interesting. It's a perfectly understandable response to the question "Have you ever been there?" Yes! I have ever been there.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:53 PM on April 16, 2007
One of the grammatical issues I found with German + English comes from both languages' liberal use of prepositions for oddball purposes. Of course, the languages use different prepositions and so you cannot just translate, nor can you really think about it because they make little sense. Some examples of prepositions ...
Ocassionally omitted for no reason: to look FOR versus to search.
Completely changing a verb's meaning: to catch versus to catch ON, to start, to start UP, to start ON, to start OUT, to start WITH (like, "don't start with me!").
My impression is that other languages also do this, but IMO it's not nearly as hairy. Consider that "to catch on" literally translated into german ("anfangen") means "to begin".
Close to but not quite taken literally: to hike IN the mountains versus to hike ON the mountains.
posted by cotterpin at 1:07 PM on April 16, 2007
My impression is that other languages also do this, but IMO it's not nearly as hairy. Consider that "to catch on" literally translated into german ("anfangen") means "to begin".
posted by cotterpin at 1:07 PM on April 16, 2007
I have quite a few foreign-born friends who say "thanks be to God" for something instead of "Thank God" because that's how it's worded in their language.
I'd never considered that as an improper construction 'til it was pointed out there, as we say it all the time in Ireland. The phrase is said at mass every week so I assume this is where it gained popular usage. I imagine it is some sort of literal translation of the Latin, perhaps the latin speakers among us can verify or rebut this!
There are plenty of examples of syntax in Hiberno-English derived from Irish though which give unique phrases such as "He's after messing everything up" rather than "He has messed everything up" or "He has no Irish" meaning "He doesn't speak Irish." Not necessarily wrong, but different!
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:13 PM on April 16, 2007
I'd never considered that as an improper construction 'til it was pointed out there, as we say it all the time in Ireland. The phrase is said at mass every week so I assume this is where it gained popular usage. I imagine it is some sort of literal translation of the Latin, perhaps the latin speakers among us can verify or rebut this!
There are plenty of examples of syntax in Hiberno-English derived from Irish though which give unique phrases such as "He's after messing everything up" rather than "He has messed everything up" or "He has no Irish" meaning "He doesn't speak Irish." Not necessarily wrong, but different!
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:13 PM on April 16, 2007
I am reminded of some Europeans (including Germans) who will ask things like "Can you borrow me a pencil?" meaning they want me to lend it to them.
posted by grouse at 1:14 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by grouse at 1:14 PM on April 16, 2007
Another interesting set of examples is things derived from the structure of other languages that persist beyond the original group of people who made a grammatical error. For example, I might say "they don't know from bagels" which is not really correct in Standard American English, but in doing so I am aping my Yiddish-speaking forebears.
posted by grouse at 1:17 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by grouse at 1:17 PM on April 16, 2007
Non-native English speakers often have enormous problems with strong verbs. That's a problem with German, too, but there are only about 60 and they're not too hard to learn. But English has hundreds.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:37 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:37 PM on April 16, 2007
I speak english natively and chinese as a secondary language, and its true that in chinese they do not pluralize nouns. They throw a number or something indicating the general amount before the noun. So in my chinese friends often speak english saying stuff like "TWO DOLLAR"(the number infront of the noun)
I've always wondered though, why there is a stereotype about chinese people being unable to pronounce L's or R's. I happen to know that they have the both sounds in their language, so it always boggles me that they wouldn't be able to make that sound in english.
posted by rubberkey at 1:39 PM on April 16, 2007
I've always wondered though, why there is a stereotype about chinese people being unable to pronounce L's or R's. I happen to know that they have the both sounds in their language, so it always boggles me that they wouldn't be able to make that sound in english.
posted by rubberkey at 1:39 PM on April 16, 2007
My Hungarian roommate has trouble with gendered pronouns, since Hungarian pronouns don't have gender. So she'll say things like "I like Paul. She's very nice." Or "Mary wasn't in class today because he was sick."
