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Dear all,<br>
<br>
It appears that many people have been thinking about and investigating
the use of “cheerfully” while I was sound asleep here in Australia… Thank
you very much to David, Richard, Tadeusz, Donna, John, Ramesh, Martin,
and Kate for your helpful comments! (I hope I haven’t forgotten
anyone)<br>
<br>
Even though there may be some meaning differences in my examples, in most
cases the situation seems to look like this:<br>
<br>
<u>Meaning:<br>
</u> <br><br>
<pre>If you describe someone's attitude as cheerful, you mean they are
not </pre>worried about something, and you think that they should be.
(Collins-Cobuild Third Edition)<br>
<br><br>
<pre>'conscious'/deliberate treatment of 'adjective' as being of no
importance (on the part of the entity being explicitly/implicitly
described as negative)
being cheerful/happy despite something negative
</pre> <br>
<u>Paraphrases:<br>
</u> <br>
cheerful and …<br><br>
<pre>ungrudgingly
willingly
optimistically
blissfully (as in blissfully ignorant)
blithely
heedlessly
carelessly
breezily
unrepentantly
unashamedly
</pre> <br>
<u>Suggested translations:<br><br>
</u>insouciance (French)<br>
schamlos (German)<br>
reuelos (German)<br>
sorglos (German)<br>
unbekümmert (German)<br>
gut gelaunt (German)<br>
<br>
I’d say that you could not translate these adv+adj combinations as adv +
adj combinations in German in most cases. Rather you’d probably translate
them as adj + conj + adj or adj + prep + NP:<br>
e.g. <i>cheerfully sick<br>
</i>„krank, aber unbekümmert/gut gelaunt“ (‘sick but cheerful’)<br>
„unbekümmert/gut gelaunt trotz seiner Krankheit“ (‚cheerful despite his
sickness’)<br>
<br>
though I’m still not sure about which German adj would fit best –
probably depends on the context. I suspect that different adjectives can
be used. It is certainly NOT possible to say “fröhlich krank”
(‘cheerfully sick’) in German.<br>
<br>
The use of “cheerfully stained” does seem a bit different, and this could
be translated as adj + N (“eine Schürze mit fröhlichen Flecken” – ‘an
apron with cheerful/happy stains’)<br>
<br>
The use of “cheerfully unaware” is again different – perhaps to be
translated as “völlig im Unklaren darüber”, though this completely lacks
the ‘happy’ meaning of “cheerfully”.<br>
<br>
To be honest, I find that “cheerfully” is very difficult to translate but
I guess I must try to cheerfully accept this...<br>
<br>
Again, thank you very much to everyone,<br>
<br>
Monika<br>
<br>
<br>
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