Language Grammar

I've been noticing how different languages have different grammar but yet people still understand their meaning.

Don't get what I mean?

Notice how when you translate an English sentence into Chinese, or from Chinese to English, but keeping all the verbs, adjectives and nouns in the same order as the sentence you are translating, you will get a grammatically wrong sentence in the other language but with the same meaning?

How then do people get all these information when the nouns, verbs, etc are jumbled up?

Still don't get what I mean? Nevermind, not many people do.

Anyways, here's an example.

Here's a sentence in English with proper English grammar (I know what you're thinking. I came up with the sentence myself and saying it has proper grammar only gives me self praise and yes, I do know what you mean and all but this is my blog, my post and my content. You go think of the same sentence but make it more grammatically correct yourself and when you do, I suggest you have a nice cup of milk with some lead tablets before telling me your drinking experience):

Could you help me get that red shirt that belong to Aunt Julie?

Here's the same sentence in English except with Chinese grammar:

You are either able or unable help me get Aunt's Julie's red shirt.

Ok, not much difference there, except maybe the addition of a few words. I had to do it such that it would still sound grammatically correct which hopefully I did succeed in although it's meaning is now slightly different.

Let me try again..

You could help me get Aunt Julie's the red shirt.

Ok not really grammatically correct in English but I tried to make it so in Chinese.

If you don't know what's happening, just read on. You'll realise what I mean when you speak other languages.

So how do people still understand the meaning of the sentence even with the structure mixed up and different from other languages?

I'm no psychologist or Neurotic Surgeon but I've thought about it for awhile and came up with this.

Well, the meaning still stays the same so after hearing the whole sentence, we should all be able to recall what information is in the sentence and derive it's meaning.

Back to the example above,

When someone is saying the sentence in English, here's what comes to mind in order of what we hear.

"Could you help me get that red shirt that belongs to Aunt Julie?"

-I'm being asked to do something.
-I've been asked to get something.
-That object I'm supposed to get is red.
-The object is a red shirt.
-The object, or red shirt, belongs to an "Aunt". (Many possibilities of the meaning Aunt used here. It will have to depend on the scenario used)
-The red shirt I'm supposed to get belongs to Aunt Julie.
-I can reply with a "Yes" or "No". (This part can be the second or third point, depending on how the individual thinks)

In Chinese,

-I've been asked for help.
-I've been asked to get something.
-I've been asked to get something from Aunt Julie.
-The object I'm supposed to get from Aunt Julie is red.
-The object is a red shirt.
-I'm supposed to get, from Aunt Julie, a red shirt.
-I can reply with a "Yes" or "No".

I mean, overall, the meaning of the sentence is the same. The order in which we process the information in the sentence, however is different. And that's why we can still obtain the same meaning from difference in languages even though they have different grammatical sentence structures, that is, if we actually listen to the whole sentence before concluding our interpretation of the meaning.

Another example is this:

English: Night Market.
Malay: Pasar Malam.

They both mean the same thing, except in English, we process the information as something at night first then the event rather than the event and the time it takes place at.

Of course, many people listen to the whole sentence before processing the information because our brain dedicates a small amount of memory, about a few seconds, to listening to sentences and unless it's a really long sentences, very few would actually care about the order they get the information in, as long as they get the same meaning as what the person telling them wants to say.

And what does this have to do with us normal people who live normal lives who go around chatting all day without noticing these kinda things?

Nothing.

Enough said..