In a moment I'm going to give you an English sentence that you have to translate into your
language. If you're a native English speaker then translate it into a language that you know or that
you are learning. Are you ready? Here we go: "You want to see the exhibition? You see those doors?
Go in, down, through, across, around, up and out." I'll say it again "You want to
see the exhibition? You see those doors? Go in down, through, across, around, up and out.
In this video we're going to look at how similar and how different English is to other languages
we're going to delve deep into the English speakers mindset are you ready for that?
Hello and welcome to LetThemTalkTV. In the sentence I just gave you at the beginning of
this video, in English after the verb go, you don't have any more verbs. Depending on the
language you're translating to you could have as many as seven verbs. Zero verbs or seven
verbs that's an extraordinary difference. Let us know in the comments your language and how many
verbs you used. Can you translate that sentence word for word from English into your language
languages can roughly be divided up into two types and these are verb framed languages and satellite
framed languages. I'll show you what I mean in a moment with some examples and I'll also show you
how you can relate this concept to learning English to improve your English
especially the use of phrasal verbs. Some students of English find phrasal verbs particularly
difficult because of the differences of how some languages are constructed and I hope this
video helps explain that if you already know English you can also apply this knowledge to
another language because understanding how verbs work is key to forming clear sentences. By the way
much of the information i use here I got from listening to linguist John Mcwhorter's podcast
Lexicon Valley which is wonderful for anybody who has an interest in language and how it all
works. I'll put a link to that in the description and the concepts that he talked about
were first put forward by the American linguist Leonard Talmy. I'll be trying
to expand on some of these ideas and make them relevant to this audience. That's you
dear viewer. So firstly, there are verb frame languages: The romance languages are verb frame
languages French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese etc Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Tamil,
Turkish and others these are verb frame languages the information you need in a sentence
is contained in the verb. I'm talking here mostly about verbs of motion. The other type
of language are the satellite framed languages such as English, Germanic languages and Greek in
these type of languages you have a sentence with a verb but the motion described is not contained
in the verb in English it's in some additional information in the form of a preposition or an
adverbial phrase not in the verb. I'll show you what I mean with a few sentences comparing English
and French. I choose French by the way, because I know some French, I live in France but it should
work with most verb framed languages and I'll give a few examples from other languages too so let's
start with the first sentence. ùhe walked into the roomù in French 'Il est entré dans la pièce'
Notice that in French you don't normally say WALK - ENTRER means to enter because normally
when you enter a room you do so walking. The only reason you would say 'he walked into the room'
in French would be perhaps because he was in a wheelchair but he got up out of the wheelchair
much to everybody's surprise and he walks into the room. Il est entré dans la pièce en marchant
In English we have the possibility of saying he entered the room of course because English
has a big influence from French and Latin and we can express sentences
with the verb but it's more common to say 'I walked into the room then,' 'I entered the
room' you could also say 'he went into the room' of course but let's just stick for the moment
for the sake of simplicity with walk he walked into the room okay. 'I walked into the room' The
manner is in the verb. How did he enter the room? well he walked okay walked is the manner and the
information about the motion such as the direction is not contained in the verb it's contained in the
satellite, the extra piece of information such as the preposition or the adverb particle. INTO
in this case. WALK is the manner INTO is the motion. Let's continue with some similar examples.
'I ran out of the room' In French that would be 'je suis sortie de la pièce en courant.'
which we would translate literally as 'I exited the room
running' but of course we don't say that in English we put the manner in the verb 'he ran out
the room.' So in English the verb is kind of split up into two parts: The verb part
and the manner - down, in, up, etc. In French we have the motion part in the verb entre
then we attach some additional information if necessary to show how it was done how did
he exit the room running in English the manner is in the verb but the motion part is outside.
In English if you said left the room or he exited the room
that's okay and the reason it's okay is because we understand from the context that he walked
out because that's the normal way but 'he left the room running' sounds strange because in English
the manner is contained in the verb so he ran out the room would be the way a native speaker would
normally express it. If you're learning English from French or Italian or Turkish or Korean
you have to change your mindset to focus on the manner of the verb. Let's look at some more
examples and, by the way, note to all translators out there translation software such as google and
Siri made a terrible job translating between verb frame languages and satellite framed languages.
Try putting the sentence I started the video with into Google translate. What are shambles!
Translators, human translators, your jobs are safe at least for the moment. Let's look at a
couple more examples okay. 'He stormed out the room.' How do you say that in your language?
STORM by the way means in an angry way in French it's 'il est sortie de la pièce en colère.'
He exited the room angrily. 'He shuffled out the room.' How do you translate into your language?
