Re: Active and Passive please help.

Joe Hill wrote:
:17:21 -0000
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Almaran Dungeonmaster" <dungeonmaster@...>
>To: <CONLANG@...>
>Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 8:17 PM
>Subject: Re: Active and Passive please help.
>
>
> > Joe Hill  wrote
> >
> > > My language has no passive sentences.   I can't seem to translate it
>was
> > called into and active sentence...
> >
> > Do you mean you want to convert the phrase "it was called" into an
>active
> > phrase? It might be a little hard, since "to be called" in the current
> > meaning is inherently passive in English. However, other languages have
>an
> > active verb for naming things.
> >
> > E.g. in dutch, we use the verb "heten" to name things.
> >
> > "Ik heet Maarten"= "I am called Maarten"
> >
> > So all you have to do is invent a transitive verb in your language that
> > means "being named".
> >
> > Maarten
>
>
>No, but I can make one...
>
>silly thinking in English...
BTW, what happened to the English cognate of Dutch "heten", German
"heissen", Swedish "heta" etc? I remember finding it increadible that
English lacks a verb of this meaning when I learnt it.

                                                        Andreas

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