At 06:42 19/10/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>> You keep with the unambiguity (I remember having troubles with=
this
>> ambiguity when I was younger, and no way to disambiguate it -I was to shy=
to
>> ask for an explanation-). The ambiguity is so important that I remember=
that
>> I used to think that "h=F4te" meant only "guest". I 'discovered' the=
meaning
>> "host" very much later (in a book, I think. I spent one day to understand
>> the sentence!).
>
>Are you saying that ho^te is rarely used to mean "host"? If so, what is
>the normal word for "host"? (Also, if that's what you mean, it's quite
>interesting - ho^te (Old French hoste) is the origin of our "host")
>
I don't think so. Actually, I hear "h=F4te" for both meanings with=
the
same frequency. It's just that "h=F4te" was not very used when I was young=
(we
didn't receive people to stay at home more than for one dinner, so we didn't
use the word "h=F4te"). I learned it first in books and, by chance, saw only
its meaning "guest". Now that I'm used to it, I can say that it is as much
used as "host" as as "guest".
Christophe Grandsire
|Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.
"R=E9sister ou servir"
homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html