no need for responsibility

There are days when language learning is tiring and seems to have no end. But then there are days when I learn something especially mind-stimulating about a language and it make my brain really excited. So here's a little something for your mind to chew on and hopefully it'll excite you too.

As wonderful as our English language is, we do not have a grammatical structure for the 'impersonal' as they do in the Latin languages. We are forced to use the word 'one' or 'they' when we construct sentences that detaches a particular person or group from an action. For instance, in a sentence such as "One goes to school" we do not know who exactly has gone to school; nonetheless, a general person has gone to school. In Italian, this type of structure is created through the use of the third person pronoun si + third person singular/plural verb conjugation. So the same sentence would go something like "Si va a scuola."

We had a discussion in class about how in Florence, many young Italians use this structure to free themselves from the feeling of responsibility from actions committed that would otherwise be considered less than acceptable. If a kid skips school, goes to the movies instead, and subsequently his mother finds out, he could reply to her angry words with a "non si è andato al cinema" or literally "one did not go the theater." Of course this sounds strange in English, but apparently in Florence it is perfectly fine. Another interesting point comes from one of our phD candidate's research on Italian writings on World War II, especially those dealing with Hitler or Mussolini. She writes that history books are written in this impersonal form so as to perhaps free the government from full responsibility of all the atrocities that took place.

Now, this brings me to Korean and Japanese (henceforth called KJ), the two languages I love the most and how they construct this idea. In the KJ languages, since pronouns are frequently dropped and only picked up in context, the verb becomes the most important part of the sentence. If one asks "Did you eat?" in KJ you would word the same sentence as "Did Eat?" The 'you' is implied because the question is obviously directed at a person. So it is in the verb that changes happen. Now, Korean and Japanese people hate to take credit for things they do. (Whether good or bad.) So, this impersonal structure we have seen in Italian is achieved in the KJ language through intransitivity. What happens when a kid breaks a cup and is faced with telling his mom the truth? "カップが割れてた" or "the cup had been broken (with an implied meaning of when I found it there)." When somebody makes dinner for all his friends he will say "밥이 다 됐어요" or "the food has been cooked." One really important thing to notice here is that the cup and food in the examples take a subject particle when the subject should be the actual person! Furthermore, it would be strange and awkward socially to take full responsibility by saying "I broke the cup" or "I made dinner for you all." The speakers take no responsibility.