- ¿Qué es esto para?That was Daughter.
- ¿Qué es esto para?
- Pardon?
- ¿Qué es esto para?
- Hmmm... I don't understand, nena.
- ¿Qué es esto para?
- Hmmm... I don't understand, nena.
- ¿Qué. Es. Esto. Para?
- I. Do. Not. Understand.
I did understand, mind, but I was playing dumb. Because the mistake Daughter was making was the same slip-up I had often borne witness to whenever I was in the presence of British children speaking either Spanish or French.
To be honest with you, my dear fellow bloggers and readers, Daughter's error was a baby blunder. Daughter was placing the preposition 'para' at the end of the sentence rather than at the beginning. Whereas that would be common practice for an Anglo-Saxon speaker, in romance languages we keep to a strict structure whereby prepositions are usually placed before nouns, pronouns and other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives.
In English, as well as German, prepositions can be used at the beginning of a sentence (For whom are we waiting?) or at the end (Who are we waiting for?). Note the difference of 'whom' and 'who'. That's another post. In Spanish the question Daughter was asking me made no sense whatsoever because that 'para' must be placed at the beginning of the sentence. That's why I did not translate the phrase; it would have made sense to an English-speaker. I know for a fact that there are some exceptions in French (any Francophone reading this post, please do get in touch) but I cannot vouch for either Italian or Portuguese; I think it's the same structure as in Spanish.
However Daughter was not totally wrong.
Apparently this habit of ending sentences with a preposition in English is not very old. Schoolchildren used to be told by their teachers (probably influenced by Latin) that finishing their phrases with a preposition was a no-no. This was famoulsy satirised by Winston Churchill who said: 'this is the sort of English up with which I will not put'.
And if we analyse the etymology of this word, preposition, we see that in Latin (praepositiōn) the term meant 'a putting before'. What happened, in my humble opinion, was that English syntax, lax as it's always been, allowed for final placement of the preposition, as in 'We have much to be thankful for' or 'I asked her which course she had signed up for'. A little Teutonic influence should not be ignored as in German 'split verbs' are very common and they tend to place the preposition at the end: 'Wen wartest du auf?' (Who are you waiting for?)
So, yes, Daughter was not totally incorrect. She just chose the wrong language.
Copyright 2009
I love this post. I am forever correcting the grammar of TV reporters, etc., much to the amusement of my family. I must admit that I have been known, however, to let a preposition dangle dangerously at the end of my spoken sentences, if not in my writing.
ReplyDeleteMy personal irritant?! Adverb abuse. Adverbs are disappearing from the English language, at least American English.
Stand up, stand up. Stand up for your.....language!
Alle die Rede von Sprache, wenn ich kann kaum Schreiben meine Muttersprache, macht mich traurig.
ReplyDeleteAll the rules one must learn!
ReplyDeleteI was taught not to let prepositions dangle, following through is another matter.
What a fantastic post,
ReplyDeleteI love the idea that words shuffled around can mean totally different things to different people...
Life is contextual.
The order of things varies according to the mind that thinks of them.
Peace my brother,
M
I love this post.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your kind comments.
ReplyDelete'The order of things varies according to the mind that thinks of them.'
Absolutely. And that's another post in the pipeline.
Greetings from London.
FYI - you still get corrected at English universities for ending sentences with prepositions ;-) Whatever might be accepted in spoken English, just isn't quite good enough for the academic world ;-)
ReplyDeleteThnaks, sara, and welcome back.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.
Lovely. I'm all the time struggling to make my Spanish speaking pupils understand the meaning and uses of the "dangling" prepositions in English. But then, for your daughter, I guess English is her "mother tongue", so she logically applies English rules to her Spanish!
ReplyDeleteHehe, great post! Split infinitives, dangling prepositions, abused adverbs...it all sounds very dangerous, don't you think? I tend to agree with Bill Bryson - "There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren’t available to the Romans."
ReplyDeleteThanks, rosa and tessa (haha, that was a brilliant quote) for your lovely comments.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.
Y todavía no le explicas el uso del modo subjuntivo!!!! Ay Dios Mío!!!! ( El marciano se encontraría en frente de la cama...) Ach! du Lieber Gott. Languages are tricky when it comes to prepositions. As I learned different languages I figured that I had to memorize how to use prepositions without translating them in my own language, they cannot be translated literally. Very interesting post. Oh one last thing, We I was in the third grade we had to recite all prepositions in the Spanish language in tandem: a, ante, bajo, cabe, con, contra, de, desde, en ,entre, hacia,hasta, para, por según, sin, so, sobre, tras. Most interesting post.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and acute observations! I am gonna ask my husband to read it... he gets very confused with our use of prepositions in Spanish!
ReplyDeleteTalking of English grammar and syntax being a bit lax... it reminded me of the book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation", by Lynne Truss. Great read!
Great post - between what we've learnt to do and (should be doing and) what we actually do..."il y a un monde", as they say in french..!
ReplyDeleteBon weekend (should be: Bon fin de semaine!)..:)
As always, so well said, Cuban. I find learning word order the most difficult thing in learning a new language.
ReplyDeleteIt's so funny you brought up this issue with prepositions. As soon as I clicked "publish", I noticed a preposition at the end of a sentence in my post today. I was going to correct it, but I was too lazy. Had I known you were such a stickler, I would have changed it. Now I will leave it in for you to find and then I will change it :)
I am laughing, laughing and dying to share this post with my mother and husband. They are both grammar-philes of the most serious kind. They are going to love this.
ReplyDeleteHave you read Eats Shoots and Leaves? I think you would like it. You'll like this even better. My Mom hadn't even made it through two pages when she began editing the book. Editing a published book. A published book about the importance of good grammar. Don't you love it?
lovely post- and I agree with Maitri that "Life is indeed contextual!" Personally however, I am glad, as your header expresses, there is the language of smiles for those of us who melange our grammar and word order. Salut from a relaxed dyslexic from blustery southern France
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your kind comments. 'Eats Shoots and Leaves' has been on my list of must-reads for quite some time now. I think I ought to get it this year.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.
I love this kind of posts, too!!
ReplyDeleteAnd have the same problem with the Spanish-German version at home.
La niña se ve que traduce literalmente muchas ideas, sobre todo cuando repite lo que oye en la televisión (mi esposo y yo hablamos Español) y nos pone los verbos al final, sobre todo intenta "partir" algunos de ellos tal y como si fueran en Alemán.
Es gracioso oírlo, pues nos damos cuenta de cómo va formándose su lenguaje poco a poco, pero le rectificamos en lo posible.
Greetinmgs from Germany, Cuban!
Well, as I'm hopeless with languages you've totally lost me here. I took 10 years fo French and all I can say is Ou est la garcon? Fat lot of good that does me! LOL.
ReplyDeleteLike your new pic on top.
Thanks, mmm, for your kind comment.
ReplyDeleteAgu, me muero por ver a tu nin-a partiendo un verbo espan-ol a la usanza alemana :-).
Saludos desde Londres.
now that i think of it, i do remember being taught at some point--meaning in my standard american, english education--that prepositions go at the beginning of phrases. however, at some point putting them *anywhere* became acceptable, and now i find myself doing a combination of both.
ReplyDeletewhen reading and mentally translating your daughter's phrase in spanish, though, i subconsciously thought, "some element of this phrase seems odd." yep. it was the placement of "para." every spanish teacher i've ever had taught me that rule, and that's how i speak spanish--with the prepositions before.
nice post!
Thanks, fly, for your kind comment.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.