Philip Newton wrote:
On 20 Feb 2004 at 2:34, la_okus wrote:From personal experience, I know that Japanese sometimes disagreeswith english as well. The verb "au" means to meet, but the japanese don't say "I meet friends", they say "tomodachi ni au", which is morelike "I meet to friends".*nods* and "dare-ka *to* kekkon suru" which is literally "to marry *with* someone" rather than the English "to marry someone".
Same with Turkish: "biriy*le* evlenmek" (literally "someone-with to-become-a-house"). Also in Turkish, you are angry _to_ something, but frightened _from_ something; you beat someone but hit _to_ them; you look _to_ someone, but wait them (no "for").
Languages have a limited number of prepositions/cases which are then extended metaphorically. The process is not entirely arbitrary, but produces variations of the type mentioned.
robin.tr -- "Caesar non supra grammaticos." - Suetonius Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin