From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 12153
Date: 2002-01-26
>Another example: One evening when returning with a colleague fromWhat's your point? "Baal" is not the Dutch for "bonfire".
>Denmark to a job in Holland we saw a lot a bonfires everywhere and my
>colleague decided to ask a waiter at a motorway restaurant what the
>occasion was; but we didn't know the Dutch word for "bonfire". My
>colleague convinced himself that since Danish word for bonfire
>is "bål" the Dutch word would be "baal". I had a hunch that this root
>was North Germanic (also English, I later found out). The waiter
>seemed to agree with my opinion.
>Details aside, this is the type ofHuh?
>one-second discussion that takes place in your head when you apply
>your parametrized language knowledge. Sometimes you overshoot and get
>too critical. I've heard Dutch use the expression "Is it possible for
>you to ..." for "Can you", presumably because they know that the
>translation Du.<kan>=En.<can> doesn't work in the expression "Dat
>kan" ("It can be done", ie. "can do", probably a calque from
>Spanish "se puede").