On Tuesday 28 July 2015 05:23:48 Joel Rees wrote: > Hi, Lisi, Hi, Joel,
> If I'm still in your blacklists, it won't help for me to comment, but ... No, you're not. I'm surprised that it mattered enough for you to remember! > 2015/07/28 6:46 "Lisi Reisz" <lisi.re...@gmail.com>: > > On Monday 27 July 2015 16:53:14 Thomas Schmitt wrote: > > > "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that > > > English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow > > words; > > > > on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat > > > them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James > > D. > > > > Nicoll > > > > > > So: > > > "bzw." is a really useful word. Get it and use it whenever > > > you want to point to a fork in your thoughts. > > > > I'm not defending the purity of anything. The English language is a > > right mish-mash of Latin, French, German, Norse, Hindi etc.. But > > none-the-less, it > > > improves comprehensibility if one sticks roughly to the language in which > > one > > > is speaking/writing. > > > > If you do use foreign words, you need to be willing to explain them when > > asked, as you were by Chris. > > > > I'm still not clear on the meaning of bzw, > > I'm guessing it was in the part you cut out, the "beziehungsweise" that he > was translating as "respectively", abbrevitated to "resp." I couldn't follow. Yes, I knew that bzw was beziehungsweise, and that he translated it to "respectively", which he chose to abbreviate to resp, thus from my point of view muddying the waters still further. > > nor in what way its meaning differs > > from "or". So I shall continue to use "or". ;-) > > > > Lisi > > With a little help from google translate, "or rather". > > I'd go with the idea suggested on the stackexchange post he referenced, > that, in other contexts, the English grammar puts the "beziehungswiese" > after two lists which are being associated: > > ... translating breakfast, lunch, and dinner > as "asa-gohan", "o-hiru", and "yuu-han", _respectively_. > > (with apologies for potentally muddying the waters further by using > Japanese in my example). > > And, in this case, "namely" doesn't work other. > > This may be one time that Google translate was useful. Thanks, Joel. What you have said is clear, and respectively makes sense there. But it still doesn't make sense to me of what Thomas originally said. "resp" remains a _foreign_ word of English origin. Since we are referring now to Japanese, when my granddaughter was a toddler she often asked for "dako" as a noun, or issued "dako!" as a command. We accepted the Japanese simply because it was untranslatable. We used the Japanese word even when speaking English, and she bemused my Israeli cousins by announcing loudly that "Grandma needs dako" when I had pneumonia and was feeling very ill. Nonetheless, no matter how useful the word, I have never used it in English to a non-Japanese speaking child. Lisi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201507280936.11395.lisi.re...@gmail.com