posted by craichead at 1:40 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by craichead at 1:40 PM on April 16, 2007
The linguistic terms, if you want to find out more, are interference and interlanguage. They're predictable to the extent that I've seen books with compilations of the standard errors for English language learners of different linguistic backgrounds.
posted by Paragon at 2:01 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by Paragon at 2:01 PM on April 16, 2007
I know that when I speak german my main difficulty is remembering the order of where the words go, it's very very different from English so I put words in the wrong structure sometimes. And with learning arabic, the articles as well as the masculine & feminine changes on idaafas (especially extended ones, and ESPECIALLY if they include numbers!) make my head hurt. Owww. I know I will be screwing those up for a long time.
posted by miss lynnster at 2:17 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by miss lynnster at 2:17 PM on April 16, 2007
I've always wondered though, why there is a stereotype about chinese people being unable to pronounce L's or R's.
I always thought that was a stereotype about the Japanese. Engrish.com seems to support this stereotype as most of their examples are from Japan.
(I don't know from bagels about the Japanese language)
posted by clh at 2:19 PM on April 16, 2007
I always thought that was a stereotype about the Japanese. Engrish.com seems to support this stereotype as most of their examples are from Japan.
(I don't know from bagels about the Japanese language)
posted by clh at 2:19 PM on April 16, 2007
clh: No, you should say "I don't know from Japanese." Bagels? We should have such problems. Oy.
posted by grouse at 2:41 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by grouse at 2:41 PM on April 16, 2007
#2. Germans will often use "what" for "that". For example, "The question what you are asking is very intriguing."
posted by cocoagirl at 2:52 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by cocoagirl at 2:52 PM on April 16, 2007
The L/R business is a problem for Japanese because they have a sound which is kind of half-way between the two. らりるれろ all begin with that sound, which to my unschooled ears actually sounds almost like a rolled R the way the Spanish say it -- except that sometimes it doesn't. (Strongly rolling that sound is a vocal affectation that suggests that you're a tough guy.)
But it can be pronounced more like our "L" or our "R" depending on the word and who is saying it. To their ears, both sounds are the same. They're trained to hear them both as variations on the same phoneme.
So their constant problems with them are a source of humor. But not just by English speakers; I've seen jokes about it in anime, where the Japanese themselves laugh about it.
Ear-training is something that happens naturally in kids when they're first learning to speak. It's one of the steps in the process. The kids have to learn what sounds are semantically different and what sounds are variations which are semantically identical. And it can be very difficult to pick up later in life. For instance, I have a devil of a time with りょ ryo. No matter how much I try I cannot make that sound, and I always have a hell of a time even hearing it. (To me it sounds like いお, though it just now occurred to me that the cadence should be different.)
Which just reminded me of another problem Americans have speaking Japanese: long vowels. The terms "long vowel" and "short vowel" in English refer to different sounds, e.g. "short u" is the sound in "but" and "long u" is the sound in "flute".
In Japanese the terms refer to time period, and a long vowel is semantically different than a short one. It's spelled differently. But the difference in pronunciation is only in timing, and it's really subtle.
My favorite example of that is: おに oni is "ogre" and おにい onii is "older brother". You'll run into the latter a thousand times as often as the former, of course, and in different contexts, so there isn't really any confusion in this case. But I (with my untrained ear) have a devil of a time figuring out when a particular syllable in a word is lengthened, because Japanese speakers are actually quite sloppy about it (or so it sounds to me). I suspect that if I were trying to speak Japanese, I'd sound very pedantic in this way, too, because I would make my lengthened vowel sounds much too long.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:54 PM on April 16, 2007
But it can be pronounced more like our "L" or our "R" depending on the word and who is saying it. To their ears, both sounds are the same. They're trained to hear them both as variations on the same phoneme.
So their constant problems with them are a source of humor. But not just by English speakers; I've seen jokes about it in anime, where the Japanese themselves laugh about it.
