[MPlayer-users] [Very OT] German Speakers
The Wanderer
inverseparadox at comcast.net
Fri Apr 15 20:48:18 CEST 2005
Joey Parrish wrote:
> Sorry for the very very off-topic post. I wanted to reach a large
> audience of helpful Europeans. :)
I'm neither European nor a speaker of German, but as one of the resident
English-usage hounds, I do have one comment, to wit:
> I'm curious about something in German. In English, the verb
> "explode" is intransitive. A thing explodes, but someone does not
> explode it. We could say I "detonate" something, but that verb is too
> technical. What sounds best, IMO, is to say I "blow it up". The
> phrase is informal, but seems most correct.
Actually, phrases like "the bomb squad exploded the device safely" are
to the best of my knowledge perfectly valid English - the usage just
isn't common, that's all. "To explode" is most often intransitive, but
it is not inherently so.
The above derives from a generally descriptivist viewpoint, mind you,
but that doesn't mean it's invalid.
--
The Wanderer
Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.
A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.
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