Re: Weekly Vocab 6: to know
| From: | H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, May 7, 2003, 18:29 |
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On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 01:09:42PM -0400, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 08:57:45AM -0700, Garrett Jones wrote:
> > something interesting i noted with people's translations for the verb 'to
> > know': all but one person's conlang either had more than one word for the
> > english word 'to know' or omitted a word in one case.
> That is interesting. Many natlangs distinguish "to know" as in
> "to know a person" (Spanish conocer, German konne?) from "to know" as in
> "to know a fact" (Spanish saber, German weiss?), but I haven't run across
> many who distinguish "to know a fact" from "to know how to do something".
This is distinguished in my L1, Hokkien. /tsai1/ is to know a fact, but /e
hiao2/ is to know how to do something. The latter also applies to acquired
skills or tastes; one might say that a child /beh hiao1 jiak t_hsai/ -
"hasn't acquired a taste for vegetables", literally meaning "doesn't know
how to eat vegetables".
Furthermore, to know a person is /bat/. So you /tsai1/ that something has
happened, but you /bat/ a person, and you /e hiao2/ to do something.
> The partcular way the latter gets expressed is highly idiomatic
> (English sticks the "how" in there, Spanish just uses the bare infinitive),
> but they usually seem to involve the same verb as the former.
>
> So how come we conlangers all felt the need to make this distinction?
'Cos my L1 *does* make that distinction? :-)
T
--
Sick minds seek sick things. The fact that current trends in the
entertainment industry are sustainable tells you something.
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