Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

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.

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

Error: Keyboard not attached.  Press F1 to continue.

Replies