Re: Weekly Vocab 6: to know

Hello,

> [...] I haven't run across
> many who distinguish "to know a fact" from "to know how to do
> something".
Welsh has 'gwybod' for 'know a fact', 'nabod' for 'know someone' and
'medru' for 'know how to' (though this last is usually glossed in
bilingual dictionaries alongside 'can' rather than 'know'). Russian also
has _znat'_ for the first two, but _umet'_ for the last sense. Though
again, it's perhaps closer to 'can' (and a couple of centuries they
could exchanged freely: for instance, Pushkin has _ja ne umeju vam
skazat'_ 'I can't tell you', but modern Russian will invariably have _ja
ne mogu skazat'_. I sometimes think this is an influence from Polish
_umiec'_, but I haven't read it anywhere... not that I searched, OTOH).

Then there's Swedish 'veta', 'känna', 'kunna'. I'll let the native
speakers tell us about them, I can't get the hang of it :-(

Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

Is mall a mharcaicheas am fear a bheachdaicheas
                 --Scottish proverb

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