Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Linguistically Speaking III

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Perhaps it is more of a linguistical question than a psychological question...
I mean, one would usually say: "It's half filled with water." You might say it's half empty if it had once been full.

On top of that, this question may only be valid for certain languages... I can't imagine how to phrase it in chinese!
杯子半满还是半空?
半空的!
You are more likely to say: 半杯水 [half a cup of water] "half a cup of air" would be totally weird.

[note: i'm using chinese because that's about the only valid language i can compare english with. my japanese's not worth mentioning. correct me if i'm wrong ^^]

Is the glass half full or half empty?
How about "it's 125ml water and 150cm3 air..."

2 comments:

Jon said...

Connection problems?

the owner of the other blog said...

see you in 2 weeks!