Foreigner talk

A discussion of the peculiarities of languages and the differences between them.
frank
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Foreigner talk

Postby frank » Sat May 13, 2006 7:36 pm

This evening, while watching 2 minutes of a rather bad French movie, i heard following phrase (context: French guy meeting a Japanese guy):

Moi proteger toi.
[lit. me protect you]

This got translated in Dutch as:
Ik jou beschermen
[lit. I you protect]

In regular French, this would be
Je te protège.
[lit. I you protect]

While the normal Dutch phrase would be:
Ik bescherm jou.
[lit. I protect you]

What struck me is the place of the objects 'toi' and 'jou' (you) in both the correct sentences and in the foreigner talk.

How would you translate the French FT sentence "Moi proteger toi" in English?

Me protect you.
or
I protect you.

What about the other Romance and Germanic languages?
I'm not only interested in the word order, but also in the usage of the subject / object form of the personal pronouns.

Similar question for "Tarzan talk"

English "Me Tarzan." ('me' as subject, object form)
French: "Moi Tarzan."
Dutch: "Ik Trazan." ('ik' as subject, subject form)
(not 'Mij Tarzan').

How is this translated in the other Romance and Germanic languages?

Thanks in advance,

Frank

anders
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Postby anders » Sun May 14, 2006 6:48 am

A deacon was briefed beforehand on what his role would be at an upcoming missionary banquet and was told to be sensitive to the fact that there would be guests from foreign countries who were not accustomed to American culture.

During the banquet, the deacon found himself seated next to an African man who was hungrily devouring his portion of chicken. Trying to think of some way to communicate with the man, the deacon leaned over and said, "Chomp, chomp, good, huh?" The man, gazing back at the deacon, simply replied, "Mmmmm good!"

A few moments later, as the African man savoured a delicious cup of coffee, the deacon leaned over and commented, "Glug, glug, good, huh?" The man, a little uncertain, replied, "Mmmmm good!"

To the deacon's dismay, when the speaker for the evening was announced, it happened to be the African gentleman next to him. The gentleman got up and delivered a flawless message in Oxford-accented English. Upon concluding, he headed toward the deacon, whose face was aglow with red. The speaker simply said, "Bla, bla, good, huh?"

----

For more material on Trazan, go here. His surname, Apanson, would be Apeson or Monkeyson in English. In our vocabulary, 'apa' is either; to single out apes we have to say "människoapor" (human-apes/monkeys). AFAIK, we have no word to specify the monkey simians.

The "Bi bi viti limm" is Ba ba black sheep, with all vowels = 'i'.

Itma Hoha (1950) by Povel Ramel will be performed and loved for centuries to come.
Irren ist männlich

Brazilian dude
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Postby Brazilian dude » Sun May 14, 2006 10:17 am

I think this foreigner talk is silly, since the other person will not even understand those three words that are being enunciated, so why butcher your own language? Anyway, I think it would go something like this:

Portuguese: Eu proteger você/tu.
Spanish: Yo proteger usted/tú.
Italian: Io proteggere lei/tu.
French: Moi protéger vous/toi.
Catalan: Jo protegir vostè/tu.
Romanian: Eu proteja dumneata/dumneavoastră/tu.

I'll leave Germanic languages to someone else.

Brazilian dude
Languages rule!

frank
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Postby frank » Sun May 14, 2006 10:37 am

Thanks for the translations!
Weird that French pops out in its non-usage 'je' (subject form of the pronoun).
I think this foreigner talk is silly, since the other person will not even understand those three words that are being enunciated, so why butcher your own language?
I agree it's rather silly, but every time i go out with my foreign students on the streets and have them e.g. ask questions to natives, lots of the latter will switch to the FT-mode...

F

Brazilian dude
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Postby Brazilian dude » Sun May 14, 2006 11:14 am

Weird that French pops out in its non-usage 'je' (subject form of the pronoun).
That is because French uses les pronoms toniques (moi, toi, lui, elle, nous, vous, eux, elles) when there's a need to stress them. Je is too weak and could not be found in that position.

Brazilian dude
Languages rule!

tcward
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Postby tcward » Sun May 14, 2006 10:27 pm

Speaking out of ignorance, why wouldn't the typical French phrase be Moi, je te protège...

I get the whole pronoms toniques thing, but changing the entire sentence structure isn't making any sense to me.

-Tim

Brazilian dude
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Postby Brazilian dude » Mon May 15, 2006 9:51 am

Speaking out of ignorance, why wouldn't the typical French phrase be Moi, je te protège...
It would, but we are talking about agrammatical sentences here in which only a pronoun (normally nominative), a non-conjugated verb and another pronoun (also nominate) are used for "simplicity"'s sake..

Brazilian dude
Languages rule!

sluggo
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foreign translator talk

Postby sluggo » Wed May 31, 2006 11:47 pm

This original post is reminding me of the old AltaVista game, where some well-known text is dumped into the AltaVista translator bot, pureed into, say, Italian, and then regurgitated back to English. I remember the lyrics to Isaac Hayes' song "Shaft" coming back something like:

Who is the dick classified black that is one machine of sex to the chicks?
Tree!
Cursed right.

Closed you mouth!
And we can scarvali
(can you dig it?)
Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots! Knife no one, fink!

EZ2TALK
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Postby EZ2TALK » Thu Jun 01, 2006 2:06 am

I think this foreigner talk is silly, since the other person will not even understand those three words that are being enunciated, so why butcher your own language? Anyway, I think it would go something like this:

Portuguese: Eu proteger você/tu.
Spanish: Yo proteger usted/tú.
Italian: Io proteggere lei/tu.
French: Moi protéger vous/toi.
Catalan: Jo protegir vostè/tu.
Romanian: Eu proteja dumneata/dumneavoastră/tu.

I'll leave Germanic languages to someone else.



Brazilian dude
forgive my ignorance on the topic of translations,,I only recognize the Spanish. But why is it tranlated into the infinitive rather than "yo protejo usted" or "yo te protejo"

sorry if this is a dumb question....but I dont get it>

Karen

frank
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Postby frank » Thu Jun 01, 2006 4:22 am

I think this foreigner talk is silly, since the other person will not even understand those three words that are being enunciated, so why butcher your own language? Anyway, I think it would go something like this:

Portuguese: Eu proteger você/tu.
Spanish: Yo proteger usted/tú.
Italian: Io proteggere lei/tu.
French: Moi protéger vous/toi.
Catalan: Jo protegir vostè/tu.
Romanian: Eu proteja dumneata/dumneavoastră/tu.
I'll leave Germanic languages to someone else.
Brazilian dude
forgive my ignorance on the topic of translations,,I only recognize the Spanish. But why is it tranlated into the infinitive rather than "yo protejo usted" or "yo te protejo"
sorry if this is a dumb question....but I dont get it>
Karen
Hi Karen,
The topic was foreigner talk, i.e. simplification of the sentences because the speaker thinks the foreigner will understand better. Hence in the context of this topic BD's "wrong translations" are very correct :-).

Frank

EZ2TALK
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Posts: 28
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Location: Tucson, AZ USA

translations

Postby EZ2TALK » Thu Jun 01, 2006 7:30 pm

hi Frank, Thank you for the explanation> I had just never seen it as such....karen


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