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From: steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.nlang
Subject: Re: natural language deficiencies?
Message-ID: <6124@mcvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Oct-84 13:56:48 EST
Article-I.D.: mcvax.6124
Posted: Fri Oct 26 13:56:48 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Oct-84 07:12:15 EST
References: <12582@sri-arpa.UUCP> <12300003@uicsl.UUCP> <194@oliveb.UUCP> <619@gloria.UUCP> <801@aplvax.UUCP> <367@tjalk.UUCP>
Reply-To: steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 13
Xref: mcvax net.ai:1459 net.nlang:95

> There is no (reasonable) way to render Dutch: leraresje (little female
> teacher) into English.

There is no way, reasonable or not, to render Dutch 'gezellig' into English.
This is also SURELY a language deficiency.

(Since there's no way to render the word into English, I'm afraid I can't
explain to non-Dutch speakers what it means, except to say that it's an
adjective describing social situations, and is desirable.)

((For Dutch readers: I find the same problems with 'eng', though it's not so
widely discussed as gezellig. But perhaps discussion on that should be
restricted to nlnet distribution.))