>>>>Similarly many Germans get confused between the English "to do" and "to make", for which I believe there is only one word in German (and in French) "Machen" (Faire). I've often heard only "make" being used, as in "I make my work" (which would be true of, say, a sculptor)
>>>
>>>Nope. We do not mix up make and do. We mix up "machen" and "tun", both of them translate mostly directly.
>>>Normaly we feel a little bit strange with do.
>>>The use of "Tun" is something that one has to avoid in german languge. It's a little bit like baby-speech.
>>>We normaly use a verb without "tun" - or we replace "tun" with "machen". So we have altered the meaning from "machen"
>>>(create) to do. (And in fact, nobody is thinking about it.).
>>
>>Well this explains nothing! I still hear, and have heard, many times, a German saying like: "I make this (doing an action) ...", as in "I make all my housework before I leave the house". Maybe you don't, being a reguar English speaker on the UT.
>>
>
>Terry,
>
>yes, you are right we do this wrong. What I try to write is that for a german there is no clear distinction (we make no distinction ? ::)) between the two words in german, but we know that the words translate straight. So we do our german wrong - and translate that to english.
>So do not blame our english - you must blame our german.
>
>Agnes

Ah, I thought you were contradicting what I'd observed :-)

I thought, "how could she know how I, as an English speaker, perceive Germans over here?". I also have a German colleague who's within chatting distance of me.

Terry