More Amyisms

[pne]

The negation of can used to be don't can ("She don't can sing") but is now often can't can ("She can't can sing"). Amusing :)

She still often uses "can it" rather than "can do it", as in German. (For example, "I can that by myself already" or "Can you it, too?".)

She also seems to be coming to grips with the adjective–adverb distinction; the other day she said, "I just burped loud... (short pause) ...ly".

In German, she sometimes uses a word that sounds a bit like "iffer", which appears to mean "whether"; for example, "Guck mal nach iffer sie noch schläft" (Have a look to see whether she's still sleeping). I imagine the -er ending is from English "whether"; I'm not sure where the rest of the word comes from or why she doesn't simply use "ob".

When I say, "I wonder whether [something or other]/I wonder what [subject verb]", she'll often respond, "I either". (Which is another Amyism for standard "I don't, either"; with several words that occur in negative sentences, she'll often leave out the negative.) I wonder what it's supposed to be a response to; "I don't know whether [something or other]", perhaps? Since "wonder" is not negative syntactically.

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

I guess she must be so confused sometimes...

Oh, I'm sure!

"We have to be very carefully walking down the stairs." "We have to walk down the stairs careful." -- What do you mean, they are both wrong? I thought I had just understood which to use! It seems like whatever I say, you correct me! Do the stairs need the -ly on "careful" or not, now?!

That was probably the most common situation where she got things wrong, and I thought she must have been so proud of herself for including the -ly in "we have to be carefully". Poor girl :)