Ear-training is something that happens naturally in kids when they're first learning to speak. It's one of the steps in the process. The kids have to learn what sounds are semantically different and what sounds are variations which are semantically identical. And it can be very difficult to pick up later in life. For instance, I have a devil of a time with りょ ryo. No matter how much I try I cannot make that sound, and I always have a hell of a time even hearing it. (To me it sounds like いお, though it just now occurred to me that the cadence should be different.)
Which just reminded me of another problem Americans have speaking Japanese: long vowels. The terms "long vowel" and "short vowel" in English refer to different sounds, e.g. "short u" is the sound in "but" and "long u" is the sound in "flute".
In Japanese the terms refer to time period, and a long vowel is semantically different than a short one. It's spelled differently. But the difference in pronunciation is only in timing, and it's really subtle.
My favorite example of that is: おに oni is "ogre" and おにい onii is "older brother". You'll run into the latter a thousand times as often as the former, of course, and in different contexts, so there isn't really any confusion in this case. But I (with my untrained ear) have a devil of a time figuring out when a particular syllable in a word is lengthened, because Japanese speakers are actually quite sloppy about it (or so it sounds to me). I suspect that if I were trying to speak Japanese, I'd sound very pedantic in this way, too, because I would make my lengthened vowel sounds much too long.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:54 PM on April 16, 2007
[This is the point where Languagehat shows up and yells at me for playing on his lawn.]
No, actually you're doing a fine job here. Which is a good thing, because this question short-circuits my brain. It's sort of like "Different languages are different in different ways, aren't they? Examples?" Well, uh... yeah.
posted by languagehat at 3:50 PM on April 16, 2007
No, actually you're doing a fine job here. Which is a good thing, because this question short-circuits my brain. It's sort of like "Different languages are different in different ways, aren't they? Examples?" Well, uh... yeah.
posted by languagehat at 3:50 PM on April 16, 2007
For instance, I have a devil of a time with りょ ryo.
Another trouble for foreigners learning Japanese is hearing the difference between "su" and "tsu". Depending on who says it and where it is in a word, sometimes it's not clear how to write/say it, and I have to ask. I've had Japanese friends who couldn't believe that anyone has trouble distinguishing these; I have successfully explained it to them using an "R/L" analogy...
posted by vorfeed at 3:59 PM on April 16, 2007
Another trouble for foreigners learning Japanese is hearing the difference between "su" and "tsu". Depending on who says it and where it is in a word, sometimes it's not clear how to write/say it, and I have to ask. I've had Japanese friends who couldn't believe that anyone has trouble distinguishing these; I have successfully explained it to them using an "R/L" analogy...
posted by vorfeed at 3:59 PM on April 16, 2007
Which just reminded me of another problem Americans have speaking Japanese: long vowels.
Yeah, I've noticed that Americans tend to replace the long "e" sound in various languages with the diphthong /eɪ/. So allez becomes "allay", Kaffee becomes "kaffay", and oneechan becomes "onaychan".
posted by martinrebas at 4:28 PM on April 16, 2007
Yeah, I've noticed that Americans tend to replace the long "e" sound in various languages with the diphthong /eɪ/. So allez becomes "allay", Kaffee becomes "kaffay", and oneechan becomes "onaychan".
posted by martinrebas at 4:28 PM on April 16, 2007
My wife had a lot of trouble with pronouncing certain plurals, even when she knew they needed an 's' on the end. 'Buds' came out as 'budza.' She even made fun of the whole situation for a while by stating plurals like "bud plus S." With a lot of practice, she learned to say those fluidly.
She never had any trouble with 'L's and 'R's, but for a long time pronounced W as V, like a German
Gender assignment is still random, though. She'll be telling me what her friend said and will pick a gender pronoun on the fly. She's got a 50% chance of picking the right one. It's only confusing when she's talking about a mixed group.
I've noticed all these things in the speech of other Chinese people, too.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:52 PM on April 16, 2007
She never had any trouble with 'L's and 'R's, but for a long time pronounced W as V, like a German
Gender assignment is still random, though. She'll be telling me what her friend said and will pick a gender pronoun on the fly. She's got a 50% chance of picking the right one. It's only confusing when she's talking about a mixed group.
