Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 23

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August 23

Leaving out the word "the" when English is not one's primary language

A professor of mine does not speak English as a first language (although she does speak it very well) and she will usually leave the word "the" out of her sentences, such as saying, "When you take membrane from beneath the gingival tissue, make sure you do so with caution." My presumption is that, because she speaks fluent Hebrew (presumably as her first language), and in Hebrew, "the" is adjoined to the following word as a prefix, when she first learned how to speak English by translating Hebrew word-for-word into English in her mind, the word "the" got lost in the switch because it was affixed to the following word. I speak only English, and when I try to speak Hebrew (though I wouldn't actually consider myself to be speaking it :), I translate each word separately, and thus come up with lots of errors of conjunction and the like -- I just figured that my professor is having the same problem in reverse. But, then again, this may happen with people who speak another language (not Hebrew) as their primary language while speaking English, in which the primary language does not have "the" as a prefix. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 04:26, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a number of Indian colleagues that tend to do this also. "The" must be more of a European construct, that Asians find confusing somehow. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 04:34, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

"The" isn't a European construct, as many non-European languages have a definite article. However, it's also common for languages to lack it (e.g. Russian), or express it somehow other than by using a word coming directly before the noun (e.g. Bulgarian uses a suffix, e.g. myzh 'a man', myzhyt 'the man'). Mo-Al (talk) 04:39, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Aha, so it seems like they would tend to translate both of those words simply as "man" and leave out the article. And it sounds funny to us because the Romance languages and English (and its cousin, German) put the article before the word. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 04:58, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

My wife's ob/gyn is Sephardic and we laugh about how he says, "...and then you can go to mikvah." I don't know what his primary language is, though. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 04:42, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

BBBugs may be somewhat correct, as most linguists seem to think think that the Proto-Indo-European language did not have an article and that it developed out of the demonstrative pronoun in some of the extant Indo-European languages. Our entry on article points to the Latin "ille, illa, illud" and the fairly similar sounding articles as used in surviving Romance languages. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 08:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

PS: It may also be relevant to point out that, whilst most languages have but a few articles, Wikipedia has 13,000,000 articles in 260 languages. None of these, however, is a definite article :) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 08:30, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, those cunning linguists. Even though the article exists in Latin, as far as I know it is seldom used, although those 3 words are obviously the roots of the definite articles in the Romance languages. I should point out that while most wikipedia articles are indefinite, in that they are subject to change by anyone who can edit, wiki does have some definite articles: those that have been fully protected due to assault by users that have, ironically enough, been blocked indefinitely. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 11:47, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Wonderfully pointed-out irony, Bugsy. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:53, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The different formation of the definite article in different IE languages, and its absence in the earlier instances of some groups, suggests very strongly that it did not exist in proto IE. I don't believe there was a definite article in classical Latin, even for translating from Greek (which had one); but obviously the use of forms of 'ille' as an article appeared at some time in the history of Latin.

All the Semitic languages I know anything about have a definite article (prefixed in Hebrew and Arabic, suffixed in Aramaic and Amharic) so I am surprised that it is a Hebrew speaker that is making the error the OP mentions: it is very familiar with speakers of languages which do not, such as Russian or Japanese. --ColinFine (talk) 12:52, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah...but my second point relates to just that! It is my own speculation that Hebrew-to-English translation allows for a novice to inadvertantly skip "the" because it exists as a prefix and not as a word by itself. I speculate as such because I recognize my own ineffective English-to-Hebrew translation based on my word-for-word translation. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:56, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Even western languages with both indefinite and definite articles will use them in ways different from English. French, for example, uses a definite article with abstract nouns (le bonheur, happiness), and as an equivalent to English "some" or "any" (J'ai mangé de la salade hier, I ate (some) salad yesterday). --- OtherDave (talk) 13:48, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The Romance languages appear to use the definite article more than English does. It's almost used like a "title". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:55, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Mmmh, like "the white house", "the queen" , "the titanic" ?83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:41, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually "the White House", "the Titanic", etc. "The" is needed in those cases because it's pointing to definite objects, hence the term "definite article", as opposed to "a white house", or "a queen". I was thinking more in terms of expressions like "el español". We don't say "The Spanish", we simply say "Spanish", unless we spell out "The Spanish Language". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 19:22, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Not just Romance languages - German does that too: German name#Order of names and use of articles. -- 128.104.112.102 (talk) 17:29, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

@DRosenbach: Perhaps that is relevant, but I'm a bit dubious: I don't think 'words' are that clearly separated in our minds. I wonder if it might be significant that in the construct state in Hebrew, the head noun does not take the definite prefix: אשת האיש‎ "wife (const) the man". However, my impression is that this sort of construction is not common in modern Hebrew, being replaced by האשא של האיש‎ "the wife of the man", so it may not be relevant. (Compare "the man's wife" and "the wife of the man" in English). --ColinFine (talk) 18:22, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I wouldn't count leaving out the definite article as a grammatical error for an Indian, since it's a general and recognized feature of Indian English. It's hard some times to say what's 'wrong' given the variations between established English dialects. For instance, Americans say "taken to the hospital", where Brits would omit the definite article. Both Brits and Americans would say "go to town" but inconsistently still say "go to the city", whereas Indian English would omit the article there. --Pykk (talk) 21:23, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

With regard to your professor, I think I may help you, since I'm a Hebrew speaker too, yet not a native English speaker.

