「感謝」的詞彙和表達方式🦃
Happy Thanksgiving!感恩節快樂!🦃
昨天(11月最後一個星期四)是美國的感恩節假期,人們通常會回家與家人一同享用火雞大餐。
大家都喜歡在感恩節的晚餐時段,向自己愛的人傳遞感激。我也想藉由這篇通訊,與大家探討一些關於感謝的詞彙與表達方法。
首先,「thank」一字分別有動詞和名詞的版本。
當我們要表達「謝謝某人/東西」時,作為動詞的「thank」是及物的(transitive),而被感激的對象就是直接賓語。例如:
I want to thank my family.
我想感謝我的家人
這句中的「thank」是在一組完成「I want」意思的 infinitive 基本動詞組中的。我們可以在整個「to thank my family」詞組中可看到「thank」有連接「my family」這個直接賓語。
假如我們還想表達感謝的理由,可以加入一個「for」的介詞組。例如:
I want to thank my family for their support.
我想感謝家人的支持
從上述翻譯可見,以中文表達這意思的方式是有點不一樣的。中文更自然會把這個「感謝的理由」(這裡的「支持(support)」這名詞組)作為動詞「感謝」的直接賓語。
但使用英文表達這意思的話,我們會首先表明接受「thank」的賓語(像是「thank my family」),然後添加一個額外的「for」介詞組去引出感謝的理由。
因此,如果我們說「thank my family’s support*」是較奇怪的,但「thank my family for their support」就自然得多了。而動詞「thank」的賓語也通常會是人。(當然也不一定。)
平常說的「thank you」這個表達方式,原句其實是「I thank you」。只是我們因為常用而慣性把主語「I」省略掉,因為它已經是很普遍的表達方式了。
至於名詞版本的「thank」,文法上是可數的(countable),但它基本上不會以單數字形出現,我們通常只會看到它的眾數字形「thanks」。
平常表達「謝謝」,我們還可以使用「thanks」一字,這個表達方式所用的也是這個眾數字形。(你可以想像原句可以是「I give you thanks」或「here are my thanks」之類。)
眾數字形的「thanks」常會與動詞「give」一同出現,表達「表達感謝」的意思。
使用這表達方式時,我們可以用一個「to」介詞組來添加「thanks」的對象,並以「for」介詞組說明「thanks」的理由:
I want to give thanks to my family for their support.
我想感謝家人的支持
不過要注意,「give thanks」是比較正式的用語,在日常溝通上不會經常出現。
我們也可以使用另一個有相關字源的形容詞「thankful」來表達感謝。正如我在MCA詞彙課程中所提到的,字源相關的單字在表達相近意思時,一般都具有相同的修飾語和其他特徵。
例如在使用「thankful」時,我們也會以「to」介詞組來表達感謝的對象,以及用「for」介詞組說明感謝的理由:
I am thankful to my family for their support.
我想感謝家人的支持
「Thankful」有一個同義詞「grateful」。我在詞彙課程中提到,英文中很多一對對同義詞,它們其中一個會有日耳曼語(Germanic)字源(演變自與英文自身的印歐語系分支),另一個則有拉丁語字源(在歷史上借自與英文同一語言家族但在另一分支的拉丁語)。
「Thankful / grateful」就是這樣一對 –「thankful」來自日耳曼分支,「grateful」來自拉丁文。
現代英文中這些一對對的同義詞,具拉丁字源的通常是「困難」一點的詞彙,用法上也比較正式。這裡也一樣,相對於「thankful」,「grateful」正是那個比較「困難」的單字。
在大多數的語境,這兩個單字基本上都能互換使用,但「grateful」多會表達出了一種更為「深刻」和「全面」的感謝之情, 比方說「I am grateful for what I have in my life」。「Thankful」則比較多用於表達目前某情況中的感受。
不過我們仍然可把它們視為能夠互通的單字,並透過自己接觸到的例子,熟悉兩者在於各種語境中可能出現的細微差別。
「Gratitude」是一個與「grateful」有字源關聯的名詞。與「thanks」不同,我們不會說「give gratitude*」,因為「gratitude」指的是所感受到的「感激之情」,而非「感謝」本身。
我們很經常會說「express gratitude」或「show gratitude」的,即把這種感激之情說或表示出來。我們可以如上地使用「to」和「for」的介詞組來表現這感受的接受者和理由。
I want to express my gratitude to my family for their support.
