Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
If patte refers to the entire limb, then why are we calling it a limb instead of a leg? In English we refer to all the limbs of quadrupeds as legs. Only bipeds have arms. It seems to me that using a different word for a dog's leg and a human's leg is just as unnecessary as having a different word for a dog's mouth and a human's mouth or a dog's act of eating and a human's act of eating. It's been more than a century since we discovered that Homo sapiens is just another species of mammal. We can safely use the same terminology for our physiology as for other mammals' physiology, without confusing anybody. French and German are hanging onto obsolete vocabulary, something we see no need for. Just as they hang onto obsolete grammatical paradigms like verb conjugation and noun gender.I am not sure you are correct in your comment relating to paw for patte. Paw does not seem to be a translation for patte, which I assume refers to the entire limb and is applicable to animals which do not have paws.
Disagreement? Disagreement! Dian means "electricity" and hua means "speech." Dian hua means "telephone." Is it one word or two? Xiao means "small" and gou means "dog." Xiao gou means "puppy." One word or two? Got that? Okay now: Shi means "stone" and you means oil. Shi you means "petroleum." Hey that's not compound, you say, that's one word. Well do you realize that it's simply a literal translation of scientific Latin "petro-oleum"? Okay, you're pretty sure about those, are ya? Then how about this one: Dong means "east" and xi means "west." Dong xi, is it one word or two? How about after I tell you that dong xi means "thing"? Chinese is full of compounds whose etymology is utterly unclear. It's not that we can't define a "word" in Chinese. The whole concept of "word" may not even apply to the language.Until I noticed the preface to the link provided by Syzygys, I accepted your assertion that Chinese has about the same number of words as English. Now, I am not so sure. Is there some disagreement relating to what is actually a word in Chinese?
Once again, your source is simply unfamiliar with spoken English. We say "How do you order a sandwich?" "You" is universally used as an impersonal pronoun. And yes it's ambiguous, it's not obvious if you're asking the listener how he does it or how everybody does it. But we're never confused, we always understand. Your source is not even familiar with the formal way of saying this: "How does one order a sandwich."One" is the "proper" equivalent to French on and German man, but we seldom use it except in writing. You really don't have a very good source about English usage. Whoever it is, you should stop listening to him or her; he doesn't know our language very well.I encountered a missing expression in English while trying to order a sandwich. The menu had multiple categories and supposedly I was to select a few of them. As an awfully inexperienced sandwich-orderer I had the gist of asking the sandwich-maker how in general to order a sandwich, but I encountered a stumbling block from which I was left with several options: "How do people order a sandwich?" (awkward) "How do I order a sandwich?" (embarrassing) "How do they order a sandwich?" (who? where?)
Your source knows less about Spanish than English. Se is the dative case of the reflexive pronoun, meaning "oneself." It's a broken declension, there is no nominative case. Se habla español literally means "Spanish speaks itself." It's just as silly as our way of asking a vegetarian, "How do you order a hamburger?" And ambiguity pops up. You're not supposed to use that construction when you're talking about people, but it happens. I see advertisements saying, "Se cuidan niños." They mean to say, "Child care is available," but they're saying literally, "Children take care of themselves." The first time I saw that I really had a hard time figuring out what they were telling me. Are Mexican children more self-sufficient than American children?In this context I think the Spanish se would be most aptly suited for this situation, such as "?Como se piden un (noun)" The pronoun se is completely generalized, a form I have not encountered or been able to successfully replace idiomatically or rhetorically in English.
"Quench" is not the right word. You don't quench a person the way you feed a person. You quench a thirst or a fire.Regarding this first post, I tend to support Granty's "quench" as the closest word that comes to satisfying the analogy. But yes, it is not perfect, since quenching usually means to satisfy thirst rapidly, and would sound awkward if suddenly used generally.