Britannia, she’s half-English, she speaks Latin at home

[venta]

In the last week or so, I've been doing a smidgeon of Eclipse plug-in development at work. Nothing serious, just packaging our nice shiny new plug-in into a branded product. It's now (mostly) working, but I feel like I haven't much to show for my labours. Most of the changes I've made have been of the "check this check box" kind. Sadly, anyone viewing the end result will not realise the n hours of googling misery which went into determining which box to check.

This afternoon I was once again grappling with an intractable problem and, having found no help in the documentation, was wading through newsgroup posts from aeons ago.

I eventually found this post which addresses exactly the problem I was having. It took me several goes to digest it, because the writer is obviously not someone with English as a first language. I should add that I'm not attempting to diss the guy[*] - he provided the information I needed, and his English is way better than my second language.

But it did get me thinking about uses of idiom in English. Mostly because Jan uses two phrases which really made me laugh - in each case I think I know the phrase he was aiming at, but he's missed.

Here's the first:

"It took my some time to get behind the sheets and to understand what the problem was."

And the second:

"Second, when you do not know what to do, you are left back in the rain."

In both cases it sounds rather like he's taken an idiom in his own language, and translated it directly into English. Except both these phrases exist in English too - I'm assuming he means "under the covers" (possibly crossed with "behind the scenes") and "out in the cold".

Is it just mis-remembering of English idiom which he's heard, or do these same phrases exist in other languages ?

One of my favourite writers of brain-bubblegum is Iain Pears - as well as the rather erudite Instance of the Fingerpost, he also writes light, fluffy art-world whodunnits. One of his detective characters is the Italian Flavia di Stefano, who collects English idiom (idia?) and, around once a book, gets one wrong.

I've always found this a bit implausible. The one which springs to mind is her commenting about someone trying to push cotton in her eyes, and her boyfriend correcting her: you pull wool over someone's eyes. I didn't think that sort of mistake would get made. It sounds like something made up to be deliberately funny, but maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps my English-as-a-second[**]-language friends are just too damn good at it and don't make errors.

I'm sure the internet is full of alledged mistranslations and mistakes by appropriately humorous foreigners. But does anyone have any good genuine examples to hand ?

[*] At least, I'm assuming that Jan is a Teutonic-ish male name. I guess it could just as well be a female name, short for Janet or something.

[**] At least. Bother Claudia and her being quicker witted than I am while speaking her third language.

Comments

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

But Mr Pears is merely following detective tradition - Poirot is always getting some English idiom or other wrong in a humourous fashion.

[venta.livejournal.com]

But Flavia is otherwise a reasonably plausibly-drawn character, almost exactly unlike M. Poirot :)

[ylla.livejournal.com]

I misread that as 'between the sheets', which does go well with 'under the covers', and may be another source of confusion.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had suddent doubts when writing "under the covers". I think I more commonly hear people say "under the hood", which is disappointingly American of them. But people do say "under the covers" to mean "the inner workings, which makind might not wot of", don't they ?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I've not heard of "under the covers" in that meaning. Maybe a Darlingtonian speciality?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't think so. I think I may have just made it up.

I'm sure there is a phrase, though, which is commonly used and isn't "under the hood" or "behind the scenes". I just can't think what it would be.

[(Anonymous)]

"Under the cover" or "inside the box/case" as in taking the casing off a malfunctioning item of electrical equipment. With your self-proclaimed penchant for disabling most electrical devices I thought you might be familiar with this one.

W

[(Anonymous)]

Or indeed, "under the bonnet". The English version of your Americanism.

W

[venta.livejournal.com]

They're certainly terms I'd understand. However, none of them are common phrases, as far as I'm aware. Certainly not in the way "behind the scenes" is - I'd expect someone to say "under the bonnet" about what was up with a car, but not about (say) a piece of software.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

But does anyone have any good genuine examples to hand?

My grandparents on my father's side were both French. This provided examples of two kinds of incorrect English:

1) My grandmother making errors of roughly the kind you describe.
2) My grandfather making deliberate bilingual puns.

However, my experience has been that errors with individual words are much more likely than errors with particular idioms. Consequently, once someone reaches a level where they seldom (or never) make mistakes with regular language use the chances are they won't get idioms wrong either.

In fact my all-time favourite comment of my grandmother's was none of these kinds of error. She remarked: "This time of year it's bad in the South of France because of all the Wops". At which point we all choked to death on our respective dinners, much to her confusion. It was some minutes later before we established that she was having great difficulty pronouncing the English word "wasps"!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Damn those Wily Anglo Saxon People ;)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

One of the splendid things about this modern internet business is being on several primarily-European technical mailing-lists where you find literal translations of colloquialisms. They always seem far more evocative than the versions I'm used to.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I think idiom is just an anglicisation of idioma, so the plural would just be idioms. What the plural of idioma is, I can't remember. Idiomata? I'm sure verlaine will appear and correct me at once if I'm wrong. He has spidy sense for incorrect classicisms.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Idiomata

I'm no verlaine, but I believe that's correct.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Our Swiss friend Ori (for whom English is her fourth language) quite often presents us with supposed idioms which are translations of her native ones but that don't idiomatize in English. Of course though I can't think of any off the top of my head.

The nearest I can call to mind is that she talks of being "undersnowed with work", which isn't a translated idiom but a German-construction attempt at an English one.

It wouldn't surprise me if pushing cotton was right, though, as Italian has so many dialects and regional wotsits going on -- kniowng Iain Pears, it seems more likely he researched it than made it up. And, in the south at least, they wouldn't have been very familiar with wool in a profuse and fluffy state, back in the days when people created idioms.

[(Anonymous)]

"Seek professional advice" - ie if even reading the instructions fails, get the proper bloke in - comes out on my new bottle of (French) wood restorer as "Ask council to a professional". Not funny, just someone with basiC English and a dictionary.