Celery | alt.languages.english
in <news:4a214d7c.0401270723.7f059c9c@posting.google.com>
> How do you interpret the meaning of "more than" and "less than"? If
> someone says "more than 30", does it mean a value greater than 30 (30
> excluded) or a value greater than 30 (30 included)? If someone says
> "less than 30", does it mean a value smaller than 30 (30 excluded)?
I think that if you say "More than 30 tomato cans.", that means 31,
32, 33 or 34 tomato cans, and so on, NOT 30 tomato cans.
I agree with that
But, if you say "More than two years.", that might be two years and a
day or two years and six month, not necessarily 3 or 4 years.
and with that too
> Do you personally think that there is a cultural difference in the
> perception of "more than" and "less than" across different native
> language speakers?
Dunno.
Well, I'm French, and it seems that I think the same way as Enrico (whose
"culture" I don't know), but I actually think there's a cultural difference
in considering the notion of time. In some cultures, 10 minutes of happiness
are not as long as 10 minutes of torture...
And some (e.g some of my pupils who are African and used to live in a
desert) don't even know what 30 means... they can't figure out how many "30
pens" are, so "30 years"!!!
Phine
Hope it'll help!
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