Re: Cookbook

To contribute some more:

Japanese writes its recipes in the polite -masu form.  Since Japanese
does not distinguish subject in its verb inflections, and pronouns can
be dropped, it is pretty much up to the reader's imagination if the
recipe is written in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person, the impersonal,
or whatever else.

Hindi generally uses the 2nd person polite present subjunctive.  Sometimes
there is some trace of the indicative, but those are typically just
explanations, rather than instructions.

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 02:26:08PM -0400, Justin Mansfield wrote:
>  Anyway, something to worry about when translating recipes: different
> languages handle cooking instructions differently. English uses the
> imperative, French I would imagine uses the infinitive. I'm told that German
> uses the subjunctive in the impersonal (mann soll... excuse my terrible
> German grammar and orthography, as I have the Yiddish me' zol in mind ;) ),
> and that Hungarian uses the first person!
>  In my experience, Ancient Roman recipes fluctuate between 2nd singular
> present subjunctive, present indicative, future indicative, and present
> imperative and future imperative, often even within the same recipe! The
> Akkadian recipes I've read use the imperative... I think (I don't really
> speak the language!), except that there's one where the imperative alternates
> with a first person form, as if the recipe is a transcription of a chef
> dividing the labor with his assistant!
>  So... just keep all this mess in mind while you're translating your
> recipes!
>
> JDM