I've noticed all these things in the speech of other Chinese people, too.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:52 PM on April 16, 2007
It is hard for Americans to learn to decline cases. German and Russian are examples of widespread languages with a case system, where you express a sense of toward, from, of, with, etc. by changing the ending of the words. We take a while to learn that, and have a hard time with the finer nuances.
English has only vestigial declination when it comes to our pronouns. I am going toward him. He has the book. The pronouns referring to "him" mean the same thing, but declined in a different case, but pronouns are about all we have. Spanish doesn't have a case system to speak of, so I imagine Spanish-speakers would have some difficulty with cases as well.
posted by lorrer at 5:18 PM on April 16, 2007
English has only vestigial declination when it comes to our pronouns. I am going toward him. He has the book. The pronouns referring to "him" mean the same thing, but declined in a different case, but pronouns are about all we have. Spanish doesn't have a case system to speak of, so I imagine Spanish-speakers would have some difficulty with cases as well.
posted by lorrer at 5:18 PM on April 16, 2007
My Israeli boyfriend, who speaks otherwise perfect English, pluralizes "water" and "bicycle". As in, I'll say "where is your bicycle?" and he'll say "I left them at work."
It's really the small things that get you when you're speaking a foreign language - the tiny things that you would normally never think about.
I've studied both Hebrew and Italian. They are very different languages, and most words I would never confuse. But the tiny words mess me up continuously. "Ma" means "what" in Hebrew but "but" in Italian, and I can't tell you the number of times I've used the wrong version, in both directions. It's because you don't stop to think when you say "but" or "what".
Similarly, in writing Hebrew, the letters that trip me up are the ones that closely resemble Latin letters. Like the "nun", which is the N sound, looks like a backwards "L". Unless I am forcing myself to go very slowly, I am apt to write or read that one the wrong way.
posted by wyzewoman at 5:21 PM on April 16, 2007
It's really the small things that get you when you're speaking a foreign language - the tiny things that you would normally never think about.
I've studied both Hebrew and Italian. They are very different languages, and most words I would never confuse. But the tiny words mess me up continuously. "Ma" means "what" in Hebrew but "but" in Italian, and I can't tell you the number of times I've used the wrong version, in both directions. It's because you don't stop to think when you say "but" or "what".
Similarly, in writing Hebrew, the letters that trip me up are the ones that closely resemble Latin letters. Like the "nun", which is the N sound, looks like a backwards "L". Unless I am forcing myself to go very slowly, I am apt to write or read that one the wrong way.
posted by wyzewoman at 5:21 PM on April 16, 2007
I looked in my (Taiwanese) cousin's English textbook once, and it said "g" should be pronounced /dze/.
posted by casarkos at 5:22 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by casarkos at 5:22 PM on April 16, 2007
there are only about 60
German has about 200 irregular verbs. It also doesn't help that some weak verbs in English are strong verbs in German, and vice versa, like sterben, helfen, and wake up.
posted by oaf at 5:26 PM on April 16, 2007
German has about 200 irregular verbs. It also doesn't help that some weak verbs in English are strong verbs in German, and vice versa, like sterben, helfen, and wake up.
posted by oaf at 5:26 PM on April 16, 2007
A related phenon is in phonemes. If your language doesn't have, say, the Greek chi or Russian shch, you're apt to substitute something your native language does have, a K for the CHI, SH for SHCH.
Thus regular mispronunciations of Khrushchev as Krew-Shev.
Non-native english speakers do similar things, notably with the TH sound, which comes out as the more (to them) familiar D or T. "What's dot?" "Tanks a lot." Similarly, Keith Gerson's above mentioned wife might have answered "How are you?" with "Werry vell." W, V, what's the difference?
Oddly, it's not something that is often taught in standard language instruction.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:40 PM on April 16, 2007
Thus regular mispronunciations of Khrushchev as Krew-Shev.
