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Seeing Eye Dogs
Message
From
25/07/2008 09:20:59
Dragan Nedeljkovich
Now officially retired
Zrenjanin, Serbia
 
 
To
25/07/2008 09:11:12
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Other
Title:
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01333768
Message ID:
01334049
Views:
28
>>Ah, two things here. First, the lack of word for "what" instead of "what" in English, the first one asking for an adjective ("what door is this" - "a green one"), the latter one for definition ("what do we have here?", "a door"). I've seen this so many times...
>
>For the first, we would say "Which door is this?". The second case, yes, we would use 'what'.

Nope, "which" asks for a way to identify one among the many (just like the guy asked his unresponsive wife, "which dick is it to you today" (meaning "what's the matter"), and she said "fifth"). There is simply no such word in English. "What kind of" comes close, but it still asks for a noun, not an adjective. "How are you" is asking for an adverb - need equivalent word for adjective. Every other language I know has one (even, IIRC, the clumsy German "was für ein" does the job).

>>The second is that, in most Slavic languages, Hungarian, German, Italian (and who knows how many others), the question is not "what do they call you", it's "how do they call you", or even "how's your name", never a what.
>
>Yep. I never got over the fact that in French, one doesn't ask "How are you?", but instead, "How do you go?" , or, I suppose, "How are you going?", to which we, in English, would answer, "By bus."

In many languages, "how do you like it" begs for "I like it nicely"; "how are you?" - "I permanently am".

back to same old

the first online autobiography, unfinished by design
What, me reckless? I'm full of recks!
Balkans, eh? Count them.
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