At 11:20 31/07/02 +0000, you wrote:
>I will leave aside more substantive points of Phil's post for somebody
>else and would like to comment on the above minor point. I do not think
>there is not anything striking, certainly not 'quite' striking about there
>being two verbs in french:)
>
>I think German has at least three![see translator's note on comparision of
>French and German usage in Habermas'knowledge and human interest page 319,
>although it is not very helpful in understanding Foucault's usage]. Few
>other languages I know have more!
What about English?
Know, understand, comprehend, not to mention metaphorical, slang and
dialect terms such as grasp, get, catch on, twig, click, ken, and more
specific terms such as intuit, conceive, appreciate, infer etc. English
also has the advantage (or disadvantage) that it can quite happily 'borrow'
words from other languages: nous, savoir faire, savvy, all denote different
types of knowledge or understanding, but whether it's valid or not to claim
these as English is open to debate.
I dare say there are probably plenty of examples like this in French and
German, but I'm not up on my colloquial languages, unfortunately.
Daniel Smith
University of Aberdeen
------------
Daniel Smith
t22ds@xxxxxxxxxx
>I will leave aside more substantive points of Phil's post for somebody
>else and would like to comment on the above minor point. I do not think
>there is not anything striking, certainly not 'quite' striking about there
>being two verbs in french:)
>
>I think German has at least three![see translator's note on comparision of
>French and German usage in Habermas'knowledge and human interest page 319,
>although it is not very helpful in understanding Foucault's usage]. Few
>other languages I know have more!
What about English?
Know, understand, comprehend, not to mention metaphorical, slang and
dialect terms such as grasp, get, catch on, twig, click, ken, and more
specific terms such as intuit, conceive, appreciate, infer etc. English
also has the advantage (or disadvantage) that it can quite happily 'borrow'
words from other languages: nous, savoir faire, savvy, all denote different
types of knowledge or understanding, but whether it's valid or not to claim
these as English is open to debate.
I dare say there are probably plenty of examples like this in French and
German, but I'm not up on my colloquial languages, unfortunately.
Daniel Smith
University of Aberdeen
------------
Daniel Smith
t22ds@xxxxxxxxxx