Ten rules to becoming a Python community member.

David Monaghan monaghand.david at gmail.com
Tue Aug 16 19:43:59 EDT 2011


On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:12:53 -0700 (PDT), rantingrick
<rantingrick at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Aug 16, 4:55 pm, David Monaghan <monaghand.da... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:13:10 -0700 (PDT), rantingrick
>>
>> <rantingr... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >If conciseness is all you seek then perhaps you prefer the following?
>>
>> >ORIGINAL: "I used to wear wooden shoes"
>> >CONCISE:  "I wore wooden shoes"
>> >ORIGINAL: "I have become used to wearing wooden shoes"
>> >CONCISE:  "I like wearing wooden shoes"
>> >However as you can see much of the rich information is missing.
>>
>> Indeed. Neither of your two concise examples has the same meaning of the
>> originals.
>
>Really? Are you sure?

Yes.

> ORIGINAL1: "I used to wear wooden shoes"

There's an implicit corollary to this sentence: "...but I don't any more",
which is missing from your concise sentence:

>CONCISE_1a: "I wore wooden shoes"

> ORIGINAL_2: "I have become used to wearing wooden shoes"

This carries the meaning, "I wasn't always comfortable/accustomed to wearing
wooden shoes, but I am now". This is a totally different meaning from:

>CONCISE_2a:  "I like wearing wooden shoes"

which refers only to the present and is much more positive. 

In fact, now I consider it, these examples are so clearly different that you
can't be a native English speaker. Either that, or I've just fed a troll.
Damn.

DaveM



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