Every now and then a teacher will have a problem with a sentence in a book or something and ask me to help them understand it. I love when this happens because 1) I'm usually really bored at work. 2) I enjoy the challenge of trying to explain something or translating it into a similar Japanese version... 3) I am able to realize how confusing English (or any language at that) can be.
Today my teacher came up to me with a passage from a story about a girl who is on a date with a guy that she really likes.
It said something along the lines of this...
"I began to smile while I hope and waited for him to kiss me. And he did. If it's possible, I smiled even wider."
No particularly epic... doesn't even seem that difficult to understand to me... The teacher, who is very very good at Eglish, didn't understand the part that says "If it's possible I smiled even wider."
"What does this mean?" He asked.
As I started to explain it I found it was really difficult to explain simply. It was much more complex than I had imagined...
I started simple:
"Well, she was already smiling and then they kissed. Then, she was so happy she smiled even wider."
He responded, "So it is a fact that she is smiling wider?"
"Well... no... the second half implies that she was already smiling as wide as she could smile."
"Well, I'm a bit confused about the tense of this first section. Shouldn't it say 'If it was possible.' instead of If it is possible?"
Now I started to get confused.
"Well no... I don't think so... hmmm..."
"Is 'if' being used conditionally?" He was growing more and more confused.
"Well it's kind of a hypothetical thing... I think."
...There was an awkward pause....
I thought for a moment and came up with this.
"It would be the same as if she said "I was smiling as wide as I could, then he kissed me. I was so happy that I felt as if I could smile even wider, even though that is not possible."
The he stared at me and said "I think I'll try to go back to my desk and write out some other examples that are similar to this to try and understand..."
I decided I wanted to write some examples too, so that he might understand better. Boy, it's a difficult thing!
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2 comments:
Clearly he was more interested in perfect English rather than the feeling she was trying to express, which I think she did really, really well and creatively.
It depends on hat the meaning of "is" is.
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