Buona Pasqua!
Happy Easter!
¡Feliz Pascua!
Frohe Ostern!
Joyeuses Pâques!
Καλό πάσχα!
Feliz Páscoa!
复活 节 快乐！(fùhuó jié kuàilè)
Христос Воскресе ! (Xristos voskres)
المسيح قام ! (el maseeh qam)
See this cartoon in Spanish.
Wishing you a happy Easter time!
You may also stop by Translator Fun Shop.
When you feel down and incomplete,
just take your pen, pencil, guitar, mic, trainers, ballet shoes,
and
CREATE.
Regardless of what you love,
everything you do, can make a difference.
#translatorsgonnatranslate
#perlediunatraduttrice
#keepgoing
Now, which language do I write this post in again…?posted on March 12, 2014 at 10:59am EDT
“What’s the name of that little thing that lives in Australia? It’s ‘ornithorynque’ in French, what is it in English?”
“Yes, do you have a question?”
“Oui, savez-vous où… sorry.”
“I just came ba- oh, in French? Umm… Je, euh, je viens de passer mes vacances à, euh, c’est-à-dire en Australie où, euh, où j’ai vu un platyp- un ornithorynque.”
Um, okay. “Va t’en, s’il te plaît.” GO AWAY.
Okay, do you have several years to spare? ‘Cause I sure don’t.
A) No B) NO C) NO
Do you really need me to tell you that “hydrates de carbone” means “carbohydrates?” Is this really something you need reinforced?
“You need my help? Okay, well I don’t speak Spanish… No, it doesn’t matter than Spain and France are next to each other. The languages are not the same.”
“I saw this guy on Friday night, et il était le plus bel homme du monde, il était tellement magni- damn it, sorry.”
OH MY GOD. ACTUALLY THE WORST.
This is what happens when you type English into a French keyboard. It’s mayhem.
“It’s really funny, I swear it is! No, like, seriously! I promise!”
“Hold on, let me translate my thoughts real quick…”
“This is absolute gibberish!!… OH, it’s in English. Never mind.”
“Well, heyyy there! What’s your sign- or, should I say, quel est votre signe? Oh, not interested? That’s cool. Just walk away now.”
“Ah, crap- did I really just do a guttural ‘R?’ I’m not speaking French right now! What am I doing??”
It’s not the same between countries. Slang is not is universal.
“Uh huh, what you just said actually makes no sense, and half of it was just American words said with an accent.”
“But it’s worth so many poooooiiinntttssss.” 😦 😦 😦
The English sentence is ‘Oh yea, I saw him there when I bought that.’ In French, you say ‘Oui, je l’y ai vu quand je l’ai acheté.’ Direct translation? ‘Yes, I he there saw when I it bought.’ Now YOU try to not get that shit mixed up when switching languages.
“Yea, he didn’t just say ‘Put the money in the bag, bitch.’ He said, ‘Give me the duck and crackers, son.’”
“Vous avez le cul bordé de nouilles?* Oh my god, are you okay? Oh… another damn idiom. Sorry.”
*This is a real idiom that literally means “to have an ass lined with noodles.” The idiomatic meaning? “To be lucky.” Yea, I don’t get it either.
Martha Brockenbrough, founder of The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, started National Grammar Day in 2008. Since then it has been held every year on March 4th, a date that also happens to be a complete sentence (March forth!). It is celebrated in various ways: There is a haiku contest, an anagram unscrambling contest, and even an official song.
That’s all good clean fun. Some people, however, like to use the holiday as an excuse to engage in what Kory Stamper calls “vigilante peeving.” Stamper, a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster who knows from good grammar, dreads the way the holiday seems to encourage the shaming of others for their mistakes, or, as she calls it, “asshattery in the name of grammar.” (Read the whole thing. It’s worth it.)
This Grammar Day, let’s not look at grammar as a cold, harsh mistress. She can also be a fun, kooky aunt. Here are some tricks you can do to make crazy sounding sentences that are still grammatical.
Take advantage of the fact that the same sentence can have two different structures. This famous joke from Groucho Marx assumes that most people expect the structure of the first part to be
One morning [I shot an elephant] [in my pajamas].
But another possible, and perfectly grammatical, reading is
One morning [I shot] [an elephant in my pajamas].
