Re: Two different opposites (again)

En réponse à Philippe Caquant :

> >
>Yes, we can...
>
>J'ai appris l'anglais à l'école (I learned English at
>school)
>J'ai appris l'anglais à mon fils (I teached English to
>my son) (or maybe I taught ? can't remember)
Note, as shown in this sentence, that when using "apprendre" for "to 
teach", a recipient is *mandatory*. If you want to say "I teach English", 
you're obliged to use "enseigner".


>Similar ambiguity for the word "hôte" (hote with
>circumflex on o):
>- the one who gives hospitality
In English the "host".

>- the one who receives hospitality
In English the "guest".

Interestingly (and IIRC, but I just checked in the American Heritage 
Dictionary and it agrees with me :)) ), both words in English are cognate, 
but "guest" is the original Germanic word, while "host" is borrowed from 
Old French. They are cognate in that they come from the same PIE root :) .

>So you can say: Je suis l'hote de mon hote (with
>circumflexes), which is completely ambiguous.
In practice, it is usually known whether you live at your own place or not, 
so context usually disambiguates. As for sentences like the above, who in 
their right mind would want to say such a thing anyway? ("I'm the guest of 
my host" may be unambiguous, but it's still meaningless, in the sense that 
it doesn't bring any information).

I personally like the "hôte" ambiguity, and was considering having such an 
ambiguity omnipresent in Maggel :)) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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