From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-05-09T07:04:58+09:00
Subject: OT Re: Symbiosis offer: trade Ruby for German :-)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric Schwartz" <emschwar@pobox.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 3:54 PM
Subject: Re: Symbiosis offer: trade Ruby for German :-)


> > I suppose it is "home language".
> 
> "Mother tongue" is perfectly valid in English, as well.
> 
> From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:
> 
>   mother tongue
>        n : one's native language; the language learned by children and
>            passed from one generation to the next [syn: {maternal
>            language}, {first language}]
> 
> > I usually make this error cause in italian 
> > "tongue" == the red thing you have in your mouth and you use to lick
> > ice cream == "lingua"
> > and
> > "language" == the way you speak == "lingua"
> > 
> > nice to see german is so similar ;P
> 
> As is English, which is only fair, since we "borrowed" the word
> 'tongue' from the Germans 700 or 800 years ago.
> 
> So at least in English, you haven't been making an error after all. :)

For that matter, isn't Latin the same way?
I wouldn't be surprised if Italian and 
Spanish and others got it from Latin.

Of course, in German and English, we have
the concept ("language"==="speaking organ")
though not the same root word as Italian
and others.

Hal