From: Mark Davis (mark.edward.davis@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 21 2009 - 13:55:43 CDT
I have as well been assuming that this was a long, elaborate April Fool's
discussion.
Mark
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:28, John Burger <john@mitre.org> wrote:
> William J Poser wrote:
>
> The problem of translation is even worse than you may realize. In the
>> language of the area in which I live, for example, before I can decide
>> how to say "it's raining" I need to know whether the speaker is on land
>> or on water. nawhulhtih means "it is raining onto land". tawhulhtih
>> means "it is raining into water".
>>
>
> Yes. I haven't been reading the list that closely, but I assumed that this
> whole discussion was a long-running thread that began on April 1.
> Seriously.
>
> The list of utterances which can reliably be translated into more than a
> few languages with little or no context is vanishingly short. Even "yes"
> and "no" are problematic - in some languages these operate like English, in
> some they reverse when the question has negative polarity, and in others
> there are additional words for that situation.
>
> - John D. Burger
> MITRE
>
>
>
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