Make a garden path sentence. In this one, we think we’ve reached the main verb when we get to “raced,” but instead we are still inside a reduced relative clause. Reduced relative clauses let us say, “the speech given this morning” instead of “the speech that was given this morning” or, in this case “the horse raced past the barn” instead of “the horse that was raced past the barn.”
Another garden path sentence, this one depends on the fact that “complex,” “houses,” and “married” can serve as different parts of speech. Here, “complex” is a noun (a housing complex) instead of an adjective, “houses” is a verb instead of a noun, and “married” is an adjective instead of the past tense of a verb.
Make a sentence with multiple center embeddings. We usually have no problem putting one clause inside another in English. We can take “the rat ate the malt” and stick in more information to make “the rat the cat killed ate the malt.” But the more clauses we add in, the harder it gets to understand the sentence. In this case, the rat ate the malt. After that it was killed by a cat. That cat had been chased by a dog. The grammar of the sentence is fine. The style, not so good.
Another crazy center-embedded sentence. Can you figure it out? Start with “anyone who feels X is likely to agree.” Then go to “anyone who feels if X then Y is likely to agree.” Then fill out the X and Y. You might need a pencil and paper.
Buffalo! It’s a noun! It’s a city! It’s a verb (meaning “to intimidate”)! We’ve discussed thenotorious buffalo sentence before, but it never stops being fun. It plays on reduced relative clauses, different part-of-speech readings of the same word, and center embedding, all in the same sentence. Stare at it until you get the following meaning: “Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.”
This sentence takes advantage of the versatile English –ing. The author of a 19th century grammar guide lamented the fact that one could “run to great excess” in the use of –ing participles “without violating any rule of our common grammars,” and constructed this sentence to prove it. It doesn’t seem so complicated once you realize it means,
“This very superficial grammatist, supposing empty criticism about the adoption of proper phraseology to be a show of extraordinary erudition, was displaying, in spite of ridicule, a very boastful turgid argument concerning the correction of false syntax, and about the detection of false logic in debate.”
Not only is this a great example of the wonderful crazy things you can do within the bounds of proper English, it’s the perfect response to pull out the next time someone tries to criticize your grammar.
Sources of sentences: 1. Groucho Marx; 2. Bever (1970); 3. Wikipedia; 4. Chomsky & Miller(1963); 5. Chomsky & Miller (1963); 6. William Rapaport; 7. Goold Brown (1851).
Primary image courtesy of NationalGrammarDay.com.
March 4, 2013 – 10:06am
Cf. original piece @ : “http://mentalfloss.com/article/49238/7-sentences-sound-crazy-are-still-grammatical”
Seen on fb, source: HelpTraduzioni
!["You shall not pass" -Gandalf [from The Lord of the Rings]](https://onesectranslation.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/shall-not-pass.gif)
And a lion, a lion roars would you not listen?
If a child, a child cries would you not forgive them?
Yeah, I might seem so strong
Yeah, I might speak so long
I’ve never been so wrong
Yeah, I might seem so strong
Yeah, I might speak so long
I’ve never been so wrong
Excuse me for a while,
Turn a blind eye
With a stare caught right in the middle
Have you wondered for a while
I have a feeling deep down
You’re caught in the middle?
If a lion, a lion roars would you not listen?
If a child, a child cries would you not forgive them?
Yeah, I might seem so strong
Yeah, I might speak so long
I’ve never been so wrong
Yeah, I might seem so strong
Yeah, I might speak so long
I’ve never been so wrong
Excuse me for a while
While I’m wide-eyed
And I’m so down caught in the middle
Have you wondered for a while
I have a feeling deep down?
You’re caught in the middle
Yeah, I might seem so strong
Yeah, I might speak so long
I’ve never been so wrong
Yeah, I might seem so strong
Yeah, I might speak so long
I’ve never been so wrong
#perlediunatraduttrice
The only MACHINE TRANSLATION I accept. ;D
choose your taker, lips and purse
oh jees you picked one worse
amnesia, here’s your curse
for every new thing that you find
you’re gonna leave something behind
at ease you’re a skipping stone
knock knees you till you’ve grown
amnesia, pick up the phone
for every new thing that you find
you’re gonna leave something behind
and you can dance me round again
till it feels like everything
is getting smaller
and closer up
the same again tomorrow…
amnesia, the wild bore
that’s the cheese you ate before
amnesia, please get out more
for every new thing that you find
you’re gonna leave something behind
and you can dance me round again
till it feels like everything
is getting smaller
and closer up
the same again tomorrow…
goodnight
#perlediunatraduttrice
#translatorsgonnatranslate
#getinspired
by COREY · 30 COMMENTS
By Corey Heller
Photo Credit: Ben and Kaz Askins
Today was not a day that I am proud of. I yelled at my German husband in front of my multilingual kids. And, as always, I regretted it later.
