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<DIV><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=2><SPAN class=843401319-08032005></SPAN>H<SPAN
class=843401319-08032005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=3>ow would you
render the idiom "the penny dropped" in your
language?</FONT></SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT><SPAN class=843401319-08032005> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=2><SPAN class=843401319-08032005>(</SPAN>When
the penny drops, someone belatedly understands something that everyone else has
long since understood.<SPAN
class=843401319-08032005>)</SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=2><SPAN
class=843401319-08032005></SPAN></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=2><SPAN class=843401319-08032005>German: der
Groschen ist gefallen (same idea as in English)</SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=2><SPAN
class=843401319-08032005></SPAN></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=2><SPAN class=843401319-08032005>Fritz
Goerling</SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Tahoma size=2></FONT></SPAN><BR><BR> </DIV></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE><TT>My wife says that in Cantonese you would say "the pencil
dropped".<BR><BR>I don't have any Amele speakers handy to check with but I
think you would <BR>use an impersonal experiential verb to say this which
would be equivalent to <BR>"the pencil dropped" or "the pencil was dropped by
you".<BR><BR>I notice that the Collins COBUILD gives two senses for "drop" for
a vt under <BR>superordinate "release": the first is "let fall by mistake" and
the second <BR>is "let go of deliberately". But both these senses are
expressed in the same <BR>way lexico-syntactically, i.e. with an actor and
undergoer argument. Which <BR>means when I say "You dropped your pen" I could
mean either you did it <BR>deliberately or accidentally. I think I could also
use this to express <BR>another sense. If the teacher was walking across the
classroom and the pen <BR>fell from his pocket, say, and he didn't notice, I
would say, "You dropped <BR>your pen" meaning 'the pen fell from you'. In the
first context if I said <BR>"the pen dropped" it wouldn't be polite; it would
be very odd, like I was <BR>trying to say the dropping of the pen had nothing
to do with the person <BR>holding it - or maybe I am talking about another pen
...<BR><BR><BR>John Roberts<BR><BR><BR></TT><BR>
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