One of the fun things about learning another language is that you understand your native language better, and find weird holes and gaps in both.
Here's one of my favorite examples: English, as far as I know, has no positive, active way to say "to not know"; it can only be formulated as a negative (not knowing) or a passive (I am ignorant). It does has a word for the condition--ignorance--but to "ignore" something is definitely not the same as not to know it.
In Spanish, however, "ignorar" means "to not know", expressed as a positive declaration. Interestingly, Spanish does not, as far as I know, have any single word that expresses the English meaning of "to ignore", and the phrase that translates it best, "no hacer caso", is formulated as a negative.
Very curious!
Saturday, May 8, 2010
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