As far as I know, Hebrew speakers who start learning English find no problem when coping with the "the": its being a prefix in Hebrew can't constitute a reasonable ground for the professor's avoiding the "the" in some (rare) words (e.g. membrane). I think the reason for her behaviour is due to another fact, i.e. due to a Hypercorrection: English tends to omit the "the" more than Hebrew does, e.g. in sentences like: "I'm lying under sun" (whereas the parallel sentence in Hebrew would always be: "I'm lying under the sun", and never: "I'm lying under sun"). Unfortunately, the professor has got no general rule for knowing when the "the" should be omitted in English, so she omits it even when unnecessary.

HOOTmag (talk) 18:27, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your insight. I can think of few contexts in which "I'm lying under sun" would be possible; but "in sunlight" is possible in some contexts, though it cannot be used in reference to a specific occasion. --ColinFine (talk) 18:53, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I've got some clearer examples:

• "President Obama". In Hebrew, one must say: "The president Obama" (i.e. the president, Mr. Obama; i.e. the president, being Mr. Obama). The avoidance of "the" is totally prohibited here.
• "The issue of security bothers me". In Hebrew one must say: "The issue of the security bothers me", and mustn't omit the "the". Similarly, phrases of the form: "the X of the Y" are quite rare in English, and one would rather use forms like: "the X of Y" (e.g. "the issue of economy") instead, whereas the Hebrew phrases must be of the form "the X of the Y" ("the issue of the economy").
• "My neighbor". Hebrew: "the neighbor of mine" (but never: "my neighbor"). Again, the "the" mustn't be avoided.

HOOTmag (talk) 19:08, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Except that "the issue of economy" and "the issue of the economy" mean to completely different things in English. The first is about using less, the second about spending more :} See the first two definitions at Economy (disambiguation). 75.41.110.200 (talk) 21:03, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

While Hebrew recognizes "the issue of the economy" only, in both meanings. HOOTmag (talk) 22:16, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what this is called in Hebrew, but in Arabic the idafa construction means that a bunch of different sentences (or fragments) can be constructed from two words, depending on the placement of the definite article. I assume Hebrew works the same way? Adam Bishop (talk) 02:00, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

In Arabic, Idafa means that any phrase of the form: "the issue of the security" can become a phrase of the form: "issue of the security". Similary, "the issue of the security of the citizens" can become: "issue of security of the citizens", etc. The Idafa rule is as follows: in genetive constructions, one is permitted to remove the definite article from all nouns, excluding the last one. Doing so, each noun from which the definite article is removed, must undergo a little morphological change (indicating the genetive construction of the phrase), or else the definite article mustn't be removed from the noun.

A very similar demonstration exists in Hebrew as well, and it's called Smikhut.

HOOTmag (talk) 07:53, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

or construct state, as I mentioned above. The article says, as I surmised, that the construction is not productive in modern Hebrew, at least for possessive. --ColinFine (talk) 20:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. However, modern Hebrew does use the construct state, when the word chain - points at an object whose essence is considered as "simple" (i.e. not complex), e.g. in the phrase: "the book house" (literally: "house the book"), which means: the school; or in the phrase: "the grave house" (literally: "house the graves") which means: the graveyard, etc. That kind of usage (which follows the construct state rules, according to which the first noun must undergo a little morphological change) is very common in Hebrew, including modern Hebrew, whereas using the construct state for objects considered as complex (e.g. in the phrase: "the man's wife") - can occur mainly in ancient Hebrew. In spoken modern Hebrew, that occurs less frequently, e.g. in the phrase: "Now it's the second team's turn" (literally: "Now it's turn the second team's"), etc. HOOTmag (talk) 00:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The key word is 'productive': there are many set expressions that use smikhut, but it is not often used ad hoc. --ColinFine (talk) 07:37, 25 August 2009 (UTC).

