Anglicisms in Amy's German

[pne]

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.)

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What, no "meiner Puppe ihre Haare"?

[pne.livejournal.com]

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".)