Re: More natural language questions

David Peterson wrote:
>
>     I'm having some translation problems with French and German.  First,
> German:
>
>     When you say "a pair of socks" and "a lot of socks", my girlfriend
> (minoring in German) said you say "ein Paar Socken" and "eine Menge Socken".
> I thought you'd have to insert "der" in between there to get that "of", but
> she says it's idiomatic.  Is this true?
I've never heard an article used in that situation. To say "a lot of
socks", I would be more inclined to use "viele Socken" ("many socks") or
"etwas Socken" (more properly, "some socks", without indication of
relative group size), although "eine Menge Socken" would be perfectly
appropriate here, I think.

--
Daniel Seriff
microtonal@sericap.com
http://members.tripod.com/microtonal

Honesty means never having to say "Please don't flush me down the toilet!"
                      - Bob the Dinosaur