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Re: Cheap, shallow and super: French deficiencies

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Sunday, February 29, 2004, 18:20
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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John Cowan <cowan@...>