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From: celerylao@sinaman.com (Celery)
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: "More than" versus "Less than"
Date: 28 Jan 2004 04:32:08 -0800
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Thank you for all your replies.
I agree with your answer. That was the answer I gave to a
Ｔaiwanese who asked me about this question yesterday.
I believe there may be some cultural differences in the perception of
"more than" and "less than", just from what I heard from this
Taiwanese who told me that the value of 30 should be included for the
phrase "more than 30", but the value of 30 should be excluded for the
phrase "less than 30" in Chinese.
I am a native Cantonese speaker. I also speak Mandarin Chinese but I
attended an English school when I was small. That is why I come to
think my different educational and language background is the possible
cause of such a difference in the perception of these two phrases.
Thanks again for your reply
"Phine" <phineforgetit@infonie.fr> wrote in message news:<bv6apd$46b$1@news.tiscali.fr>...
> 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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