Re: Do you want a French "little" or a Dutch "little"? :))

On 3 Jun 02, at 10:42, John Cowan wrote:

> In Lojban, there are five vague quantifiers, usually translated "almost all",
> "most", "many", "several", and "a few".  But all that is really defined is
> that if more than one is used in the same context, they form a scale in
> the order given.  There is no implication, for example, that "most" means
> "a majority" (more than half).
That reminds me of a discussion we had with my Japanese teacher quite a
while ago; she didn't see the difference between "vielleicht" and
"wahrscheinlich" ("perhaps" and "probably"), since to her both were
Japanese "tabun". So we had to explain with percentages (say, "perhaps"
is 30% and "probably" 80%, or whatever -- in any event, I'd place them
on opposite sides of the 50% mark).

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>

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