On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 05:32:12PM +0100, Pigeon wrote: > On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 01:56:55PM +0200, David Fokkema wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 11:25:00AM +0200, Stephan Seitz wrote: > > > Shade and sweet water! > > > > I was going to argue that this is an incorrect translation and should've > > been 'shade and fresh water', but, apparantly, this is wrong. Wendy > > herself has said 'shade and sweet water'. Why? Is there some sort of > > english subtlety I miss here? Why is water sweet? > > > > I am from the Netherlands, where they say: 'schaduw en zoet water', > > where 'zoet' means 'sweet', but 'zoet water', as opposed to 'zout > > water', means 'fresh water' as opposed to 'salt (sea) water'. > > 'Sweet' has a more general meaning of 'good' with a sense of > 'comforting' or 'deeply satisfying', as well as the specific meaning > of 'tastes like sugar'. There are places in America called Sweet Water > where hot, thirsty and tired pioneers on the trail got to a river and > made good use of it, or something.
That's nice to know. Sweet Water... We don't have names like that in the Netherlands, as far as I can think of, but then, there's a _lot_ of sweet/fresh water around here... > From your 2nd para, it sounds like the Dutch use is pretty similar, > which isn't too surprising as it's obviously the same word spelt a bit > different. Do you mean that you always say 'zoet water', and don't say > '<Dutch word for 'fresh'> water'? Yes, I do. It's always 'zoet water'. Other translations of 'fresh' combined with 'water': As in 'fresh vegetables' vers water (lately gathered water) As in 'It's fresh outside' fris water (cool water) Can it be 'fresh' as 'cool' outside? (I might have gotten a little bit confused, here, ;-). At least I know of fresh breezes, between moderate and strong, but that is somewhat different... David -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
