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Suppose that you wanna go to a resort area and you phone your friend to see whether he'd like to come. You ask him: Would you like to GO with us, or COME with us, or both, or both on different occasions?
In my language, Persian, it's literally: Would… to come… ?
Happy to be told of mistakes,
Thanks,
Rafee
Rafee, either one would sound fine. If you ask "Would you like to go with us?", the thought is that we're going (away from here to somewhere else); if you ask "would you like to come with us?", the thought is that you'll join us. But of course what's actually happening is the same either way; the words just emphasize two different things.
In Farsi, what's the verb used for "come"? How would you transcribe it? I know how to ask "do you want to...?" in Farsi, but is "would you like to...?" any different?
(Come to think of it, how do you ask, for example, "what do you want to eat?" without accidentally asking "what will you eat?"?)
1.The Farsi equivalent for 'to come' is 'آمدن' which almost reads /É‘Ëmædæn/.
2. In normal and informal situations we simply say 'چي ميخورين؟' which is the literal equivalent for 'what do you eat?'_and not for 'what will you eat?'(use of simple present for future tense).But if the person is highly respected, we say 'چي ميل داريد؟', which is equivalent for 'What would you like…'. In Farsi we don't call our, say uncle, by name, and we have two different second person pronouns, one of which-شما- indicates higher respect. But even in this situation, we won't tell our uncle 'چي ميل داريد؟'. It sounds too formal. So, here we are, in fact, saying 'What will you eat?'. But what is working here is the tone with which we ask.
(I myself am sometimes gotten wrong because the element of 'tone' is slight in my voice. Once my sister said my tone was 'bossy' or as if I were angry. To tell the truth, listening to my voice, sometimes I have also the same feeling! Or once one of my friends said that I always spoke with the same tone.)
( I've heard one of your prominent politicians also spoke this way. I know him but the name escapes me.)
We don't usually think about it, but every language differs not only in words and the pronunciation of vowels but also, to some extent, in the tone of voice. There's something in the Farsi accent that might strike an American as slightly harsh, I suppose, though it never struck me that way.
I had a bunch of Farsi friends in college, back before the revolution; they started asking me questions about English and after a while I was informally tutoring them. (We also studied calculus together.) So pretty soon I started asking them about Farsi, too. I picked up 50 or 100 words, got the basics of past / present / future tense, the endings for the persons and numbers, nothing more. But they didn't teach me the alphabet at the time, and even years later when I picked up a book on Farsi I found it extraordinarily difficult and don't remember more than a few characters. I'm not sure why, for I know several other alphabets and have no difficulty retaining them.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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