Translations 447, Different Syntactic Word Order in English and Romance Languages

In English, our word order changes when it involves am embedded phrase that begins with a question word; however, in many if not all romance languages, it does not.

In English, we have common sentence structure such as the following when we use questions words (who, what, why, when, where,  how, …):

A colleague and friend of mine is named Jim Moon. His skills as a Portuguese English Interpreter are impeccable. He does not have an accent in either language, has a large vocabulary in both, and does an excellent job.

However, when we were working together as simultaneous Portuguese-English Interpreters in the same conference, once he said something to me in English with Portuguese context as described in this brief article, such as “I don’t know where is the food.”  I was shocked and told Jim I thought he was a never speaker of English but that clearly no native speaker of English would have that syntax. Then he explained to me that he was brought up in Brazil speaking Portuguese to his mother and English to his American father. Thus the perfect accent in both, wide vocabulary in both (probably from reading a lot), yet a minor syntactic error influenced from Portuguese, the country he grew up in.

Below I will attempt to explain these differences in syntactic order.

Where are you?

Question word verb subject?

Who is the president?

Question word +  verb + subject

Note the change in word order when we put these same sentences in an embedded position:

I know where you are.

Subject verb question word subject verb

They understand who the president is.

Subject verb question word subject verb

As you can clearly see, when embedded in a sentence, the embedded clause changes it word order in English and then instead of the word order of questions word + verb + subject, it become questions word + subject + verb.

Now, let’s take Spanish and Portuguese as representatives of romance languages and see how their word order in this context does not change.

Dónde está usted? [Where are you?]

Question word verb subject

Onde está você? [Where are you?]

Question word verb subject

Quién es el president? [Who is the president?]

Question word verb subject?

Quem é o president? [Who is the president?]

Quiestion word verb subject

Note the word order does not change when we put these sentences subordinate in am embedded position:

Sé dónde está usted. [I know where are you]

Subject vcerb questions word verb subject

Sei onde é você. [I know where are you]

Subject verb question word verb subject

As you can see, the embedded sentence that is subordinate to the new sentence, when combined, changes its word order from “question word + verb + subject” to “question word + subject + verb”

Another example:

Why are the books?

The students know where the books are.

Note in the example right above, we have question word + verb + subject, the same as in the romance languages. However, when embedded in a subordinate position to another subject and verb, the word order in the embedded clause changes to question word + subject + verb. Look at the following

The students know where the books are.

Subject + verb + question word + subject + verb