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Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by ad
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Wols Lists |
Subject: |
Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden) |
Date: |
Wed, 20 May 2015 18:25:59 +0100 |
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On 20/05/15 18:18, David Kastrup wrote:
> James <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> However [English] is a very forgiving language, you can really mangle
>> our sentence structure and we'll still know what you mean ;)
>
> Uh no?
>
> "The dog bites the man" has a different meaning from "The man bites the
> dog" whereas in German "Der Hund beißt den Mann" and "Den Mann beißt der
> Hund" have the same unambiguous meaning. Star War's Yoda's speech
> patterns would not be particularly distinctive in German. "Den Mann zu
> beißen der Hund sich nicht entbrechen konnte" is still almost pristine
> even though "Den Mann zu beißen konnte der Hund sich nicht entbrechen"
> would be slightly less archaic though not staggeringly so.
>
Except you're doing a ghoti Bernard Shaw on our sentence structure.
German declines its articles, so you can tell subject and object by
article, in English we have to do it by position *relative to the verb*.
"Bites the man the dog" is weird but unambiguous because we haven't
messed up the declension rules. If you just swapped the noun in German I
guess either (in this case) you *would* mess up the meaning, or because
you have gender rules you'd end up with nonsense.
Cheers,
Wol
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), (continued)
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Joram, 2015/05/18
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Paul Morris, 2015/05/18
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), David Kastrup, 2015/05/18
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Paul Morris, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), David Kastrup, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Werner LEMBERG, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), David Kastrup, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), James, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Wols Lists, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), David Kastrup, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden),
Wols Lists <=
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), David Kastrup, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Werner LEMBERG, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Anthonys Lists, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), pls, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), Paul Morris, 2015/05/20
- Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), David Kastrup, 2015/05/20
Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), k-ohara5a5a, 2015/05/19
Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden), k-ohara5a5a, 2015/05/21