# שאני אשלם?‏



## hadronic

Hello,  am I correct in seeing 2 "shades" of meaning for that short sentence : שאני אשלם?, in case where actual context is not provided :
- doubt, consternation, uncertainty :  "what, you're asking me to pay" ??
- spontaneous self-proposing : "would you like me to pay, can I propose myself to pay for us both" ?

Thx!


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## ystab

Correct indeed. Not only context may imply the meaning, but also tonnation.


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## airelibre

Shall I pay?
Me, pay!?


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## hadronic

אני לשלם ?!? too sounds ok to me in Hebrew.
Native confirm?

For the "self-proposing" meaning, yes it would be a kind of first person singular imperative. This construction (ש+fut/subj) is usual in the third person both in French and Hebrew (שהוא ישלם, qu'il paye !!) but French doesn't have the first person singular possibility ("que je paye" sounds weird). But for some reason, it seemed not to shock me in Hebrew, so I wanted to confirm


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## bazq

hadronic said:


> אני לשלם ?!? too sounds ok to me in Hebrew.
> Native confirm?



Only with a long, obvious pause, and the intonation on leshalem must be raised.
אני?       לשלם ?
"Me?         PAY?"

Without the pause and the intonation it's ungrammatical.
It's very dramtic though.... not really natural.


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## hadronic

Does it feel any different from English "me, pay?!", which is not grammatical either?


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## elroy

hadronic said:


> Does it feel any different from English "me, pay?!", which is not grammatical either?


 It _is_ grammatical in English.  It would be ungrammatical without a pause/comma, as in Hebrew.


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## Drink

elroy said:


> It _is_ grammatical in English.  It would be ungrammatical without a pause/comma, as in Hebrew.



It depends on your point of view. You're both right. I think what Hadronic meant was that "me... pay?!" would not make up a so-called "complete sentence", which is true of the Hebrew as well.


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## bazq

Oh of course, I did not mean to suggest Hebrew and English differed in this.
It's just that in hadronic's post it wasn't clear what he meant by "אני לשלם?!?", so I explained in which form it's accepted (since this is pretty much the only way in which such an utterence IS accepted).
I don't know why he'd consider it ungrammatical in English, I reckon because as is it does seem a bit odd, but you can easily picture the following:
"Me?  make dinner for 12 people?? You're out of your mind!" 

Either way, it's not common in everyday speech, and the construction with ש+imperfect conj. is by far more popular.


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