How to express hunger

[pne]

Erik is nearly a head taller than Amy, despite being nine months younger.

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A recent possibly Anglicism in Amy's German: she's taken to saying "Ich bin hungrig" and "Ich bin durstig", which would be literal translations of "I am hungry" and "I am thirsty" (respectively). And those are ways of saying it in German, but not that common, I would say; more common is "Ich habe Hunger" and "Ich habe Durst" (I have hunger/thirst). But presumably she's taken the adjective road so that she can use the same construction in both her languages, which is probably easier. (She also used to go through a phase where she mixed the two constructions, resulting in "Ich bin Hunger" and "I have hungry".)

And that made me think about different ways to express this:

• The copula+adjective route, as in English ("I am hungry"). This probably works in most languages, too, even if this construction is not the most common.
• The copula+preposition+noun route as in (I think) Maltese: jien bil-ġuħ "I [am] with-the-hunger"
• The have+noun route, as in German ("Ich habe Hunger"), French ("j'ai faim"), Spanish ("tengo hambre"), Romansh ("jau hai fom"), etc. etc.
• The verb route:
  • Personal verb, as in Greek ("πεινάω" - "I hunger")
  • Impersonal verb, as in German ("mich hungert" - "[it] hungers [to] me")
• Other circumlocutions, as in Japanese (お腹が空いた・喉が渇いた o-naka ga suita; nodo ga kawaita "[my] stomach has become empty / [my] throat has become dry" for hunger and thirst, respectively)

Anything else interesting in other languages?

Comments

[pthalo]

Éhes/szomjas vagyok (I am)
Gladan/žedan sam (I am)

for Hungarian and Serbian :)

ASL doesn't really use the verb "to be", so it's just "I" "hungry" and "I thirsty"

[pne.livejournal.com]

How much does ASL distinguish between verbs and adjectives?

In other words, could it also be "I" "hunger", "I" "thirst", or is only a translation as "hungry, thirsty" justified?

[pthalo]

hm, that's a good question. Nouns vs verbs are easy to spot because nouns are usually signed with a double movement. It might possibly be a verb. It's very similar to the sign for "wish" same handshape, same motion, some everything, except that the sign hunger is longer (goes farther down the chest towards the stomach) and wish just goes a short distance.

My dictionary says that the same sign as hunger is used for appetite, crave, famished, ravenous, starved, yearn.

As for thirsty, it's also used for parched and thirst

[opal1159.livejournal.com]

Hm...no verb in Chinese.
[person] [stomach] [hungry]

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Except that what you translate as "hungry" (presumably 餓 è) is grammatically a verb in Chinese.

Korean uses a similar locution, i.e. 배가 고파 /pay ka kopha/ "belly SUBJ hunger-INF". Although 고프다 is limited to this expression nowadays, the original meaning is probably "be empty"; cf. 배가 곯아 /pay ka kolh.a/ "belly SUBJ empty-INF" "I'm still hungry" (said after eating some food). (The root of both verbs is presumably 골 /kol/ "hollow; cave".)

[opal1159.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah, [hungry] [stomach] makes it more clearly a verb.

Celtic

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

In the Celtic language, hunger is "on" you, e.g.:

Irish: Tá ocras orm.
Welsh: Mae eisiau bwyd arna fi.

It's not the copula (Irish is, Welsh y(d)w) that is used here, but rather the verb of existence. (Cf. "Tá fíonchaora ar an mbord"/"Mae granwin ar y ford" "There are grapes on the table.")

Incidentally, the Welsh expression for "hunger" here is really "desire [of] eating", which reminds me of something a Dutch acquaintance would say. His parent's didn't allow him to use the words, "I'm hungry" growing up because "In the War, we were hungry!". Instead, he was taught to say "I'd like to eat."

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

In Ubykh, both are just ordinary intransitive verbs: "I am hungry", "I am thirsty". However, there's an intriguing connection between the latter and the noun "water".