I don't understand "in the opposite direction – you would both be caught!" well

Forums: English, Esl, Grammar
Email this Topic • Print this Page

Can you get it at once?

Context:

Suddenly I realized that the paths of these light rays could never approach one another. If they did they must eventually run into one another. It would be like meeting someone else running away from the police in the opposite direction – you would both be caught! (Or, in this case, fall into a black hole.) But if these light rays were swallowed up by the black hole, then they could not have been on the boundary of the black hole.

More context:

A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Question • Score: 3 • Views: 629 • Replies: 17

[+3] - parados - 06/24/2011If the police are chasing you and you meet someone else that the police are chasing, you will both be caught because you will run into the police chasing the other person.

@oristarA,

If the police are chasing you and you meet someone else that the police are chasing, you will both be caught because you will run into the police chasing the other person.

1 Reply

God help us all - he's got hold of the damn Hawking book!

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

If the police are chasing you and you meet someone else that the police are chasing, you will both be caught because you will run into the police chasing the other person.

Cool. Two policepeople solve anything doubtful.

Thank you.

0 Replies

@contrex,

contrex wrote:

God help us all - he's got hold of the damn Hawking book!

Of course you cannot get anything Hawking says in his books. But there must be something inspirational there!

1 Reply

@oristarA,

oristarA wrote:

Of course you cannot get anything Hawking says in his books. But there must be something inspirational there!

Never was a book bought by so many, read by so few and understood by even fewer...

1 Reply

@contrex,

contrex wrote:

oristarA wrote:
Of course you cannot get anything Hawking says in his books. But there must be something inspirational there!

Never was a book bought by so many, read by so few and understood by even fewer...

Its raison d’être is to fill a gap in producing great thinkers in science. And you know, not every one likes science.

BTW, how to pronounce raison d’être? I put it into the world dictionary and the dictionary shuts down!

1 Reply

@oristarA,

oristarA wrote:

BTW, how to pronounce raison d’être?

It is a French phrase, therefore pronounce it like the French do.

Link to audio follows.

http://www.forvo.com/word/raison_d%27%C3%AAtre/

2 Replies

most people pronounce it soimething like ray-zawn-det

0 Replies

@oristarA,

It would be like meeting someone else running away from the police in the opposite direction – you would both be caught!

Someone is running away from the police - say that that person is running east and then that person meets another person who is running west, also away from the police. If they keep running on this east/west line they are both going to run into the police.

0 Replies

@contrex,

Quote:

It is a French phrase, therefore pronounce it like the French do.

You keep on keeping on with this nonsense, Contrex. It is an English phrase.

1 Reply

Aside:
I think, regarding the Most Bought/Least Read Books, that's it's a tie:

The Art of Computer Programming -Vols 1-4

and

The Bible.

For myself, it's Atlas Shrugged.
I just found out I have three copies.

Joe(I did get through it once, skimming furiously, in 1974.)Nation

0 Replies

@contrex,

contrex wrote:

oristarA wrote:
BTW, how to pronounce raison d’être?

It is a French phrase, therefore pronounce it like the French do.

Link to audio follows.

http://www.forvo.com/word/raison_d%27%C3%AAtre/

Cool stuff.

0 Replies

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

It is an English phrase.

Well, I suppose you could say it is an "imported" French phrase, but I wonder how you explain away the circonflexe? English contains many words of French origin which are pronounced according to English rules of phonology, rather than French. Around 28% of English vocabulary is of French or langues d'oïl origin, most derived from, or transmitted by, the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern English. However I take the view that raison d'être should be classified among those words or phrases that generally entered the lexicon later, e.g. through literature, the arts, diplomacy, and other cultural exchanges not involving conquests. As such, they have not lost their character as Gallicisms, or words that seem unmistakably foreign and "French" to an English speaker.

1 Reply

Furthermore, my own personal view is that if the word or phrase retains French diacritics or is usually printed in italics, it has retained its French identity.

0 Replies

@contrex,

Quote:

Well, I suppose you could say it is an "imported" French phrase, but I wonder how you explain away the circonflexe?

That's easy. It's purely show-off pedantry, as is 'circonflexe'. That little mark is a circumflex.

Quote:

However I take the view that raison d'être should be classified among those words or phrases that generally entered the lexicon later,

There's a very good reason that languages don't do this. The people using a particular tongue only know the rules, phonological and otherwise for that tongue.

raison d'etre has been around since 1864. That's certainly qualifies it as English.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

The people using a particular tongue only know the rules, phonological and otherwise for that tongue.

Really? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I am a native English speaker, but I also know, to a certain extent, the rules, phonological and otherwise, for French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, and I am by no means a prodigy or particularly exceptional.

As to your other remarks, thanks for reminding me that you really are a prick.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Quote:

As to your other remarks,

Contrex, when you get caught out, which is often you resort to this nonsense. That little mark is a circumflex.

Quote:

Really? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I am a native English speaker, but I also know, to a certain extent, the rules, phonological and otherwise, for French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, and I am by no means a prodigy or particularly exceptional.

The operative words are that you are not particularly exceptional, even in describing the rules, phonological and otherwise in you native tongue, so one must consider how you are in those other languages.

But as good as you are, you are still missing the point. Languages borrow words, not rules.

0 Replies

I don't understand "in the opposite direction – you would both be caught!" well

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know