Hi, Joel Rees wrote: > I instinctively look for a pair of lists of things to map when I see > "respectively" in these contexts.
Now that i know the correct meaning i do understand why the german-ish use appears so odd to native speakers. That's why i deem the main translation flatly false: "respectively" is nearly never "beziehungsweise". But even my old paper dictionary "Langenscheidts Handwoerterbuch Englisch" has them as first proposal and the correct meanings only as second ones: "or rather" for "beziehungsweise". "in dieser Reihenfolge" (= "in this sequence") for "respectively". The lure for error is even more appealing because both words have an abbreviation: "resp." and "bzw.". > I think beziehungsweise bears some similarity to the logical > implication operator. This impression would be wrong. Among logical operators it is indeed nearest to "or". Not so much to "exor". Somehow it resembles a diffuse "if-then": "If you like to view it differently then it can also be seen as this given alternative." As said: English language should adopt it. It is as versatile as "put" and "get". > Thanks for pointing it [www.linguee.com] out. Google's merit. But i must say this page really summarizes the problem. Including the standard first proposal and the empirical evidence that it is wrong. "as the case may be" appears very near to the german meaning of "beziehungsweise". Directly translated from its two word parts it would be "relation-wise". Have a nice day :) Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/836755485772990...@scdbackup.webframe.org