Shuffle, by the way, means sweeping your feet on the ground
in French it's ' il est sortie de la pièce en trainant les pieds'
'He exited the room with his legs dragging.' Don't assume that because a language is unrelated to
English if it's a not an Indo-European language and comes from a different branch of the tree it
can't share, by coincidence or otherwise, some traits such as being a satellite language. My
student Giau tells me that in Vietnamese you can indeed translate the sentence I started the video
with the same structure as English. However, Germanic languages are also satellite languages
and this could be one of the reasons why speakers of these tongues find it easier to master ours. Of
course the verb frame languages and the satellite languages are just broad categories. It depends on
the language and some may display elements of both. English is a satellite language
but if you want to sound more formal or add a flourish to your sentence you may opt for a verb
of motion. For example 'take care when descending the stairs' instead of 'when
going down the stairs.' You may write that on a sign or say it when you want to speak formally.
'I wanted to get the teacher's attention so I raised my arm.' instead of 'I put up my arm'
just to sound more more formal. 'We traversed the forest looking for mushrooms.' In everyday English
you'd say 'we walked through the forest looking for mushrooms.' 'traversed' is more literally
and might sound right in the context but this explains why we use so many phrasal verbs in
English the default English mindset is manner and satellite rather than using a motion verb
but we can do both let's look at one more example. 'I'm flying to Taipei tomorrow.'
How do you say that in your language or the language that you're learning? In Italian, let's
do Italian this time, it's a verb frame language so you probably say 'domani vado a Taipei'
'Tomorrow i go to Taipei' in German ;morgen fliege ich nach taipeh'
in German you probably use fliege, to fly, because it's a satellite language. You see now what you're
probably thinking is 'oh yeah, now I know the difference between a verb frame language and
a satellite framed language I can translate much better into any language than a few minutes ago'
and that's true it's a kind of polyglots trick. If you know the type of language you're learning
it gives you a kind of a head start. Let's return to French it's a verb language
you know it's a verb language so you'll use a motion verb. 'Demain je vais à Taipei'
Tomorrow i fly to Taipei, I'm flying to Taipei. You know that the only way
to get to Taipei for most people, unless you're in Taiwan or nearby is by flying so
there's no need to say je vais à Taipei en avion,' 'I'm going to Taipei by plane', By plane is
redundant information. Incidentally, in French you have the verb VOLER - TO FLY but you wouldn't
say 'je vole à Taipei' it would imply that you're flying around Taipei in a hot air balloon. Now
some languages you can use both. In English, 'I'm flying to Taipei tomorrow' or 'I'm going to Taipei
tomorrow' without much difference in meaning most of the time. How can we use these rules
to improve our English? It should help, first of all, with phrasal verbs. As I mentioned earlier
when formulating a sentence with motion first of all find yourself a verb of manner and then
a preposition to express the direction. to form the phrasal verb. Let's try this out 'I danced
up the stairs' I used DANCE for the manner and UP for the direction. That's easy enough let's
move on to more interesting verbs let's use the verb AMBLE. How did I amble? Just around,
just around. So in a sentence. 'I ambled around the market for hours
trying to find some strawberries.' A verb of manner MEANDER. I like that meander.
How do you ma meander? DOWN. 'He meandered down the river on his rowing boat'.
You see phrasal verbs are getting easier but it doesn't end there. It gets more exciting
what if instead of direction using direction literally you expressed it metaphorically?
That could really be interesting give your English a little panache and the beauty of
this is that you can invent your own phrasal verbs. Yes I'll show you that in a second.
'I had a headache but I went to the beach and walked it off.' When you use OFF in a phrasal
verb it can sometimes have the idea of remove or terminate. WALKED OFF means that walking
along the beach had the positive effect of you recovering from the headache. The
manner is WALK and preposition OFF To express what happened. You could also say 'I ran off
my headache.' or 'I sauntered off my headache' 'I didn't exactly walk it off I kind of just
sauntered off my headache.' So I just invented a new phrasal verb TO SAUNTER OFF you won't
find that in any dictionaries. If you can get into this way of thinking your English will be
trudging along nicely. Even non-motion phrasal verbs still have the idea of a [manner] verb and
a [motion] the way you do it. They can be used literally or figuratively. 'I thought of some
new ideas' correct but for ideas newness use the preposition UP 'I thought up
some new ideas.' 'I thought up some new ideas for the website.' 'I dreamed up... I conjured up.'
Needless to say there are many, many more examples and by the way, do check out our video,
101 must know phrasal verbs up here and in the next video we're going to continue this theme
on the instincts of the English speakers mindset. Apologies, by the way if
I botched up my attempt to speak one of your languages. You can put your angry comments
down below and thank you anyway take care stay healthy bye