17555
One of the common mistakes that Japanese people make when speaking in English
is to translate the expression "電話番号を教えて" directly into English - "to teach a
phone number", which can confuse native English speakers who are not familiar
with the expression. I was wondering why they use the word teach rather than a
verb similar to tell or give?
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2014-06-24T05:05:50.070
17554
2014-06-24T19:24:50.070
2014-06-24T06:23:14.303
6656
6656
question
verbs expressions
Why do Japanese people 'teach' others their phone numbers?
"Teach" in this case is simply "tell" -- i.e., "inform someone of something
they did not know previously". As to why folks in Japan use 教える instead of 伝える
or some other verb, that may have to be chalked up to cultural, historical,
and linguistic differences.

ADDENDUM:

By way of example of "cultural, historical, and linguistic differences", it
bears noting that English and German, two quite related languages, use
interestingly different words for the same ideas.

Where English speakers would say " _tell_ " in the sense of " _inform_ ", like
" _tell me your name_ ", German speakers would say " _sagen_ " -- cognate with
English " _say_ ". So we could just as well ask why English speakers don't say
" _say to me your name_ ". Meanwhile, the German cognate for " _tell_ " is "
_zählen_ ", which instead means " _to count [something]_ " (compare English "
_tally_ ").

Each language is its own cognitive web of ideas. Each word in a language
represents a node or intersection in that web, and a node in any one language
will only ever imperfectly map to another node in another language. So it is
with Japanese 教える and English " _tell_ ".
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2014-06-24T06:27:27.100
17555
2014-06-24T19:24:50.070
2014-06-24T19:24:50.070
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17554
answer