pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)
Philip Newton ([personal profile] pne) wrote2009-02-05 12:09 pm
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry
Entry tags:

Anglicisms in Amy's German

Heard today: "Meine Puppes Haare müssen auch gebürstet!"

"Meine Puppes Haare" looks like a, more-or-less, morpheme-by-morpheme translation of "My doll's hair".

Standard German equivalents include "Meiner Puppe Haare", with proper genitive rather than clitic -s à l'anglaise (though that sounds old-fashioned and rather "creaky"); "die Haare meiner Puppe", with postponed genitive (though that also sounds a bit formal); and "die Haare von meiner Puppe", with "von" + dative, which is probably the most commonly-encountered possessive construction hereabouts.

(As for the omission of passive auxiliary, I've mentioned that before somewhere. I'm not sure where it comes from, or whether the difference between English auxiliary-participle word order in "must be(aux) brushed(ppl)" and German participle-auxiliary order in "müssen gebürstet(ppl) werden (aux)" is an influence.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com 2009-02-05 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
What, no "meiner Puppe ihre Haare"?
ext_78: A picture of a plush animal. It looks a bit like a cross between a duck and a platypus. (Default)

[identity profile] pne.livejournal.com 2009-02-06 05:43 am (UTC)(link)
The "hereabouts" was deliberate.

I've heard of that construction, but I don't think it gets much use up here.

There's also "meine Puppe ihre Haare"; I think I've heard both nominative and dative for the possessor. (And though both feel nonstandard to me, dative for possessor feels a bit more correct -- so "meinem Vater sein Hund" over "mein Vater sein Hund".)
Flat | Top-Level Comments Only