希望這篇通訊能提供一些有用的信息,以助大家從第一人稱的角度向某人表達謝意和感激之情。
最後,我想藉此感謝各位,讓我有機會和平台去分享英文知識,並在過程中不斷地自我提升。
謝謝你們!
____________________________
Some Words and Expressions Related to Giving Thanks 🦃
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! 🦃
Yesterday (the last Thursday of November) was the American holiday of Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, people usually go home to have a big feast -- with turkeys! -- with their families.
At this Thanksgiving dinner, many people like to share with their loved ones what they are grateful for in their lives, so I thought we could look at a few words and expressions related to giving thanks in today’s newsletter.
First, the word “thank” has a verb version and a noun version.
As a verb, “thank” is transitive when we want to express “多謝某人/東西” -- the person you “thank” is the direct object. For example:
I want to thank my family.
我想感謝我的家人
In this sentence, “thank” is in an infinitive phrase completing the meaning of “I want.” In the phrase “to thank my family,” we can see that “thank” has the direct object “my family.”
If we want to express the reason for thanking someone/something, we can add a prepositional phrase with “for.” For example:
I want to thank my family for their support.
我想感謝家人的支持
As we can see from the Chinese translation, in Chinese, we would express meaning differently -- with the “support” as the direct object of the verb “多謝.”
In English, however, we would first express the object of “thank” -- like “thank my family” -- and then use an additional prepositional phrase “for” to express the reason for this thanks.
As in, it would be quite unusual to say “thank my family’s support*” in English even though it is grammatically fine. Saying “thank my family for their support” would be more natural. The object of the verb “thank” is usually (but not always, of course) a person or people.
Interestingly, the expression “thank you” is actually “I thank you” -- but we habitually omit the subject “I” as this is now a common expression.
The noun version of the word “thank” is grammatically countable but basically never appears in singular form. It almost always appears in plural form, as “thanks.”
The expression “thanks” -- an alternative to “thank you” -- is this plural noun form. (You can imagine the “full” sentence of this as, for example, “I give you thanks,” “here are my thanks” etc.)
This plural noun “thanks” usually appears in usage with the verb “give” -- like in “Thanksgiving.”
When we use this expression, we can add the “recipient” of the “thanks” with a prepositional phrase with “to,” and the “reason” of the “thanks” with a prepositional phrase with “for”:
I want to give thanks to my family for their support.
我想感謝家人的支持
But note that “give thanks” is quite formal and is rarely used in daily communication.
We can also use the etymologically related adjective “thankful” to express thanks. As I mentioned in our MCA Vocabulary Course, words that are etymologically related usually also have the same modifiers and other characteristics when they express similar meanings.
For example, when we use “thankful,” we would also use a prepositional phrase with “to” to express the “recipient” of the thanks and a one with “for” to express the reason for the thanks:
I am thankful to my family for their support.
我想感謝家人的支持
A synonym to “thankful” in English is “grateful.” I mentioned in our Vocabulary Course that English has many pairs of synonyms in which one word has Germanic roots (from the branch of the Indo-European Language family that English evolved from) and the other one has Latinate roots (borrowed from Latin, which is in another branch of the same language family).
“Thankful” and “grateful” are such a pair of synonyms -- “thankful” comes from the Germanic branch itself, and “grateful” comes from Latin.
With such pairs of modern English synonyms, the Latinate word is usually the so-called “harder” word and is more formal in usage. It is the case with this pair as well. “Grateful” is a “harder” (or less common) word than “thankful.”
These words are basically interchangeable in most contexts, but “grateful” probably expresses a “deeper” and more “overarching” feeling of thanks -- like “I am grateful for what I have in my life” -- than “thankful,” which probably focuses more on a particular thing that gives you relief.
But you can just think of these words as interchangeable and just use examples you see to “feel” the nuanced differences they might express in different contexts.
A related word to “grateful” is the noun “gratitude.” Unlike “thanks,” we don’t say “give gratitude*” because “gratitude” is the “feeling of being grateful” that you feel (not the “thanks” itself).
We can “express gratitude” -- as in, voice out this feeling. We can also use prepositional phrases with “to” and prepositional phrases with “for” in the same ways mentioned above:
I want to express my gratitude to my family for their support.
Hopefully, this newsletter can give you some useful information on how to express thanks and gratitude to someone for something from a first-person perspective.
Finally, I would like to express my thanks to all of you for giving me a chance and platform to share what I know about English and to improve my own knowledge continually in the process.
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