Re: "Each Other"

On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 09:44:52PM -0600, Nik Taylor wrote:
> I've always wondered, how do you specify the reflexive meaning if
> needed?  How would you describe a situation where, say, a group of
> people each, individually, look in a mirror?
By recasting to be explicit - "each sees him/herself in the mirror",
for instance: "cada se ve en el espejo".

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.

-Mark

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