[lit-ideas] Re: Hebrew Queer Order? (A Non-Indo-European Survey)
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:13:25 -0500
I was good friends with a gal from Spain several years ago. I knew Spanish,
but as we spent more and more time together my Spanish became much more
fluent, awareness of colloquialisms and slang became part of my vocabulary.
There came a time when I dreamt in Spanish nightly and when, while at home
with my family, or in public, it actually took me a bit to transform my
thoughts into a proper English expression. At that point the word order of
English seemed odd to me. Illogical. Weird.
It wasn't a matter of thinking through the grammar and diagramming the parts
of speech and their word-order -- it was a thoroughly intuitive thing.
I'm not sure I understand your equation re. thought, idea, and form,
Andreas. Care to illuminate?
Julie Krueger
On 10/14/07, Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> When you can speak several languages fluently, the word order in that
> language feels natural. It may seem odd to an American that Danes put the
> article at the end of the noun, but when speaking Danish, it feels right.
>
> Thought isn't formed in language; it is expressed in language. It's one of
> the odd features about language that you don't need to form the idea first
> and then say it.
>
> yrs,
> andreas
> www.andreas.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Wager" <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 4:47 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Hebrew Queer Order? (A Non-Indo-European Survey)
>
>
> >I HIGHLY suspect that the Frenchman had German in mind when he made the
> > comment. In German, all the verbs tend to pile up at the end of the
> > sentence. I once corresponded with a graduate school friend who was
> > studying for a year in Heidelberg. At first, his English letters were
> > proper English letters. But over the course of the year, his verbs kept
> > slipping more and more to the ends of his English sentences, until the
> > only way you could get what he was saying was to "translate" the English
> > back into English.
> >
> > Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx wrote:
> >
> >> Perhaps someone who speaks a non-Indo-European language on this list
> >> (such as Hebrew) can explain us if they think the words in a queer
> >> order, too?
> >>
> >> JL
> >> . . . .
> >>
> >> "Rather, one first has to think it, and then one arranges the words in
> >> that queer order"
> >>
> >> "(A French politician once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the
> >> French language that in it words occur in the order in which one
> >> thinks them.)"
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > -------------------------------------------------
> > "Never attribute to malice that which can be
> > explained by incompetence and ignorance."
> > -------------------------------------------------
> > John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
> > Lisle, IL, USA
> >
> >
> >
>
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