From: Robert Dober Date: 2008-05-18T18:17:03+09:00 Subject: Re: Dude? On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 9:48 AM, Petite Abeille wrote: > > On May 17, 2008, at 10:29 PM, Robert Dober wrote: > >>>> I will put it this way, you should not call somebody dude unless you >>>> have herded sheep with her ;). (Comes from a French idiomatic sentence). >>> >>> Cows, not sheep, i.e.: >>> >>> "Avoir gardé les vaches ensemble" or not... >> >> You are the native speaker, but I know that my wife says "gardé les >> chevres ensemble", she is from Britany, maybe local differences? > > Goats in Britany? Very unlikely. Something must have been lost in > translation then :) I know this is completely OT now, but this is a very open community so I dare to continue, after all it is interesting some people ;) Goat was it, right, I knew that chevre != sheep but goat did not spring into mind. Well that's what she says, you can be very surprised in languages, especially in French. To Rick: very interesting point I never visited the West Coast, maybe dude has a different meaning over there. And I guess that you are right every Frenchwoman would understand "On n'a pas gardé les x ensemble" for a large set of x ;) especially in social context which we do not have on the list. Cheers Robert > > -- > PA. > http://alt.textdrive.com/nanoki/ > -- http://ruby-smalltalk.blogspot.com/ --- Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein