From iad@math.bas.bg Thu Feb 3 05:21:43 2000 X-Digest-Num: 353 Message-ID: <44114.353.1903.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2000 15:21:43 +0200 From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: Re: And the Eskimos have 100 words for 'Snow Cone' Cyril Slobin wrote: > la xod. cusku di'e: > > "What is the Russian word for 'fun'?"--to which a Soviet responds, > > "There is no such word. Fun is not a Russian concept." [...] > Also there is no word for "pet" in Russian, > but my cat doesn't care about this. Indeed. Goes to show how fallacious the transition from `There is no word for #1 in language #2' to `#1 is not a #2 concept' is. Never mind `fun'; why is there no word for `meal' in Russian (or Bulgarian, or many other languages for that matter)? Is that a specifically English concept? I can't think of any difference between anglophone and non-anglophone dining that might justify such a notion. It's an unmotivated lexical gap, and that's that. (It's an annoying one, too -- my father and I sometimes use the English word in Bulgarian, but I know of no one else that does so.) I agree that some gaps do have cultural (or other) motivations, but generalisations are dangerous. -- <'al-_haylu wa-al-laylu wa-al-baydA'u ta`rifunI wa-as-sayfu wa-ar-rum.hu wa-al-qir.tAsu wa-al-qalamu> (Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi) Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences