Re: R: Re: Correction, I hope, of M/C URL

Mangiat wrote:

> > Seriously, It's really good work. Bravo Sally!
>
> A thing I hate of English is that he randomly takes foreign words and uses
> them without thinking about their original meaning:
> Italian 'bravo' can be used only for men!!! It wouldn't be a nice thing say
> 'bravo' to a girl, even worse than 'brava' to a boy (the latter means that
> you are speaking to a gay boy, but to a *boy*; the former could mean only
> one thing: the girl is so rude that she resembles a man!)
>
> For women, we have 'brava':)
Hi, Luca!  I wasn't offended... the thing about "borrowings" from one
language
into another is that they acquire the properties of the language they're
borrowed
into.   This isn't merely a feature of English, by any means.  I'm sure
Italian
or French or Welsh have borrowings from other languages that they then
apply
gender to or provide initial mutation for (look at Welsh llyfr,
"book"... taken
from L. liber, the "b" suffers soft mutation... certainly not a feature
Latin
intended for it!).  "Bravo, Sally, Chris, Tom, Dick, Harry," etc. in
English
has lost its gender implications.  (Whereas I notice that you have given
gender
to the word "English"... "A thing I hate of English is that HE...").
And besides,
it's being used not as an adjective, but as an adverb or an expletive.
Christophe
left out the comma!  BRAVO!  "Great!"

I think it's interesting to see the foreign qualities of our languages
like this as we
hear from speakers of various tongues.

Sally

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SALLY CAVES
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html (T. homepage)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html (all else)
http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/languages.html
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Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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