Non-native english speakers do similar things, notably with the TH sound, which comes out as the more (to them) familiar D or T. "What's dot?" "Tanks a lot." Similarly, Keith Gerson's above mentioned wife might have answered "How are you?" with "Werry vell." W, V, what's the difference?
Oddly, it's not something that is often taught in standard language instruction.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:40 PM on April 16, 2007
Perhaps Kirth's wife read too much Great Expectations as a student and knows "what wittles is".
posted by Abiezer at 5:45 PM on April 16, 2007
posted by Abiezer at 5:45 PM on April 16, 2007
Chinese, as well as Japanese and a host of other languages, doesn't have plurals. Russian, as well as Japanese, doesnt have articles. As an English teacher in Japan, I can attest that articles are the single most difficult thing to master for Japanese students, even the high-level ones. There are rules they can study, but so much of article usage is intuitive, that is, you have to grow up with the language to use it well. Japanese has it's own version of articles, wa, ga, and o. It's similar to English articles but the rules are completely different, and it's equally baffling for Japanese language students.
As for the pronunciation thing, Japanese is full of English (and other languages') loan words that sound horribly mangled to native ears. But take a word like "karate". In Japanese it's pronounced "KAH-RAH-TEH" with all syllable the same stress, but that short "e" is never used at the end of an English word, so we say "Kuh-RAH-Tee". Say it like this to a Japanese and they won't recognize the word. Same with "karaoke". "KAH-RAH-OH-KAY" vs. "Karry-OH-Kee".
posted by zardoz at 5:46 PM on April 16, 2007
As for the pronunciation thing, Japanese is full of English (and other languages') loan words that sound horribly mangled to native ears. But take a word like "karate". In Japanese it's pronounced "KAH-RAH-TEH" with all syllable the same stress, but that short "e" is never used at the end of an English word, so we say "Kuh-RAH-Tee". Say it like this to a Japanese and they won't recognize the word. Same with "karaoke". "KAH-RAH-OH-KAY" vs. "Karry-OH-Kee".
posted by zardoz at 5:46 PM on April 16, 2007
And Hungarians often mix up "he" and "she," when speaking in English, because they only have one word for both.
I actually first learned about this trait of ESL Hungarian speakers from a previous metafilter thread, so if you can hunt that one down, it would probably have some similar examples. I'm glad I saw it, by the way, because I had always thought my grandmother's constant reference to my brother and I with female pronouns was from her senility, but it turns out it was due to her having grown up in Hungary.
posted by andoatnp at 7:11 PM on April 16, 2007
I actually first learned about this trait of ESL Hungarian speakers from a previous metafilter thread, so if you can hunt that one down, it would probably have some similar examples. I'm glad I saw it, by the way, because I had always thought my grandmother's constant reference to my brother and I with female pronouns was from her senility, but it turns out it was due to her having grown up in Hungary.
posted by andoatnp at 7:11 PM on April 16, 2007
This could be a new parlor game. More from German:
One of my favorites is someone asking for "ein mehr" (one more) which is a nonsense phrase in German (correct: noch eins: still one, which is a nonsense phrase in English)
Ivana took a lot of heat for calling her husband "the Donald" but using the article in front of a proper name is a common central European colloquialism. (Der Bill, Die Marie, etc.)
The most common error I hear in German from English speakers is putting the verb in the wrong place, or putting the two parts of a compound verb together. Also lots of errors with conjunctions like which and that, and with short queries (was-- What? would be phrased as Wie-- How or as Bitte (more or less I beg your pardon)
posted by nax at 7:18 PM on April 16, 2007
One of my favorites is someone asking for "ein mehr" (one more) which is a nonsense phrase in German (correct: noch eins: still one, which is a nonsense phrase in English)
Ivana took a lot of heat for calling her husband "the Donald" but using the article in front of a proper name is a common central European colloquialism. (Der Bill, Die Marie, etc.)
