Re[4]: [tied] French Gerund v. Participle

At 21:23:09 on Tuesday, 2 November 2004,
enlil@... wrote:

> Brian:

>> Nor does it mean the same thing. People who speak French
>> may be speaking English.

> So would "people speaking French"!

No. If they are speaking French, they are not speaking
English.

> You're splitting more hairs and they may be used
> interchangeably in both English AND French despite what
> you may consider grammatically appropriate.

I can't speak for French, but they are not in general used
interchangeably in English. There are, of course, some
specific contexts in which they can be interchanged with
very little change of sense, but there are many in which
they cannot, one of which is seen above.

> Look in Google and do the following searches:

> And now English, or rather what's left of the pieces:

> "people who speak English"
> (6330 entries)

> "people speaking English"
> (2230 entries)

Irrelevant. Of course both forms are acceptable and
reasonably common; the point is that they are not
synonymous, and the number of Google hits tells you nothing
about that.

And of course *all* of this is irrelevant to Kim's original
observation.

Brian