My patient husband kept calm – which made me even more annoyed.
Is that a German trait, that staying-calm-in-an-argument trait? That trait that can drive me up the wall? My fiery response to it (inherited from my Irish grandparents) was a clear indication that I still haven’t mastered that trait – not yet, at least.
Let’s hope my children inherit my husband’s calm genes. Please!
The thing that I find fascinating is that when I lose my temper and start to yell, it is usually in German, my non-native language. Rarely do I launch into a host of deeply familiar American exclamations.
Instead, I automatically turn to my limited, yet carefully selected, set of German vocabulary – words that I have chosen over the years due to the way they so comfortably roll off my tongue.
Non-native speaker tip: Don’t use swear words in a heated argument that you (1) haven’t learned well enough to use comfortably and (2) you can’t pronounce correctly. I can say this from experience. The impact is less than stellar when a swear word you utter makes your opponent burst out laughing (at you) because he can’t figure out what you just said. “Did you just say I’m a pair of binoculars? Bwahhhahhahh!”
Memorable. But definitely not satisfying. Not in the least.
I enjoy swearing in German. It feels sophisticated compared to the English equivalents. It gives me a certain sense of satisfaction, primarily because the words feel so very empowering and forceful yet not crude and obscene. Those German words just roll of the tongue with such slithering pleasure:
“Verdammt, noch mal!” Doesn’t that sound so much more appealing and mature than “damn it all”? Course, I have to admit that I do enjoy a good “bloody hell” from time to time while watching those fantastic British mysteries on our local PBS TV station! What sophistication. Such refinement.
“Scheiße!” Those two syllables make our English “shit” seem so very vulgar. The smoothness of the “sch,” the openness of the “eye” and the soft ending of the “eh” is so very soothing to the ear, is it not?
Even “Idiot” in German has a kind of low, casualness with that lovely long-o sound. Contrast that with its sharp, edgy American-English cousin. Anything that ends in “ut” like the American pronunciation must be relegated to the compost heap.
Obviously, I didn’t pick up the worst of the worst when it comes to German swear words (thanks to my clean-talking husband and his friends). My repertoire of German swear words is limited to a few targeted general ones that I most likely learned from German television.
The fact that I lack a personal association with these words makes them feel so much less offensive – almost pleasant in my mind. In fact, being that I learned them during a very exciting, joyful time in my life (those first euphoric years with my husband-to-be), it is no surprise that they hold with them many pleasant memories (even though some were used in that same joyful context against that same wonderful person – let’s just blame it on that same Irish blood).
Even though I try never to use swear words in front of my bilingual children, there are times when they slip out. Purely by accident. I swear!
I have even been known to use an occasional English swearword in front of my children now and then. However, I aim to stick with German exclamations: they are so much easier to get away with when my kids repeat them in front of English-speaking community members. I can just pretend like my kids said something extremely cute and praiseworthy: “What did he just say?” they ask. My response: “Oh nothing, really. Just ‘darn it,’ that’s all.” (Inward chuckle.)
I have been asked once or twice by my kids to please define a given swear word in English. As I usually only use German swear words, I always respond with an honestly shocked response: “What!? Where did you learn that word!?”
To which my children answer matter of factly, “From you Mama.”
“Really? Are you sure? From me?”
Scheiße, verdammt noch mal!
On the rare occasions that you lose your temper, which language do you prefer? Do your children ever use swear words? If so, do find that swear words in one language have less of an impact than in your other languages? Are your children allowed to use words in one language but not their translation in the other language(s)?
Corey Heller is the founder of Multilingual Living and the Editor-In-Chief/Publisher ofMultilingual Living Magazine. Multilingual Living is the place where she shares her knowledge about raising multilingual and multicultural children. Corey, an American, and her German husband live in Seattle where they raise and homeschool their three children, ages 12, 10 and 8, in German and English.
CLICK HERE to send her an email!
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