The most common error I hear in German from English speakers is putting the verb in the wrong place, or putting the two parts of a compound verb together. Also lots of errors with conjunctions like which and that, and with short queries (was-- What? would be phrased as Wie-- How or as Bitte (more or less I beg your pardon)
posted by nax at 7:18 PM on April 16, 2007
Norwegians (as well as Swedes and Danes) will often say things like "How many people is it in the room?" instead of "How many people are there in the room?" because in the construction for "there is" or "there are" (det er) is exactly the same as the one for "it is".
...which brings my to my next example - they tend to get their subject/verb agreement wrong a lot. In Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, there are no separate verb forms for each person - so for "I am" you would say jeg er, and for "you are" you would say du er, etc. So you'll hear a lot of things like "What was you saying?" or "He have asked me about it".
posted by flod logic at 7:26 PM on April 16, 2007
...which brings my to my next example - they tend to get their subject/verb agreement wrong a lot. In Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, there are no separate verb forms for each person - so for "I am" you would say jeg er, and for "you are" you would say du er, etc. So you'll hear a lot of things like "What was you saying?" or "He have asked me about it".
posted by flod logic at 7:26 PM on April 16, 2007
One of the big differences between the Germanic languages and the Romance languages is the number of genders. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to translate the word "it" into French. There is no equivalent word. French, Spanish, Portugese, and Italian only have two pronouns, which translate to English "he" and "she". Noun genders is one of the things English tossed, though the other Germanic languages still do. Virtually the only remnant of this in English is the convention of referring to ships as "she" instead of "it".
The rules about gender (note: "gender" is a term-of-art in linguistics that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex) in German are peculiar. For instance, technically speaking, any use of the -chen or -lein diminuative endings is supposed to convert the noun to neuter gender, irrespective of the gender of the base word. Which is why you say "die Frau" but "das Fraulein"; "die Madel" but "das Mädchen". (I may not have that exactly right; high school German was 35 years ago.)
Which also means that strictly speaking, if you've used the word "Fraulein" and then need a pronoun for later reference, you're supposed to use "es", not "sie". In other words, you're supposed to refer to the good looking young woman as "it", not "she". That's highly counterintuitive for English speakers, and IIRC even the Germans ignore the rule in that case.
Anyway, gender is a place where speakers of different languages get crossed up a lot.
While French speakers of English generally do not have difficulty with this, a common parody of poor Franglais is to have the French speaker use "he" or "she" in places where native English speakers would use "it". That's the classic stereotype of a Frenchman who is struggling with English, just as the L/R mixup is the stereotype of a Japanese struggling with English.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:14 PM on April 16, 2007
The rules about gender (note: "gender" is a term-of-art in linguistics that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex) in German are peculiar. For instance, technically speaking, any use of the -chen or -lein diminuative endings is supposed to convert the noun to neuter gender, irrespective of the gender of the base word. Which is why you say "die Frau" but "das Fraulein"; "die Madel" but "das Mädchen". (I may not have that exactly right; high school German was 35 years ago.)
Which also means that strictly speaking, if you've used the word "Fraulein" and then need a pronoun for later reference, you're supposed to use "es", not "sie". In other words, you're supposed to refer to the good looking young woman as "it", not "she". That's highly counterintuitive for English speakers, and IIRC even the Germans ignore the rule in that case.
Anyway, gender is a place where speakers of different languages get crossed up a lot.
While French speakers of English generally do not have difficulty with this, a common parody of poor Franglais is to have the French speaker use "he" or "she" in places where native English speakers would use "it". That's the classic stereotype of a Frenchman who is struggling with English, just as the L/R mixup is the stereotype of a Japanese struggling with English.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:14 PM on April 16, 2007
In Vietnamese you usually omit the verb to be and there are no articles or verb conjugation, so when Vietnamese people speak English they often (most of the time, actually) say things like "I go to store". They also say "go to shopping" or similar, but I haven't yet figured out why.
Germans often say "make" when they want to use "do", because in German it's machen in both cases.
posted by borkingchikapa at 9:31 PM on April 16, 2007
Germans often say "make" when they want to use "do", because in German it's machen in both cases.
posted by borkingchikapa at 9:31 PM on April 16, 2007
There are plenty of examples of syntax in Hiberno-English derived from Irish though which give unique phrases such as "He's after messing everything up" rather than "He has messed everything up" or "He has no Irish" meaning "He doesn't speak Irish."
