Problem
You translate a sentence in Google but the structure is different. Has the system got it right?
Answer
English sentences are structured noun verb noun or
subject verb object.
SVO for short
Japanese and German sentences are structured subject verb object.
SOV for short.
This means that the Japanese and Germans listen patiently and attentively because they will not know until the last word of your sentence what it means.
Yesterday I spoke to a Japanese woman. I assumed she would know that. She didn't. I was delighted to be able to enlighten her.
I looked up SVO in Wikipedia and learned:
From a table of languages, ignoring languages I have never even heard of, I get this result:
The table does not even mention German, but puts Korean in the list of languages which often use the verb at the end of the sentence.
Like English, it lists Mandarin (official language in China and Singapore) and Cantonese (Hong Kong) as using the verb second and the object at the end.
However, this does not take into account the fact that both Italian and Mandarin often omit the subject. In Italian the verb ending, as in Latin, will tell you whether the doer is the speaker, I, or you or he or she or it or we or they.
In Mandarin and Chinese dialects the subject is often missed and implied by context, especially in sentences answering, 'Can I do this?' where in English we would answer, 'Yes, you can,' you will hear, in English, from a person whose first language is Chinese, 'Can, can!' For them, the subject is implied. I presume they are translating directly from their language which has no subject, rather than simply forgetting the English or shortening to make the translation easier.
You might like to discuss this with your friends who are learning foreign languages, or people you meet on yhour travels.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. I have several other posts on various languages. Please share links with your friends.
You translate a sentence in Google but the structure is different. Has the system got it right?
Answer
English sentences are structured noun verb noun or
subject verb object.
SVO for short
Japanese and German sentences are structured subject verb object.
SOV for short.
This means that the Japanese and Germans listen patiently and attentively because they will not know until the last word of your sentence what it means.
Yesterday I spoke to a Japanese woman. I assumed she would know that. She didn't. I was delighted to be able to enlighten her.
I looked up SVO in Wikipedia and learned:
Albanian, Arabic dialects, Bosnian, Chinese (Cantoneseand Mandarin), English, Estonian, Finnish (but see below), French, Ganda, Greek, Hausa, Icelandic (with the V2 restriction), Italian, Javanese, Kashubian, Khmer, Latvian, Macedonian, Malay (Malaysian and Indonesian), Modern Hebrew, Polish, Portuguese, Quiche, Reo Rapa, Romanian, Rotuman, Russian (but see below), Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Thai and Lao, Ukrainian (but see below), Vietnamese, Yoruba and Zulu.
Ancient Greek has free syntactic order, though Classical Greeks tended to favor SOV. Many famous phrases are SVO, however.
Languages that have SOV structure include Ainu, Akkadian, Amharic, Armenian, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Burushaski, Cherokee, Dakota, Dogon languages, Elamite, Ancient Greek, Gujarati, Hajong, Hindi, Hittite, Hopi, Ijoid languages, Itelmen, Japanese, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Korean, Kurdish, Classical Latin, Lakota, Manchu, Mande languages, Marathi, Mongolian, Navajo, Nepali, Newari, Nivkh, Nobiin, Pāli, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Quechua, Senufo languages, Seri, Sicilian, Sindhi, Sinhalese and most other Indo-Iranian languages, Somali and virtually all other Cushitic languages, Sumerian, Tibetan and nearly all other Tibeto-Burman languages, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and all other Dravidian languages, Tigrinya, Turkic languages, Turkish, Urdu, almost all Uto-Aztecan languages, Uzbek, Yukaghir, and virtually all Caucasian languages.
Standard Mandarin is SVO, but for simple sentences with a clear context, word order is flexible enough to allow for SOV or OSV. German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar. For example, in German, a basic sentence such as "Ich sage etwas über Karl" ("I say something about Karl") is in SVO word order. When a noun clause marker like "dass" or "wer" (in English, "that" or "who" respectively) is used, the verb appears at the end of the sentence for the word order SOV. A possible example in SOV word order would be "Ich sage, dass Karl einen Gürtel gekauft hat." (A literal English translation would be "I say that Karl a belt bought has.") This is V2 word order.
A rare example of SOV word order in English is "I (subject) thee (object) wed (verb)" in the wedding vow "With this ring, I thee wed."[4]
From a table of languages, ignoring languages I have never even heard of, I get this result:
| Word order | English equivalent | Proportion of languages | Example languages | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOV | "She him loves." | 45% | Sanskrit, Hindi, Ancient Greek, Latin, Japanese, Korean | |
| SVO | "She loves him." | 42% | Cantonese, English, French, Hausa, Italian, Malay, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish | |
| VSO | "Loves she him." | 9% | Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic, Irish, Filipino, Welsh | |
The table does not even mention German, but puts Korean in the list of languages which often use the verb at the end of the sentence.
Like English, it lists Mandarin (official language in China and Singapore) and Cantonese (Hong Kong) as using the verb second and the object at the end.
However, this does not take into account the fact that both Italian and Mandarin often omit the subject. In Italian the verb ending, as in Latin, will tell you whether the doer is the speaker, I, or you or he or she or it or we or they.
In Mandarin and Chinese dialects the subject is often missed and implied by context, especially in sentences answering, 'Can I do this?' where in English we would answer, 'Yes, you can,' you will hear, in English, from a person whose first language is Chinese, 'Can, can!' For them, the subject is implied. I presume they are translating directly from their language which has no subject, rather than simply forgetting the English or shortening to make the translation easier.
You might like to discuss this with your friends who are learning foreign languages, or people you meet on yhour travels.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. I have several other posts on various languages. Please share links with your friends.
