On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 01:56:55PM +0200, David Fokkema wrote: > I was going to argue that this is an incorrect translation and should've > been 'shade and fresh water', but, apparantly, this is wrong. Wendy > herself has said 'shade and sweet water'. Why? Is there some sort of > english subtlety I miss here? Why is water sweet? There's a long history in English (especially informal English, maybe) of using 'sweet' for 'good' in some circumstances. From the pop song some years back that mentioned "kisses sweeter than wine" which makes no literal sense because neither kisses nor (decent) wine are actually sweet-tasting -- to the widespread use of "sweet deal!" to describe a particularly impressive bargain... > I am from the Netherlands, where they say: 'schaduw en zoet water', > where 'zoet' means 'sweet', but 'zoet water', as opposed to 'zout > water', means 'fresh water' as opposed to 'salt (sea) water'. Ahh, the quirks of languages! Cheers! -- ,-------------------------------------------------------------------------. > -ScruLoose- | If I had a dog as daft as you, I'd shoot him. < > Please do not | - Scottish Proverb < > reply off-list. | < `-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
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