Reminds me of a fascinating little (US published) book I had, but lost - A
Dictionary of Russian Obscenities.
Whereas in English we have a limited number of such verbs as f*ck, scr*w,
r**t, in Russian there's a bookful, thanks to the use of prefixes to add to
the basic meaning the sense of (for example) "repeatedly", "to death",
"satisfactorily" and so on, all in one word. It's a delightfully
well-engineered system which packs a lot of functionality into a small and
user-friendly package. Just like a Maitani-designed camera, in fact.
!
--
Piers
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Andrew Dacey
Sent: 03 November 2005 15:57
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: USA Southwest
On 11/3/05, James N. McBride <jnmcbr@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> It would seem to limit linguistic creativity. /jmac
--snip
Where you also get a lot of potential creativity is with the amount of
flexibility you have with prefixation. By prefixing a verb you can change
the verb to mean "to begin to", "to do a little", "to complete"
and so on, all with the prefix of the verb. For instance, while in Russia a
friend said that he wanted to go for a walk and by the prefix he used for
the verb I knew that he meant that he just wanted to go for a short walk.
--snip
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