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Greetings in Mongolian are fun because the question and the response are so similar. - сайн yy? - сайн, сайн yy? - сайн, <...> Took me awhile to learn to he
by AlotOfReading 4y ago
Greetings in Mongolian are fun because the question and the response are so similar.
- сайн yy?
- сайн, сайн yy?
- сайн, <...>
Took me awhile to learn to hear the various elaborations on that for different types of people.
- malkia 4y agoreally: - fine, you? - fine.. fine.. you? - fine :) heh,
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThe yy/uu is an interrogative that turns the preceding sentence into a question, so it disappears. Literally translated, it's just: - good? - good, good? - good, <...> But the actual meaning is: - how's it going? - good, how 'bout you? - fine, <...> There's simply a few layers of simplification going on to get from the 'correct' grammar to here. Native speakers will use small differences in emphasis between the words, but I'm not nearly fluent enough for that.
- johnchristopher 4y agoHere's the french one: - ça va ? - ça va, ça va... ça va toi ? - ça va :) The `toi` is optional but there's a bit leg pulling involved.
- jfengel 4y agoI particularly appreciate that this is literally "Does it go? It goes. Does it go for you? It goes." Native speakers don't generally look inside idioms the way non-native speakers do. English is full of equally odd-looking constructions. Still, this amuses me all the time in French.