You are right. English is an infinitely permutational language. You can use words in any way - using nouns for verbs, or adjectives. English happily steals words and concepts from other languages without any bother. (Note the French Academy's attempts to clean pristine French of intruders like "weekend".)
My favorite English word is "cleave". This means "to cling " "to adhere". But it also means "to divide" "to split".
What a great language!
Harry
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Bill wrote:
Ray,
Arabic and Hebrew are verbal languages and have very different implications as a result. What is funny now is that English is having to use nouns as verbs, viz. I will access it.
Bill
On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 21:39:07 -0400 "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Actually we should just give up this noun dominated language that > puts > people into objects and makes it impossible to define change and > growth in > humanity. English is out of date and regressive and that is the > problem > with America. What type of language is Chinese? With the kind > of > over-simplified drivel that I see here one should remember that the > largest > heads on the planet are the Osage and the Dinke. Both nomadic > peoples who > do very well when forced to settle down. I'm beginning to think > Keith and > Harry long for a rise in phrenology. Is that true boys. What > did such > "studies" in was finding that certain minorities in the world were > much more > physically endowed than the testors and immediately the science > shriveled. > Perhaps that is not all that shriveled in the process. > > REH
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.attbi.com/~haledward ****************************************************
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