Mark A Mandel wrote: > > Ah, you don't like imprecision? You must be very unhappy with English, > which, unlike German, fails to force its speakers to distinguish a male > friend (Freund) from a female one (Freundin) and an intimate "you" (du) > from a polite one (Sie)... let alone Hebrew, which distinguishes male > "you" (atah) from female "you" (at). --- Oh, but German *does* have a > word that means just what the newer use of "hopefully" covers: > hoeffentlich. > I'm afraid I have to agree with Steve on this one -- shifts in language which lead to loss of the possibility of nuanced expression are to be deplored; but that isn't the same as wanting to import all the distinctions of other languages simply to expand the language (FWIW, I would think that Greek, with its very much greater flexibility, is an even better counterexample than German). _My_ bete noire, however, is not "hopefully", but the breakdown in the distinction between "shall" and "will". -- James Burbidge jamesandmary.burbidge at sympatico.ca