OOC: Cruising for Feminine Pronouns

[sythyry]

For odd reasons, I'd like to get the word for "her" in a number of languages. That's "her" in the sense of "OMG, it's her!" -- the objective pronoun in English, accusative in some other languages, etc. If there's an emphatic form, I'd like that too.

[Poll #1507575]

Thanks very much!

Comments

[dichellddrwg.livejournal.com]

BTW, I can't say enough how much I love that icon.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Diolch yn fawr! djinni is a wonderful artist, and very generous too: the icon's from one of his free-icon days.

[dichellddrwg.livejournal.com]

Croeso! He did this one for me as well.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Does bad translations from a Translation Dictionary count?

[zeborah]

Um. I think you may need to clarify the question. Grammar's more complicated than that. In "OMG, it's her" English uses a form which covers objective, accusative, dative, and emphatic, among other things.

Many other languages though would use either the nominative or the emphatic; often these are the same, sometimes not.

And then there are other languages which wouldn't use a pronoun at all but would instead say "OMG, it's that girl/woman/bastard/queen/whatever". This may be somewhat moot because the only one I'm really familiar with is Korean and even then I wouldn't be really confident of a translation. I could try maybe, depending what this is to be used for.

But in any case I'd really need to know the context before I could give a translation into any of the languages I'm familiar with.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It's for a character who goes by the name her-her-her-her-her, in several languages, using forms suitable to: "OMG, it's her!" As if she were saying, "Yes, I'm really her" by her choice of nickname.

So the translations don't need to be terribly precise.

[rowyn]

*giggles at the character nickname and reasoning*

"That girl!" might be right, too.

I was going to donate the Toki Pona 3rd person pronoun, but it's the same as one of the others anyway. ("Ona").

0.0

[matraia.livejournal.com]

You stole my pronoun! pakala mute! :)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Elle-ella-ona-use-sin is pronouncable. And sounds kind of like a nendrai name.

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

I'm having brain fail right now regarding grammatical terminology.
"It's her" would be "det är hon" (italics denoting the word, not any particular emphasis), but e.g. "have you seen her?" would be "har du sett henne?" in Swedish. I imagine the word you want is "hon", but just noting the difference to make sure.


-Alexandra

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

I would donate, but it would only cause confusion - in Hebrew, the female singular third-person pronoun is pronounced "he". (It gets better - the male singular third-person pronoun is pronounced "who" ;P)

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

I take it there's an Abott & Costello-style routine about this!

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

Not officially AFAIK, but I'm sure every Hebrew school class creates their own ;P.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Welsh too! "she" in English == "hi" (pron. like English "he") in Welsh. "he" = "e" or "o".

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

Wow! I thought the only thing Welsh people and Jews had in common was me! ;P

(I'm sure there are other people who are both Welsh and Jewish by ancestry, but I really wanted to use that line)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I've got Welsh and Jewish ancestors too!

Oh yeah, now I remember the mnemonic...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Who is he and he is she!

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

I can only answer the poll once, so:
"hon" in Swedish -- Det är hon!
彼女 in Japanese, romanized as "kanojo."

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Tack & domo!

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Grammar nitpick: "It's her!" isn't correct english. With linking verbs (such as 'is') you're supposed to use the subjective case, not the objective. It should be "It's she!"

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

In Latin, the singular nominative feminine demonstrative is 'illa'. Which translates as 'That Girl'.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Apparently, 'it is I' vs 'it is me' has been in dispute since the 18th century.

Poll

[zyngasvryka.livejournal.com]

I answered with "Sie" which is the only way you can come close to the English 'OMG it's her!" More like "Sie is es!" which translatres closer to 'She is the one!" But you'd never use "Sie" to family or friend. "Du" is informal [second person]but gender neutral -- where English gets 'you'.

[elorie.livejournal.com]

Cherokee doesn't quite work that way, at least not so as I could provide an easy translation with my limited knowledge.

So very much depends on what kind of "her" you are speaking of. For one thing, what pronouns there are, are gender-neutral. There are active and passive nouns in Cherokee, and an active noun is a trait such as being a girl. The language doesn't really have adjectives. It also doesn't have a "to be" verb; all verbs are active/descriptive. Where you'd say "is" in English, you just don't use a verb.

"Nasgi ageyv" might work. (Pronounced nahs-gee ah-geh-yun where you sort of swallow the last syllable.) "That girl/woman," more or less (young girl is a different word, a-ta). Also translatable as "That is a girl."

The kind of accusatory quality of "OMG her!" is not expressible in the Cherokee I know, but I'm not sure they'd do that anyway. It's a very polite language. There's a lot of word-play and the fact that you'd say "That girl" with no further comment would sort of imply "OMG her!"

[belgatherial.livejournal.com]

Possibly interesting to you, it doesn't exist in Zulu (according to my dad). You either say "lo" which is something like it or that, or you have to use 'the girl' (intombazane).