Audience participation segment: Instructions from the back of a container of special Japanese 'silk' facial cleansing powder:
English: Work into lather with a little water.
German: Mit etwas Wasser aufschäumen.
French: Faire mousser avec un peu d'eau.
Spanish: Producir espuma con un poco de agua.
I really only have any actual speaking command of two of the languages on this list (English and French), but given that these are all intended as a direct translation of the English instruction, and what with being able to recognize various cognates in the German and Spanish, and having worked on causative and resultative constructions in English and Italian, and you know, heck, being a professional linguist and all, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on what was going on in these four sentences, syntactically speaking, when I first read them. And it seems to me that one of these instructions is not like the others.
Which one? And why?
Post your thoughts in the comments section here. I'll tell you what my take is tomorrow.
(For the less western-europeanly inclined, I've posted interlinear glosses (not translations) after the jump.
English: Work into lather with a little water.
German:
Mit etwas Wasser auf-schäumen.
with some water up-foam
French:
Faire mousser avec un peu d'eau.
Make to.foam with a little of water
Spanish:
Producir espuma con un poco de agua.
produce foam with a little of water