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Not to mess with

de jkph00, 14 decembrie 2013

Contribuții/Mesaje: 15

Limbă: English

jkph00 (Arată profil) 14 decembrie 2013, 16:26:03

How might one translate best this sentence, "He learned not to mess with her?" (Heh, heh. My son's girlfriend has gumption. ridulo.gif)

robbkvasnak (Arată profil) 14 decembrie 2013, 16:32:47

Li lernis ke li ne devus okupiĝi pri ŝi.

jismith1989 (Arată profil) 14 decembrie 2013, 16:38:13

There's probably a better way, but here's my attempt: Li lernis ke li ne ĝenegu ŝin.

jkph00 (Arată profil) 14 decembrie 2013, 17:08:21

jismith1989:There's probably a better way, but here's my attempt: Li lernis ke li ne ĝenegu ŝin.
That seems to capture it. Thanks!

Nile (Arată profil) 14 decembrie 2013, 18:33:17

I just noticed something weird and idiomatic about that kind of phrase: negation is done differently.
Orinarily, saying "not" after a verb like that negates it, so "learned not to" should mean "did not learn to", and "learn to not" should carry the meaning that this sentence has.

jismith1989 (Arată profil) 14 decembrie 2013, 19:01:23

Nile:I just noticed something weird and idiomatic about that kind of phrase: negation is done differently.
Orinarily, saying "not" after a verb like that negates it, so "learned not to" should mean "did not learn to", and "learn to not" should carry the meaning that this sentence has.
If you wanted to say 'did not learn to', you could put the ne earlier, e.g. Li ne lernis ke li ĝenegu ŝin. Which is similar to what you're doing in English (with 'learned not to', the 'not' is going with the 'to mess with' rather than the 'learned', whereas it's the other way around with 'did not learn to' ). ridulo.gif So yeah, there is a difference in meaning between the two.

Nile (Arată profil) 14 decembrie 2013, 20:38:14

Actually, "learn to mess not with her" sounds better to me, except it's ambiguous whether you are negating "mess" or "her".

sudanglo (Arată profil) 16 decembrie 2013, 13:03:48

Li lernis ne ĉagreni ŝin.

Li lernis ne kontraŭ-stari/kontraŭi ŝin.

Li lernis konform(iĝ)i kun ŝiaj deziroj.

Of these, I think I prefer lernis ne kontraŭi

jkph00 (Arată profil) 16 decembrie 2013, 14:41:27

sudanglo:
Of these, I think I prefer lernis ne kontraŭi
Kontraǔi has just the flavor I was looking for. I'll go back and edit what I had written so as to use it. Thank you, Sudanglo and everyone who made suggestions. They were all deeply appreciated.

Regarding the way to parse the sentence itself ("He learned not to mess with her" ), I diagrammed the sentence and have attached a .bmp of it. Does that help clarify the parse order?

Nile (Arată profil) 16 decembrie 2013, 15:34:45

I'm not familiar with this type of diagram, but my intuition tells me that it explicitly indicates that "not" is negating "learned".
Which means he "didn't learn (to mess with her)".

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