Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 11, 2001, 22:24
Tristan wrote:
>On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote: > > > Tristan wrote: > > >Even I, a native English speaker who has never spoken a language >without > > >he/she/it, mucks them up, as well as brother and sister (so I normally > > >fall back on `sibling')... > > > > That's another weirdity of learning English in school - they tell you >that > > there simply is no direct translation of the Swedish word _syskon_ > > "sibling", and that if you desperately need to translate ie you have to >use > > "brother or sister" (unless you've got a feminist teacher - she would >tell > > you to write "sisiter or brother"!:-)). > >Well, if it's any consolation, `sibling' isn't the kind of word people >randomly learn like they do `brother' or `sister'---it's generally >specifically learnt. >
I know it isn't every-other-sentence word like Swedish "syskon", but I wish the teachers would be honest enough to say it if you ask for a gloss of "syskon", even if they'd then have tell you not to use it too much. Andreas _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp