an english teacher is teaching his class about positive and negative words. "In english, as you know, a double negative is a positive, whereas in some languages, such as russian, a double negative is simply more negative. however, there is no known language where a double positive can be a negative."
from the back of the room, comes wafting up a pair of words from the class clown. "yeah right". On 5/3/05, Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Standing Bear wrote: > > >Russian grammar is different than > >ours in many ways, including the omission of common nonsense words that we > >call 'articles' like 'the' in many cases... > > Actually, English articles have a specific meaning: they indicate whether > you are talking about one specific instance or general instances. It is a > common misconception that English articles, number, and French word gender > are "nonsense" or dispensable. They have no meaning, but they provide > essential cross checking to reduce errors in communication. They function > somewhat like parity bits. Take two French words which sound similar but > are of different genders. The use of "le" or "la" earlier in the sentence > acts as a clue or heads-up for the listener. If he has trouble hearing the > sentence because he is in a noisy environment, he backtracks, replays the > sentence in his mind, and checks whether there was a "le" or "la." > > You can always have a language without articles, number or gender. We get > along fine without gender in English. Japanese has none of these things, > yet Japanese people communicate perfectly. But of course they have other > techniques to reinforce meaning, cross-check and reduce ambiguity. > > Incidentally, yesterday someone mentioned the distinction between green and > blue. The most common Japanese color word, "ao," is both blue and green. So > when you are driving with a Japanese person and he tells you the traffic > light has turned blue, he means green. When Americans first learned > Japanese, I expect some of them wondered whether Japanese people are > colorblind. Not at all. They have dozens of other words for colors which > describe fine gradations between various shades of blue and green. The most > common pair after "ao" are: "sora-iro" and "midori" which mean "sky-color" > (blue) and "leaf-color" (green). > > - Jed > > -- "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write" Voltaire
