Ah! Deutsch ist Deutsch...
Debo reconocer que en el año y medio que llevo viviendo en tierras de habla alemana, debo reconocer que a pesar de los problemas que me trae, no me he esforzado por aprender el idioma. Aunque tomo cursos y hago las tareas, no me esfuerzo por aprenderme el vocabulario, y no practico el idioma en ningún otro momento.
Sin embargo hasta ahora me ha parecido muy bonito, si el alemán se traduce tal cual a español, suena a un español muy antiguo, como una canción. Tiene reglas muy definidas (muchas, talvez demasiadas) para cada cosa, y todo debe ir en su lugar. Entonces nos aprendemos reglas, o cosas sin regla, por ejemplo los géneros de los sustantivos, que no siguen una regla específica. Sin embargo todo era coherente... hasta hoy. Me encontré la siguiente oración en un libro de gramática:
Sin embargo hasta ahora me ha parecido muy bonito, si el alemán se traduce tal cual a español, suena a un español muy antiguo, como una canción. Tiene reglas muy definidas (muchas, talvez demasiadas) para cada cosa, y todo debe ir en su lugar. Entonces nos aprendemos reglas, o cosas sin regla, por ejemplo los géneros de los sustantivos, que no siguen una regla específica. Sin embargo todo era coherente... hasta hoy. Me encontré la siguiente oración en un libro de gramática:
Es sind Fotos aus England.Lo que me sorprende es que hayan conjugado el verbo (sein) en plural (sind) por "las fotos", pero le hayan agregado un "es" (singular). Es una incoherencia que no había visto en inglés (y menos en español), sobre todo porque la regla no es así. Sin embargo, le preguntamos al maestro sobre esta frase, (porqué no se había escrito "sie" en lugar de "es", y nos dijo: Ah! Deutsch ist Deutsch, Deutsch ist immer Deutsch...
posted by Rochy at 6:19 PM
3 Comments:
Hola!
Portuguese and Spanish do have the same kind of construction:
"Esto són fotos de Inglaterra"
"Isso sao fotos da Inglaterra"
The only thing is that German also allows the use of the personal pronoun "Es", in the place of demonstrative pronouns.
The sentence only sounds strange if you read it out of context.
Imagine you have an envelope in your hands, and then I ask you "Was ist das?", pointing to the envelope. It sounds quite natural for you to answer "Es sind Fotos aus England" or "Das sind Fotos aus England".. Don't you think??
The essence of the problem is that "Sein" (or "ser", or "to be") can be seen as a binary predicate with 2 'Nominativ' arguments. Since both arguments are in Nominativ case, it is sometimes hard (and actually pointless) to determine which of the arguments is the subject. This is not a problem when both arguments agree in number (when both are singular or both are plural). But when they disagree, we cannot decide how to conjugate the verb.
I know that in Portuguese there is a grammatical rule establishing that in these cases we should conjugate the verb in the plural.
By the similarity of the languages, I would say that spanish has the same rule.
English is a mess, and conjugating in the plural usually makes the sentences sound very unnatural. I think they simply avoid this problem by trying not to use the verb to be in these cases (for example, "this [envelope] has the fotos from England").
I'm not sure if there is a rule for these cases in German (maybe you could tell your teacher this explanation and ask him. Or, if he doesn't understand, you could simply ask him if the sentence "Es ist Fotos aus England" would also be considered grammatically correct or if it would "sound ok". It doesn't sound ok for me.).
Russian has probably the most elegant solution, since they don't have the verb "to be" in the present. However, they do have the verb to be in the past and in the future. And now I am wondering how they conjugate it in these number-disagreeing cases.
We must also note that, in the translation of the verb "to be" to predicate logic, "to be" has actually 7 different meanings that I know of. And they should all be translated to different predicates:
1) "...has the property...": as in "Your heart is red", "My dog is cute"
2) "...is a member of a class...": as in "My dog is a mammal", "Bruno is a human being". (This meaning is in principle different from meaning number 1, because in this case, the subject inherits all properties of the class. However it seems that we could easily represent one meaning using the other, as in "...has the property of being a member of the class..." or "...is a member of the class of those indivuduals who have the property...". This is what is done in Description Logics, since they only have the concept of "Concept", without distinguishing between "property" and "class". I would like to investigate this further someday...)
3) "...is such that all its individuals have the property...": as in "Flowers are colourfull".
4) "...is contained in...": as in "Dogs are mammals".
5) "...is the same individual as...": as in "Bruno is the writer of this text". (In this case, the verb "to be" is a symmetric predicate. For example, "The writer of this text is Bruno" is equally valid and contains the same information. This is the meaning of "to be" in sentences like "Es sind die Fotos aus England")
6) "...is the same class as...": as in "Wolves are 'Canis Lupus'".
7) "...exists": as in "[I think, therefore] I am". (In this case, the verb to be is translated as a unary predicate. This meaning doesn't exist in Portuguese).
8) There is another meaning of the words "is", "are", "be", when these are used as nouns and not as verbs. As in "'is' is the third person singular present conjugation of the verb 'to be'". (In this case, these words are not translated to predicates but to terms/individuals).
In other words (namely, those of Object Oriented Programming vocabulary), the verb "to be" is a heavily overloaded function(predicate), accepting different types of arguments and returning different meanings for different received types.
And here is a poem I have written some months ago, about some of the meanings of the verb "to be"... :-)
"This Poem" is "This Text".
"This Text" is "This Poem".
Hence, "is" is reflexive.
But "reflexive" is not "is".
Therefore, "is" is not reflexive.
"is" is just "is".
just "is" is "is".
"is" is...
Deutsch wird immer Deutsch sein.
Zaz! Que contrariedad! Deberias entrar a la Academia de Lengua Alemana y hacerles saber su error :Ñ jajajajaja... No te creas. Ah, y bailarles en hawaiiano para que te tomen en cuenta :ÑÑÑÑÑÑ!! jajajaja
Pero en fin, que peiper con el idioma! Por eso uno no aprende tan rapido ese tipo de cosas (mas que el espaniol... por que sera? :P)
Aloha! Te mando un beso y un abrazo,
Lalo.
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