Not often? of course, as I mentioned above ("less frequently"). However, I really don't know what they mean by "productive". Is the English sentence: "now it's the second team's turn" - more productive than the English sentence: "now it's the turn of the second team" ? If the answer is positive, then also the Hebrew sentence: "now it's turn the second team's" (built by the construct state) - is more productive than the Hebrew sentence: "now it's the turn of the second team" (not built by the construct state). HOOTmag (talk) 08:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, I should have linked to the technical term productive. Productivity is not a property of sentences, it is a property of processes or constructions. Saying "smikhut is not productive in modern Hebrew" means that while there may be many set expressions using the construction, it is rare for people to use it in new expressions. --ColinFine (talk) 18:50, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for not being aware of the technical term "productive".

Yes, the construct state is not productive in modern Hebrew. However, in some rare cases, the Hebrew speakers do prefer to apply the construct state in new expressions (as one can realize in the example mentioned above).

Do you study semitic languages?

HOOTmag (talk) 19:26, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Google translation of "Petit Papa Noël"

While researching Joseph Fourier I stumbled across http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petit Papa Noël (Les Simpson) (honest! natural progression!) which google correctly translated to "Santa's Little Helper" (Bart Simpson's dog)!

But when it translated http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petit Papa Noël (chanson), it (correctly) didn't translate it at all! (Edit: actually for the dog the title is translated but not the text, and for the song, vice versa!?)

Is google really that smart?

Thanks. Saintrain (talk) 23:38, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm completely ignorant in most computer-related matters, but there is some basic information about the workings of Google's translation feature here. It looks as though their program was able to recognize that occurences of "Petit Papa Noël" together with "Simpson" corresponded to occurrences of "Santa's Little Helper" together with "Simpsons" on English-language Web pages. You may be able to get a more detailed response on the computing reference desk. Deor (talk) 16:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Deor. I'd heard about google's syntactic translator but I was hoping that some francophone would chime in about there being a similar usage. Oh well ... I, for one, welcome our new silicon overlords. Saintrain (talk) 19:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, knowing (in principle) how Google Translate works, it's very likely that it determined the "correct" translations exactly the same way that Saintrain did it: by comparing corresponding articles in English and French Wikipedias. — Kpalion^(talk) 22:06, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Yup, that's right. For a machine translator to be remotely useful, it needs to have some kind of mechanism to determine context, or even simple sentence could turn out very wrong. The same mechanism can cause very strange behavior; ambiguous sentences can give very strange results. Swedish "tomten åt banan" (all three words have double meanings) comes out as "sites to track", but capitalize the first letter (which doesn't change the possible meanings) and it becomes "The plot for the banana". --Pykk (talk) 22:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Translations

French: Vakhtang II meurt en 1292 sans laisser de descendance et il a pour successeur son cousin David VI, qui épouse sa veuve.

David II a épousé en 1292 la princesse mongole Oldjat, fille de l'Ilkhan Abaqa et veuve du roi Vakhtang II de Géorgie, puis en 1302 la fille du prince Ahmed Beg Orbéliani dont est issu :

Vakhtang II died in 1292 without leaving a descendant; his successor was his cousin David VI, who married his widow.

In 1292 David II married the Mongol princess Oldjat, daugher of the Il-Khan Abaqa and widow of king Vakhtang II of Georgia. Then in 1302 he married the daughter of prince Ahmed Beg Orbeliani, to whom was born: Marco polo (talk) 23:55, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

German: Dieser war seinem Vater in die Horde des Il-Khans Arghun (1284-1291) gefolgt und hatte dessen gewaltsamen Tod miterlebt. Doch die Mongolen setzten ihn gefangen und schickten eine Gesandtschaft unter Leitung Qutlughschahs Mankaberdeli an den Hof König Davids VI. Narin von Westgeorgien (1259-1293). Um Westgeorgien (Abchasien-Imeretien) enger an sich zu binden, boten sie dem ältesten Sohn Davids die Königskrone Ostgeorgiens an. David Narin erklärte sich damit einverstanden und Wachtang wurde an den Hof Arghuns geschickt, wo er von diesem als König bestätigt und mit der Schwester des Il-Khans, Oldschai(tu)-Chatun verheiratet wurde. Da er am Hofe des Il-Khans festgehalten wurde, konnte er seine Herrschaft in Tbilissi offiziell nicht antreten.

He had followed his father into the Horde of the Il-Khan Arghun (1284–1291) and witnessed his violent death. However, the Mongols took him prisoner and sent an embassy led by Qutlughshah Makberdeli to the court of King David VI Narin of West Georgia (1259–1293). In order to ally West Georgia (Abkhazia-Imereti) more closely with themselves, they offered the oldest son of David the throne of East Georgia. David Narin announced his agreement to this and Vakhtang was sent to the court of Arghun, where he was declared king by Arghun and married to the sister of the Il-Khan, Oldzhai(tu)-Khatun. Because he was held captive at the court of the Il-Khan, he could not officially take power in Tbilisi. Marco polo (talk) 00:03, 24 August 2009 (UTC)