Re: "Each Other"

Mark J. Reed scripsit:

> Which reminds me of another odd (to my native English mind)
> quirk of Spanish: when describing a group of people performing
> identical activities, the number of the object is appropriate for
> each individual, not for the entire group.  Thus, for example, the
> Spanish for "The children washed their hands and faces" literally
> translates the last bit as "hands and face", because each child has
> only one face.  The word for "hands" is plural not because there
> are multiple children, but because each child has two.
I like the feature whereby Spanish says _plomo y hierro fundidos_ 'molten
lead and molten iron'.  The adj. is marked pl. to specify that it modifies
both nouns; if it were singular, it would modify _hierro_ only.  English
"molten lead and iron" is ambiguous: is the iron molten or not?

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Does anybody want any flotsam? / I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam? / I can getsam.
        --Ogden Nash, _No Doctors Today, Thank You_