The Most Difficult Word to Translate

October 14, 2019 4:37 pm Published by Grace Fabian Leave your thoughts

Which word in this sentence is the most difficult to translate? I’ll give the answer below with some space so you can’t cheat and see the answer. Scroll down when you’ve picked a word.

Do you know when the pep rally will start?

The correct answer is YOU.

Hmmm, why?

We don’t have the context to know which ‘you’ to use. Depending on the language the ‘you’ might change for many reasons:

Familiarity with ‘you’ – formal, informal, queen, friend, parent,…
Gender
One or Many or two
Dialect- y’all, youse, yins, thou (informal old English), you guys,
Or a mixture of familiarity, number and gender.
Or drop the pronoun because it’s implied
Or drop the pronoun so your embarrassed you might use the wrong one

Contents of this blog stolen from a Ted-Ed video

which is really worth watching- click here.

Here are some reflections on the word ‘you’ that I stole from the comment section of the video:

French- tu (informal), vous (formal)

Meanwhile in Vietnamese….. – gender-sensitive pronouns – age-sensitive pronouns (not just your age, your parents’ age can influence “you”) – relative-sensitive pronouns – context-sensitive pronouns

In Portuguese there are 2 singular forms for you: “tu” and “você”. And 2 plural forms: “vós” and “vocês”. “Você” evolved from “vossa mercê” (which literally means your honour/your grace). “Vossa mercê” became “vossemecê” and eventually “você”. (By the way in some regions of Southern Portugal “vossemecê” is still heard). When you have a verb after “tu” and “vós” it is conjugated like an actual 2nd person, but with “você” and “vocês” it is conjugated like a third person (like he/she and they respectively). In Portugal “tu” is the informal way of “you” and “você” is more formal (which make sense since “você” evolved from “vossa mercê”- your grace).

In Danish we only have two versions of “you” Du/dig: one person. I/jer: multiple people.

Alright, if I look at Japanese, I can see… Basic ones: -anata (あなた) -kimi (君) -omae (お前) Rude ones: -temee (てめえ) -kisama (貴様) -onore (己) Dialect ones: -anta (あんた) Old ones: -sonata (そなた) -onushi (お主) -nanji (汝) That’s only singular You, and I surely have missed some. For plural, you can add either ra (等) or tachi(達) after each of those, and some of those pronouns even work with both of them like omaetachi/omaera. At the same time, they often refer to each other in 3rd person, using either their name or a title like sensei (先生), or drop the pronoun altogether if it’s already clear with context.

In Filipino IKAW- if “you” is the subject, object and doer (plural=KAYO) MO- if “you” is only the doer (plural= NINYO) KA- if “you” is the subject, object, and doer in passive form

While Indonesian uses: “Kamu” to younger/older person (Formal/Informal)(Unisex) “Anda” to Older person (Usually Stranger)(Formal)(Unisex) “Elu” or “Lu” do not try to say this word to your parents to close friends/same age person(Unisex)(Informal)

In my language (Arabic) there is many types of you You for one male You for one female You for two people You for multiple male You for multiple female