Injustice. I'm in one of those moods in which doing something I love, in this case, learning a new language, seems like a pain in the ass. Especially when the typical motives for learning a new tongue (need it for the job, going to the country where the language is spoken, have a girl/boy friend who speaks the language, etc.) are absent.
One thing that I love to complain about (ah, does anybody else out there love to gripe about insignificant things more than I do?) is the fact that in most of the Latin-based languages (and perhaps in others too since I haven't had much experience with them) you have to learn two ways of speaking: formal and informal (or tutoyer, as it is affectionately called in French). I've already been reprimanded (well, not reprimanded, but firmly corrected) for using a 'tu' when I should have used a 'vous' in a message I wrote to one of my French pen-pals. What exacerbates the situation is that it seems that many text books and home study books insist upon emphasizing the informal mode, presumably because it assumes the learner is an aimable, youthful college student practicing with her friends.
Oh, if only I could vous you and be done with it! And Spanish and Italian also employ this merciless torture. Oh, well. As usual I'll get over my indignant grand-standing and get back to the job at hand. Merci messieurs et madames. Je te remercie. Oops. Je vous remercie. :)
Consider yourself lucky! In some languages (Korean, for example), there are far more 'levels' than two. What's even more frustrating, though, is that it's not always possible to discen some general rule as to when one level of formality (or informality) is appropriate and when it isn't. And if that is frustrating enough, there is one word for "you" in Korean. Instead, there are dozens and dozens, and the speaker needs to know which to use in which situation. In English, the phrase "Your car or mine?" seems pretty straightforward and simple, but this seemingly simple question would require dozens of Korean versions, such as (if I translate literally): "Teacher's car or mine?", "Younger brothr's car or mine?" "Mother's car or mine?" "John's mother's car or mine?" "The department head's car or mine?" The list is (seemingly) endless. And then, yes, the word for "mine" will vary.
ReplyDeleteIt's perhaps worth pointing out that Google Translate does not take these very important distinctions into account, not at all. The computer has more than once spit out a sentence that would be as rude as imaginable in many, many circumstances--as well as impossibly formal ones.
Very good point, Monsieur Thalia. As I correspond with my French pen-pal, Denis, and make corrections to his English, I've run across many sentences which, though he gets the message across and is essentially grammatically correct, his phrasing just sounds awkward or is simply constructed in a way that would seem odd to a native English speaker. No doubt Denis is taking a French structure and translating it verbatim into English. Many times I struggle to explain to him why the construction just isn't quite right. It took us a lifetime to learn our native language and most of us are still learning.
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