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ajuma
Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!
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 Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:11 am Post subject: Usage question |
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Many Korean students use the expression "I want to MAKE a boy/girlfriend."
We all know that this is wrong...but why is "I want to MAKE some friends." correct??
Seems kind of strange... |
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yingwenlaoshi
Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Location: ... location, location!
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 9:02 am Post subject: |
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Maybe because they use "haeyo" which directly means "do", but where "haeyo" can mean a lot of things, they understand that "do" doesn't work in this context.
Just a guess. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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Good observation.
IMO, it comes down to 'make a friend' is an idiomatic expression and the elements don't work outside that idiom. I guess it's something like: Did you grow up in a barn? means 'Close the door', but if someone said, "Did you grow up in a tool shed?" it wouldn't mean anything.
I tell my students that a lot of English is not 'logical' all the time. It's 'get on/off a bike, a horse, a train, a plane, a ship...but 'get IN/OUT of a car. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 2:04 pm Post subject: |
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Just a matter of collocation, nothing more.
'Friend' goes with 'make'; 'boy/girlfriend' goes with 'get' or 'find'. The Korean usage may be overextension of the collocation 'make... friend'. It may also be transfer from Korean, though I don't know what the phrase is in Korean. |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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I don't think it ids wrong. It sounds awkward.
Many things that Australians (or for that matter Philidelphians) say sound
awkward to me, but I do understand what they are saying.
Just, because something sounds awkward does not mean it is incorrect.
When in the corporate world you hear many awkward sounding things,
things that make you cringe, when they make up these weird slogans
and use the latest buzz words. One phrase I used to hate was
Down-Sizing and Right-Sizing, probably hated that as much as a worker
in the 60's hated the word lay-off. They both sound better than firing or
dismissed, but in the end they all mean the same thing. |
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Novernae
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:13 pm Post subject: |
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| cbclark4 wrote: |
I don't think it ids wrong. It sounds awkward.
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I don't agree with you. While some regionalism may sound awkward to others, they are uttered by native speakers which gives them a place in the language. Corporatisms and other made up words, when made up by native (or even fluent non-native) speakers, are okay because they generally follow the paradigms of the language in question. Generally, when something doesn't follow these paradigms it doesn't take off and is relegated to bad idea heaven. When a non-native speaker says something that no native speaker would ever say, it is wrong (so long as the community making the mistake is small enough to not have more of an effect on the language). That's why so many of the English slogans used by Korean companies sound awkward; no native speaker would ever say them, which makes them incorrect despite (sometimes) getting the meaning across.
| cbclark4 wrote: |
| Just, because something sounds awkward does not mean it is incorrect. |
Just because something gets the meaning across doesn't mean it's correct. |
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