I'm after picking up some of these in my daily speech, as a Canadian who's lived here for a year and a half. Along with adding "like" to the end of sentences, which annoys me to no end. I fully expect to get teased mercilessly for this when I move home this summer :)
posted by antifuse at 1:41 AM on April 17, 2007
I'm after picking up some of these in my daily speech, as a Canadian who's lived here for a year and a half. Along with adding "like" to the end of sentences, which annoys me to no end. I fully expect to get teased mercilessly for this when I move home this summer :)
posted by antifuse at 1:41 AM on April 17, 2007
I have quite a few foreign-born friends who say "thanks be to God" for something instead of "Thank God" because that's how it's worded in their language.
Uh, a lot of native English-speakers say this because it's part of the liturgy for the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and Russian Orthodox churches (probably more, but those I know of.) It's not a purely Irish thing - although it is more commonly said in Ireland as the country takes their Roman Catholicism more seriously than others.
(I know far too much about the liturgy for an Easter-'n'-Christmas Catholic!)
posted by PuGZ at 3:41 AM on April 17, 2007
Uh, a lot of native English-speakers say this because it's part of the liturgy for the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and Russian Orthodox churches (probably more, but those I know of.) It's not a purely Irish thing - although it is more commonly said in Ireland as the country takes their Roman Catholicism more seriously than others.
(I know far too much about the liturgy for an Easter-'n'-Christmas Catholic!)
posted by PuGZ at 3:41 AM on April 17, 2007
One of the grammatical issues I found with German + English comes from both languages' liberal use of prepositions for oddball purposes.
Italian prepositions also cause a few headaches, but when my class complained to our teacher about it (and what could she do, really? language is like weather sometimes), she responded that English is just as nuts, citing the unintuitive different between "insist ON" and persist IN."
posted by kittyprecious at 7:48 AM on April 17, 2007
Italian prepositions also cause a few headaches, but when my class complained to our teacher about it (and what could she do, really? language is like weather sometimes), she responded that English is just as nuts, citing the unintuitive different between "insist ON" and persist IN."
posted by kittyprecious at 7:48 AM on April 17, 2007
...and that would be difference. Damn nominal form.
posted by kittyprecious at 7:49 AM on April 17, 2007
posted by kittyprecious at 7:49 AM on April 17, 2007
Something that seems to have been overlooked is the linguistic formation of these languages. Some languages simply do not have corresponding sound equivalents for other languages phonemes. Check out a chart like this for an example of the what a universal phonetic alphabet looks like.
There are a finite range of sounds that are used to construct languages, however they are not shared across all of them. Languages which do not have a "th" sound for instance might substitute a sound they are more familiar with. If linking together of certain sounds is uncommon, especially hard transitions such as a voiceless consonant between two vowels, and those sound combinations are infrequently present it may present a noticable difference.
posted by sophist at 9:59 AM on April 17, 2007
There are a finite range of sounds that are used to construct languages, however they are not shared across all of them. Languages which do not have a "th" sound for instance might substitute a sound they are more familiar with. If linking together of certain sounds is uncommon, especially hard transitions such as a voiceless consonant between two vowels, and those sound combinations are infrequently present it may present a noticable difference.
posted by sophist at 9:59 AM on April 17, 2007
Another foreigner norm is to put "......, no?" on the end of sentences to convey doubt. I assume this is because the English variations "...., isn't it?", "....., aren't they?" "......, didn't she?" etc. are completely ridiculous if you haven't grown up with them.
posted by kjs4 at 10:13 AM on April 17, 2007
posted by kjs4 at 10:13 AM on April 17, 2007
If you're looking for cross-language mistakes, it'd be hard to top this one.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:07 PM on April 19, 2007
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:07 PM on April 19, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by subtle-t at 10:48 AM on April 16, 2007