Here's a little Catalan joy for you...
Devia donar-se un cop ell mateix.
Devia = he probably had
donar = given
-se = himself
un cop = a hit
ell mateix = himself.
So we have.....He probably gave himself a hit, himself.
Què???????
This sentence is actually in my workbook and I have to restate it in two different ways starting with:
potser = maybe or probably
and
I si = and if
Maybe he hit himself, himself
and if he hit himself himself....but this is an incomplete sentence.?????
I will have to ask about this one.
OMG
5 comments:
I'm curious about this one! Did you finally figure it out? And a nosy question-- does The Man speak Catalan? Just curious...
The man does speak Catalan, it is his mother tongue but he can barely write it (almost not at all) though he can read it.
The Catalans love a refelxive as far as I can tell. They use them hugely...em dutxo, I shower, but the em is a refelxive pronoun and then there are the myself phrase...jo mateix for myself, ell mateix for himself. This sentence is just particularily reflexive.
Strange to me. Do the Spanish do this? You can use the refexive phrase jo/tu/ell/nosaltres etc mateix with non-reflexive verbs, indeed it seems to be more normal.
Yes, they do. For example, the sentence you mention would be similar: Se dio un golpe. He hurt himself (or she.) Or, Se dio un golpe él mismo. That repeats the "himself" part to give it more emphasis. And they use the reflexives for showering etc. also.
OHM- my head hurts just thinking about learning the language!!
If I lived there, I would buy a translator program app for my iphone and just push a button to talk for me each time. LOL
Now THAT's a good idea!
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