Project overview
When you learn a new language you also learn new concepts, forms of syntax and new ways of thinking. It’s amazing to realize that even seemingly simple phrases and questions such as “What’s your name?” and “I’m cold” are expressed with different structures and concepts in different languages. In German the question “What’s your name?” is translated as “Wie heißt du?”.
Now, if we compare the two structures we will find there are quite a number of differences here. In English we use the question word ‘what’ while in German we use ‘wie’ which is a direct translation of the English question word ‘how’.
The English question uses the noun ‘name’ and a form of the ‘be’ verb. In the German version we use the verb ‘heißen’ which doesn’t have a direct translation in English because the English language doesn’t have the concept expressed by heißen.
If we now compare the Russian translation of “What’s your name?” we’ll find that Russian speakers use a third concept. Translated literally the Russian question is “What do they call you?” - - Как тебя зовут? So, in Russian we use the question как which is a direct translation of ‘what’ and the accusative object pronoun ‘you’ (тебя).
In English we say “I’m cold” while in Russian it’s either Я замерз or мне холодно and in German we either say “Ich friere” or “Mir ist kalt”. So, even for the simple phrase “I’m cold” there are least four different ways of expressing pretty much the same idea.