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Re: do be do be do

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Tuesday, May 25, 1999, 7:43
At 17:14 24/05/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Fabian wrote: >> >> My French lecturer recently said that every language needs teh verbs be and >> have. > >Hmmm, that's odd. Why would he say that? I can think of languages >without a verb for "to be" (such as Russian in the present) and those >without "to have" (Irish [Celtic in general?], Hebrew (I think)) >
French mono- or bilinguals have generally a narrowed image of languages (generally only French, English, and sometimes Spanish, Italian or German, that all have the verbs "to be" and "to have") and are always very likely to make generalisations about what they think they know (you see? I'm doing one right now :) ).
>-- >"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father >was hanged." - Irish proverb >http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files >http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html >ICQ: 18656696 >AIM Screen-name: NikTailor > >
Christophe Grandsire |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G. "Reality is just another point of view." homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html