Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Language Contradictions

Languages are a fun thing.  While they all have many things in common grammatically, each language has it's own specific way of making words, phrases, and grammar that makes it its own thing.  However, when two languages try to come together, it makes often for an awkward combination, such as this:

Literally: Japanese Noodles (ready in 3 minutes)
Yes, ignoring the fact that I'm eating cup-of-noodles in France, I find the name of this product interesting.

First off, the French.  Noodles (Nouilles) is plural.  Japanese is the adjective modifying the noodles- meaning that they are noodles in the style more or less Japanese.  For agreement, a plural 's' is added to it (as well as an 'e' because Nouilles are feminine).

In Japanese, however, there is no plural form of nouns, or really anything- words don't change depending on their number.  It's like 'sheep' in English- it can either be one or many.  Disregarding the fact that in Japanese, the language is "Nihongo" it is still weird seeing anything Japanese with an 's' at the end.

1 comments:

Akki said...

Cup o' Noodle in France? What kind of culture are you there to experience?! >:D

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