Culture and Language Acquisition: Language

What is the girl doing in this picture? I think that in English we’d say that she’s watering the flowers. Right?

Now, if you think about it, where is she putting the water? Is she putting water on the plants? On top of the plants? Next to the plants?

This is one of the pictures I looked at recently with my language helper. Do you know how he explained this part of the picture? “A certain girl is putting water under the small trees.” Well, I guess that works. It surprised me at first to hear the “under” in there, but it actually makes a lot of sense. The hope is that the water will get down onto the roots, right? So we’d prefer the water goes under the plants than on them.

Isn’t language interesting? And this is a good reminder, too, that you can’t just translate word-for-word. How many of you would like to read a book in English, translated from My Language, in which it says “A certain girl is putting water under the small trees?” You’d kind of understand, but it would leave you scratching your head, too.