Monday, April 11, 2011

Linguistic nuances, Part III

The English sentence "I missed you" can mean a lot of things. Take these three meanings:

1. you've been gone. I've been sad.
2. we were gonna meet at Starbucks. I came too late, and you were already gone.
3. I threw an object at you and it hit the wall next to you instead.

If your neurons are hard-wired in English, you may not immediately differentiate between these meanings. But in German that's easier, because there are three different words for the English verb "to miss". You would say:

1. Ich habe dich vermisst. (I missed you)
2. Ich habe dich verpasst. (I missed you)
3. Ich habe dich verfehlt. (I missed you)

Likewise, in Spanish there is a similar differentiation:

1. Te extrañé (or "te heché de menos", depending on region) (I missed you)
2. ... (I missed you). (I don't think there's a direct Spanish equivalent to this one. You could use a different sentence, like "nos perdimos" [we lost each other], but maybe a Spanish speaker wants to correct me on this?)
3. Te fallé (I missed you)

My latest experience of Dutchness was when I suddenly realized that I only know one of these in Dutch, and am not sure whether Dutch is like English in that that same word applies to the other two situations as well, or whether Dutch is like German and would have another word for each situation. I can understand it well enough when someone else says it, but if I say it, I feel like I'm committing an awkward transliteration. To me, one sign of someone who has learned to "think" in a language is that these questions don't even arise.

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Blogger Luc said...

The Dutch and English are the same on this missing topic. Now the next question is off course: does the English follow the Dutch or the other way around? A short quest on internet seems to indicate none of the above: they both go back to the same, perhaps gothic, source. (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=m&p=24 and http://books.google.nl/books?id=9_X44k9-3j8C&pg=PA446&lpg=PA446&dq=etymologie+missen&source=bl&ots=ZPNV3Fm6ln&sig=S8QTYBGjg77cBD7Mu0T_GSQTOPo&hl=nl&ei=NqCiTZ7LD4PpOaSw2TU&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=etymologie%20missen&f=false)

8:41 AM  

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