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It's pretty subtle that in English, you need "stolen from" instead of "steal" as the verb if you want to be talking about the victim instead of the perpetrator.
"If you steal" vs. "If you are stolen from"
Even "if you steal from" specifies the wrong person. Looking at this arbitrary rule where changing to the past tense in a specific context changes the direction, I wonder how I even learned it. Is it consistent with any other rules?
In Japanese it's legal to have a sentence with nothing but the verb (no subject or object) and leave it to the listener to infer the context.
I'll bet the original read something like "stolen if, reporting now please"
Posted by: Cafe Alpha | Feb 19, 2008 at 01:52 AM