The choice of words give away a whole culture, and in particular the way verbes are built. A concept such as owning something is translated in most European languages the same way: to have, avoir, tener, … A European possesses things, the thing is owned.
Conversely, other cultures focus rather on the relationship between two elements, that is to say the languages express the existence of a person/object and then link it with the “owner”. One does not say “I have a cat”, but “a cat is with me”. Here are a few examples from a few langauges I cam accross:
- A Turkish person will say “my cat is existing” or kedim var. Kedi means “cat” to which we add an “m” to show the ownership and var means “existing” or “there is”. To say “I don’t have a cat” in Turkish we would say kedim yok, where yok stands for “not existing” or “there isn’t”. Pretty efficient.
- An Irish person speaking Gaelic will say Tá cat agam, tá is the verb “to be” and agam is the addition of the preposition ag or “at” in English and the pronoun me. Hard to translate litterally! Maybe “a cat of mine is”?
- The verb “to have” in swahili is built with the verb “to be” kuwa and “with” na, that is to say kuwa na. A person from Tanzania would then say Nina paka, paka meaning cat.
- Finally a Russian person will say У меня есть кот (in phonetics: U menya est’ kot). У is the preposition expressing the place, меня translates “me” and есть is the verb “exist” in the infinitive form, this time I will let you translate litterally.
All those differences question the way we interact with our environment and how we relate to objects and beings around us. If I were to say “a cat of mine exists”, how would that affect the relationship I have with my cat?
