Re: Cheap, shallow and super: French deficiencies

Quoting Trebor Jung <treborjung@...>:

> Merhaba!
>
> All languages are different, so of course they are going to have lexical
> 'deficiencies', but that's how language is, and it hinges only on one's L1.
> Quechua has a single word <llunk'uy>, meaning 'to clean the plate and lick
> the fingers', and if a Quechua speaker learns English, they probably wonder,
> 'Why doesn't English have this word?'. Yet we English speakers will find it
> odd that Quechua has such a word at all: 'When would one ever use it?'.
> Also, see
> http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/2and1.htm
Some of my fellow foreign exchange students here reacted with incredulous
hilarity when I, for reasons better left unexplained, accidentally made them
aware there's a single Swedish verb meaning "to pull someone's hair"
(_lugga_). They eventually concluded that Swedes must be a very violent bunch
to have need of a such word.

                                                     Andreas

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