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Re: Weekly Vocab 6: to know

From:taliesin the storyteller <taliesin@...>
Date:Friday, May 9, 2003, 8:10
* H. S. Teoh said on 2003-05-07 20:29:07 +0200
> On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 01:09:42PM -0400, Mark J. Reed wrote: > > On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 08:57:45AM -0700, Garrett Jones wrote: > > > something interesting i noted with people's translations for the verb 'to > > > know': all but one person's conlang either had more than one word for the > > > english word 'to know' or omitted a word in one case. > > That is interesting. Many natlangs distinguish "to know" as in > > "to know a person" (Spanish conocer, German konne?)
zu kennen "konw a person" zu ko¨nnen "know how to do something, as in can, could" zu wissen "know a fact"
> > from "to know" as in > > "to know a fact" (Spanish saber, German weiss?), but I haven't run across > > many who distinguish "to know a fact" from "to know how to do something". > > This is distinguished in my L1, Hokkien. /tsai1/ is to know a fact, but /e > hiao2/ is to know how to do something. The latter also applies to acquired > skills or tastes; one might say that a child /beh hiao1 jiak t_hsai/ - > "hasn't acquired a taste for vegetables", literally meaning "doesn't know > how to eat vegetables".
Eeeenteresting :)
> Furthermore, to know a person is /bat/. So you /tsai1/ that something has > happened, but you /bat/ a person, and you /e hiao2/ to do something. > > > So how come we conlangers all felt the need to make this distinction? > > 'Cos my L1 *does* make that distinction? :-)
Ditto for me, and Taruven also has the three way distinction though I don't know what the word for "to be familiar with, to know <someone>" is yet: In ASCIIfied orthography: a:r /A:r/ "to know <something>" -lann /lAn:/ "to be able to do <something>, to be capable of <something>" Though I can't remember whether -lann suffixes to verbs or nouns or both right now. (The vocab-files are at home.) In Norwegian the triplet is: å vite "to know <something>" å kunne "to know how to do <something>", same as English _can, could_ å kjenne "to know <someone>" The last two probably derives from the same word. t.

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Carlos Thompson <chlewey@...>