Re: Ungrammaticalization?

On Sat, 17 Jul 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> FFlores wrote:
> Reminds me of a time in Spanish class when a friend of mine couldn't
> remember the word for "to die", so she said "die-ir?" (/dajir/)  :-)
We use English (and other languages) in our Dutch all the time. It's
worse now we've just spent a week in London, because our brains are
firmly set to English (you may notice some improvement in our writing
as well).

I remember a girl in German class who was given the Dutch translation
of a well-known German nonsense poem to translate as a punishment
(this was a very unusual teacher; he also used to deal out poetry to
memorise as punishment, and I once missed four months of German class
because I stubbornly refused to do it, convinced as I was of my
innocence). This girl, after much hedging about and blushing, managed
"Ich wollte ich w=E4re ein Kipf" for "Ik wou dat ik een kip was" ("I
wish I were a chicken"). It should have been "Huhn", of course, but
she gave the Dutch word exactly the form that it would have had in
German.

    Irina

            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
       http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)