Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Eedoryeong]

Search engine can't find the language thread. Flame me.

Here's the syntax that's throwing me.
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맥도날드 햄버거안에 뭐가 들어는지 알았다면, 먹지 않했을텐데.
[MacDonald's hamburger-inside, what-contained if-you-knew, eat-not you would not.]
~or~
"If you knew what was inside a MacDonald's hamburger, you wouldn't eat it."

In English
-can be used on people you know have eaten a McD's burger.
-can be used on people you guess probably've eaten a McD's.
-can be used on people of whom you've no idea but you might choose to so assume.

In Korean
-can be used ONLY on people you know HAVE eaten a McD's burger.

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맥도날드 햄버거안에 뭐가 들어는지 알면, 먹지 않을텐데.
[McD's burger inside, what it contains if-you-know, eat-not you will not.]
~or~ If you know what's in a McD's burger, you won't eat it.

In English
-can be used for people we don't want to eat a hamburger, but it sounds like a prediction and comes off as a weaker deterrent than the above past conditional, which assumes you already did, which actually takes away the individuality of your choice more, which is crazy. Innate challenge or dare written into it. Totally defeats the purpose of saying it.

In Korean
-is to people who've never eaten a McD's burger,
-or people of whom you have no idea if they ever have eaten, or ever will eat a burger and you're not going to find out, so you just guess.

Why do Koreans opt for the future in guessing, and we opt for the past in guessing? What is it about 'you would not' that sounds like less of a 'go on I dare you' challenge to our individual choice in English than 'you will not'?

Is this a completely arbitrary point of organization or is there any premise for this? Is some stupid Viking responsible for this?

Why does the Korean seem more sensible now? And what's in this jujube tea anyway?

[Raptorboy0]

맥도날드 햄버거안에 뭐가 들어는지 알았다면, 먹지 않했을텐데.

This would actually be better written as:

맥도날드 햄버거안에 뭐가 들어간지 알았다면, 먹지 않했을텐데.

and better translated as: If you knew what went into a MacDonald's hamburger you wouldn't have eaten it.

Meant in a theoretical sort of way, the person already having eaten the hamburger and all.

The second sentence you've analyzed pretty much correctly, you don't know whether the person has eaten a McD's burger or not, because it's completely in the present tense. Korean uses the 머머할텐데 to make sentences theoretical supposition, where as English uses the weird "if blabla then you would/wouldn't blabla"

[blackjack]

Korean language thread

http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=109557&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0