Re: What's going on here?

[HACKER G N <c9709244@alinga.newcastle.edu.au>]

On Sun, 26 Oct 1997, Chris Bogart wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote:
> > it is *objectively* important not to confuse one with the other, because if
> > it is, the consequences seem more than merely linguistic. You can be
> > fond of a person, but you cannot plausibly feel strong affectionate
> > devotion for potato chips! This is a difference that I think is far deeper
> > than "being" in a place and "being" an Australian.
>
> There was a headline on an editorial in La Nacion that asked (if I
> remember right) "?Somos o estamos indeciso?".  The distinction between the
> two possibilities (whether the public was indecisive or merely undecided
> on whatever issue it was) were obviously important enough for some editor
> to devote space to it.

OK, well what I think is going on there (and again, Jorge will know more
about this than I do) is that "estamos" expresses a condition, and
consequently can be used here to express a tendency. We have different
ways of expressing this in English, but that is how La Nacion did it in
Spanish, anyway. Whereas, "be" is so abstract that it's really only just a
copula, and one manifestation of it is pretty much the same as another.
However, this will get complicated if there are actually multiple
definitions of "estar", like there are for "love" in the dictionary. The
point is that I don't think that the "ser/estar" distinction contributes
anything significant to the English language-web, because its functions
are handled elsewhere - as your translation of the concepts
of "somos/estamos" into "indecisive/merely undecided" shows. Conversely,
"to do/to make" might not contribute anything significant to the Spanish
web, because Spanish speakers make this distinction in other ways that are
familiar to them as well.

> As a completely pointless aside, there was a Simpson's episode where a
> mysterious apparition appears to a crowd of Springfieldites saying "I
> bring you...  Love".  The town doctor asks "You mean the love of a man for
> a woman, or the love of a man for a good cigar?".  I wonder how they
> translated that into German.
>
Heh, heh. Translation problems often occur between cases where one
language is more specific in a certain area where another language is less
specific. That happens all the time. :)

Geoff