Possessive Words

[nemorathwald]

Possessive pronouns such as "my" change meanings depending on whether you say "my owner," "my wife," "my dog," or "my boot." The meaning could range from possession (the boot that is the property of the speaker) to mere association (the spouse that is the one associated with the speaker). The speaker's usage also changes depending on culture, such as in the subjugation of women. Have you thought about this? There is also a difference between "my mentality" and "my glove," in that one of them is an inalienable possession that you can't lose without changing who you are, and another is the type of possession you can steal or give away. One of the many things I like about the planned language Lojban is that it has separate words for all of these. Studying Lojban is a mind trip.

Comments

[sothisislife.livejournal.com]

I've often pondered the word "love". How can one love his/her spouse, and also love French fries? It's not the same. I've heard that in other languages, such as Spanish, they have separate words for different kinds of love, including the difference between loving your parents, and loving your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse.

:)

[boosterbaby.livejournal.com]

It's been several years since I took French, but I believe there are at least a couple of different ways in the French language to express love. I believe "aimer" is for a more general meaning, while "amore" is reserved for a more romantic, intimate kind of love. Like I said, it's been many years since I studied it.

[sothisislife.livejournal.com]

It's been many years since my French classes, but I don't remember that. Now you're going to make me look it up in my book of 500 french verbs & conjugations....but all my French books are at work. I believe "Amour" conjugates as "aime" for first person singular.

[boosterbaby.livejournal.com]

I think you're probably right. I can only recall some basic stuff. If I were to go back to France today, I could ask where the hotel is, where the phone is, and where the bathroom is. Oh, and I could order a cup of tea. That's about it. Isn't that sad?!

[sothisislife.livejournal.com]

I don't remember much French when I try, but now that I'm learning Chinese I find my mind pulls in French words when I'm trying to think of them in Chinese. It's like my brain is looking for anything in my stored vocab that's not English, and it just defaults to French. Weird.

[boosterbaby.livejournal.com]

Chinese? Yikes! That sounds quite a bit harder than French. It is weird how your mind keeps bringing up French words. I think I could learn fluency in French, if I could learn to properly conjugate verbs. As I sat here and thought about it, I was able to recall more than I thought I could. But conjugating verbs was hard enough in English, never mind another language!

[sothisislife.livejournal.com]

In Chinese, verbs don't get conjugated. There's no tense either. The grammar is very basic and simple, it's the pronunciation that's killer to learn!

[ded-guy.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that (classical?) Greek makes similar distinctions.

Greek words for love

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Koine Greek is the best one I've heard of for this. Storge is family affection, philia is friendship, eros is romantic love, and agape is charity. These really are very different things. On top of that, when we say love, half the time we mean need and half the time we mean giving.