Lost in (Amy's) Translation

[pne]

The other day, Amy was talking about something that sounded like sweevers to me, and I had no idea what she was talking about. She got frustrated and burst into tears.

Today, while playing with her Noah's ark, she said the word again, and I twigged. I pointed at a zebra and asked her, "What's that called?" "A sweever," she said. Ah. Would you have guessed?

About the only thing similar were the vowels (I say zee-bra, not zeb-ra)... I mean, /s/ and /z/ are both alveolar fricatives, and /b/ and /v/ are both voiced and have a labial component... but I still had no idea what she meant the first time I heard it.

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In other news, this evening I knocked on the door of Amy's playhouse and she answered, "Inside!"

That amused me :) Almost certainly a translation of German "Herein!" ("inside", in the directional sense, implying movement towards the inside, rather than in the positional sense).

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In other other news, I recently heard several attempts at using a word from one language in the other, modified phonemically.

The ones I remember now are, "The girls are sitting on the veez (= Wiese)", "Und dann kam aus seiner Nase ßmok... Schmok (= smoke)", "Guck mal, Erik, der Film ist auf Swiss Deutsch!", "Daddy ist ein lejsi bumm (= lazy bum)".

That's fairly new, since in the past she's usually avoided using words from another language in her sentences.

And the last one is the most remarkable, to my mind, because I'm not sure where she got the correspondence from the sound in English mutter to the one in German Mutter (roughly, the one in English foot)—both sounds correspond in writing to the letter u, but since she can neither read nor write, I wonder what made her equate one sound with the other.

Comments

[psitticism.livejournal.com]

Re. zebras: Wow. I would never have guessed that. Oh, and you twigged? Is that British? I've never heard that before.

Re. code-switching: That's so cute. I love reading about Amy's bilingual development, especially these little phases she goes through. What a lovely little case study you have going on there. As for the Mutter-mutter sound correspondence, I know at least the way I pronounce it, the first vowel is "mother" is the same as the one in "mutter," so could it be that she's using the German word with the English vowel? That would be really interesting, because it would imply that she's modifying the sound based not on spelling but on meaning. It's really interesting either way. It will be neat to see if these things change when she does start reading and writing.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Oh, and you twigged? Is that British? I've never heard that before.

Yes, I think it's British -- for "caught on", roughly. Or, as the Urban Dictionary puts it, "To comprehend, understand, get hip to, grok. The news media are finally twigging to the fact that..."

As for the Mutter-mutter sound correspondence, I know at least the way I pronounce it, the first vowel is "mother" is the same as the one in "mutter," so could it be that she's using the German word with the English vowel?

Ah, no, those were just words I used to illustrate the sounds in question - I was looking for a sequence of letters that is a word in both English and German.

The actual word she used was "bumm" to translate "bum".

Now, "bumm" *is* a word in German, but only kind of; it's onomatopoeia for something heavy falling down, or for the sound of a canon shot, or similar "thumpy" noises. Certainly not with a meaning of its own, let alone one related to being a lazy bum.

Hm... maybe she got it from "bump" (English) / "bumm" (German)?

[psitticism.livejournal.com]

AH, okay. I get it know (I twigged?). Sorry. I suppose it could be from "bump." I remember thinking the word "bum" was onomatopoeiac as a child. I remember telling my mom that the people at my uncle's party were doing "bum" dances. She thought I meant they were shaking their "bums" while they danced, but I was actually refering to the bass line of the music. "Bum" was also the sound a human rear end made when it hit a chair, so the association with butts and with laziness made perfect sense to me as a kid. I haven't looked into the actual etymology, but I clearly remember that bit of logic from my childhood. Anyway, that'll be all for that tangent for today.

[psitticism.livejournal.com]

I get it now, not "know."

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

'Twig' is, I think, originally Scottish, coming via Scots from Gaelic tuig, 'understand'. I've heard people suggest that the Irish equivalent is the source of 'dig', coming from the phrase 'An dtuigeann tú?', 'Do you understand?'

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

Surely there are corresponding words like dumm/dumb that she might know. But I can't think of any others just now. And it could just be a chance association, or she may have heard someone else borrowing words before.