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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Japanese interference in Hindi-learning
Message-ID: <DvL2u4.1Lu@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 22:37:15 GMT
Lines: 25


When I was in my teens I learnt a good deal of Japanese, to the point 
where I was quite at home in basic Japanese conversational sentence 
structures.  Years later, when I took up Hindi (having married a Fiji 
Hindi speaker), I found that while the sentence structure in its broad 
outlines (SOV, postpositions) came easily, I *very often* found myself 
saying things that made no sense in Hindi because I was unintentionally 
and more or less unconsciously dropping Japanese vocabulary items into my 
Hindi sentences, where they "felt right".  (I did this both in cases 
where I did not know the Hindi word and in cases where I did; and I never 
found myself thus unconsciously dropping *English* words into my Hindi, 
though I frequently did so with full malice aforethought.)  Often I 
wouldn't even notice I'd done it until my interlocutor interrupted to ask 
what I meant.  In particular, I created lots of verbs on the model of 
"benkyoo karnaa" (to study) since N + karnaa "felt" like ON + suru...
What other pairs of languages have lent themselves, in the gentle 
readers' experience, to this sort of accidental macaroni?

Leland

--
Liland Brajant ROS'        "Armeo sen kulturo estas malsagxa armeo, kaj
P O Box 30091              malsagxa armeo ne povas venki la malamikon."
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono    --"La Unuecfronto en Kultura Laboro" (30 okt
Tel. (206) 633-2434        1944), _Elektitaj Verkoj de Maux Zedong_ v 3
