3 ms·
Saber vs. Conocer. Always had fun with that one in Spanish class.
by mattbgates 9y ago
Saber vs. Conocer.
Always had fun with that one in Spanish class.
- titanomachy 9y agoI think Germanic languages might be the outlier here, every other language that I've encountered uses a distinct verb for "to know (a person)" vs "to know (a fact)". connaitre/savoir (French), gnorizo/xero (Greek), renshi/zhidao (Mandarin).
- Vivtek 9y agoOr in fact, German kennen/wissen - it's not Germanic languages per se, but English, which developed from a simplified creole spoken by the Saxon conquerors of the Angles (they never bothered with all that conjugation stuff, and it stuck).
- barry-cotter 9y agoJust checked whether Dutch distinguishes between kennen and wissen. It doesn't, exactly like English, same for Norwegian and Swedish. That suggests it's a West Germanic thing. While English can fairly be described as a creole it's the influence of Norman French on Old English that makes that a fair description. Old English was IIRC on a dialect continuum between Frisian and Norse.