Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Friday, December 7, 2001, at 07:30 , laokou wrote:
>
> > From: "Yoon Ha Lee"
> >
> >>  laokou wrote:
> >
> >> Korean too.  :-)
> >
> >> In Korean it gets even better/worse: the "3rd person
> >> pronoun" in Korean really is a demonstrative.  <G>
> >
> > I steered clear of that part of the Orient because we've had discussions
> > on
> > the list before about whether Japanese has distinguishing pronouns. It
> > does,
> > of course. "Kare" for "he" and "kanojoo" for "she". I've only heard them
> > used in translationese examples, where natives seemed to prefer genderless
> > "ano hito", "kono hito" etc. Japanese students of English also made s/he
> > mistakes all over the place, making me wonder how entrenched the
> > kare/kanojoo distinction really was (or a faux distinction à la chinoise)
> > .
> >
> > One wonders (suspects) if Korean ESL students make the same error in
> > English.
> >
> > Nevertheless, it ain't a pitfall.
>
> I can attest that my dad, a native Korean speaker who has been "fluent" in
> English for many years and has almost no discernible accent, *still*
> sometimes refers to me and my sister as "he" by accident.  <G>  He'll also
> otherwise confuse "he" and she," "him" and "her."  I have other Korean
> relatives who make the same mistake occasionally when they attempt English.
>
Hungarian speakers do that too; even I, who grew up in Canada with English
all around, still occasionally mix up he and she.

---ferko

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