From Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Mon Mar 19 03:46:43 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 19 Mar 2001 11:46:43 -0000 Received: (qmail 36555 invoked from network); 19 Mar 2001 11:46:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 19 Mar 2001 11:46:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mq.egroups.com) (10.1.1.36) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 Mar 2001 11:46:42 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Received: from [10.1.2.51] by mq.egroups.com with NNFMP; 19 Mar 2001 11:46:42 -0000 Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 11:46:38 -0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: Random lojban questions/annoyances. Message-ID: <994riu+k2u9@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: <20010318193818.N3953@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Length: 1499 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 193.149.49.79 From: "A.W.T." --- In lojban@y..., Robin Lee Powell wrote: > I have checked, by the way, with both my roommates, both also native NA > English speakers, and they agree that English is truth-agnostic, i.e. > that the fact that I know something has nothing to do with its objective > truth. The had no problem with the sentence "I know Dave lives in > Australia", even if that is in fact not true, and agreed that the > _truth_ of the statement has nothing to do with the _validity_ (semantic > or syntactic) of the statement. If this really were true ("English is truth-agnostic"), up to now I never even had been aware of that English and German thinking=20 could be so different!! (and I still won't think so). Can it be that this is the reason why German is a "philosophic" language (like=20 Yiddish) while English never had been! ;-) German: "wissen" (to know); mhd: "wizzen", ahd: "wizzan", as: "witan" from g: "wait", also gt: "wait", anord: "veit", ae: "wat", afr:=20 "wet", i.g.: "woida", ai: "v=E9da", gr: "oida", akslav: "vede", apruss: "waist", air: "rofetar" - expresses the state at the subject that is=20 reached by the action *weid- 'to find' (recognize, look at), hence: 'I have found/recognized' =3D 'I know'. The basic meaning in gr:=20 "eidon" 'I looked at, recognized', air: "rofinnadar" 'finds out, discovered'; durative in l: "video" 'I see', akslaw: "videti" 'see' etc. I can only "know" the truth about something, otherwise I failed knowing (and just believed to know). .aulun.