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From: benson@dcdwest.UUCP (Peter Benson)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Ups and Downs
Message-ID: <192@dcdwest.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 11:53:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: dcdwest.192
Posted: Tue Jun  4 11:53:36 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 07:17:30 EDT
References: <1542@orca.UUCP>
Reply-To: benson@dcdwest.UUCP (Peter Benson)
Organization: ITT Defense Communications (San Diego)
Lines: 25
Summary: Linguistic Oddities

My Swedish teacher takes great pains to point out the
curiousities of English.  His favorite example is the pair
"slow up" and "slow down".  He maintains these are synonyms
while I think there is a subtle difference in usage.  "Slow
up", I think, is used when you are actively following someone
whereas "slow down" is more generic and could be said to
someone you merely SAW running too fast, for example.

This came up in class again the othernight when the Swedish phrase
"att leta upp" came up.  This means to hunt up.  I immediately
thought about the difference between "hunt up" and "hunt
down".   I think "to hunt down" presupposes that the searched
for item exists, whereas "to hunt up" merely hopes that it
exists.  There is another Swedish phrase "att leta fran" which
seems parallel to the English but which my teacher says has
the same meaning as "att leta upp".

There is no great revelation here, but any comments would be
welcome.
-- 
                                _
Peter Benson                    | ITT Defense Communications Division
(619)578-3080                   | 10060 Carroll Canyon Road
decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!benson    | San Diego, CA 92131
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