Colloquialisms, Barbarisms, Infelicities in one language that are standard in another

General discussion about learning languages
SaussuresGhost
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed May 10, 2023 1:44 pm
Languages: English (N), German (B2), Mandarin Chinese (Beginner)
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Colloquialisms, Barbarisms, Infelicities in one language that are standard in another

Postby SaussuresGhost » Wed May 10, 2023 2:05 pm

I find that one of the most fun parts of learning a language is finding bits that are non-standard, even heavily stigmatised, in your native language but standard in your TL, and vice-versa.

Obvious examples are Dutch groter als (stigmatised) vs. German größer als (standard), or American English dropping explicit adverbial marking (“she ran real fast”) vs. German not having any in the first place (sie ist sehr schnell gerannt)

Those are pretty shallow, but differences can go deeper to pragmatic or stylistic levels. One I’ve been thinking about is how Chinese is comfortable to say one thing is “the same as” another (跟…一样) when they only share the one characteristic in question. “I am the same as my brother; we both like bowling” would be a pretty weird sentence in English, or at least suggest that the two of you have very little personality, but it would be a literal translation of a normal Chinese sentence.

Have you found anything like this in your TLs?
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