Julia Thompson schreef: > "Baardwijk, J. van DTO/SLWPD/RZO/BOZO" wrote: > > > > > -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > > > Van: Gautam Mukunda [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > > Verzonden: Sunday, January 13, 2002 23:06 > > > Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Onderwerp: RE: Treatment Of Prisoners (was RE: Tragedy in Israel) > > > > > > > Unless there a special Dutch-English dictionary that declares that > > > "lots of people" (my quote) = "much of the rest of the world" (your > > > quote). I don't think there is. > > > > Since both quotes are in English, that dictionary would be an English > > dictionary, not a Dutch-English dictionary. > > > > But anyway, I do consider "lots of people in Europe and the rest of the > > world" to be pretty much synonymous with "much of rest of the world". > > I wouldn't.
> There is a large number of people in Europe. I'm not sure how many; I'm > sure that someone can come up with that figure. There are enough people > in Europe that 10% of the European population could be considered, in my > opinion, "lots of people". (I'm not taking into account the "rest of > the world" part right now.) > > To illustrate: According to the U. S. Census Bureau, there are over 280 > million people in the United States right now. 28 million people is an > awful lot of people. If 28 million people out of 280 million had a > particular attitude about something, that wouldn't be a majority or > anything, but it *would* be enough to have an impact on the rest of the > population. > > I'm with Gautam about it NOT being synonymous. I'm guessing that most > of the native speakers of English on this list will be with us. If I'm > wrong, though, I'd like to hear about it. Thanks for pointing it out. I would have also taken Gautams reference "lots of people in Europe and the rest of the world" as "much of people in the rest of the world", (or should that be 'many'?, not sure) especially since 'the rest of the world' was added as the bonus there. I was already wondering about that rather presumptuous statement Gautam made there. Sonja
