It's the phrase's ambiguity in English that I didn't really grasp fully until I realized the difficulty of translating it -- and it does seem that this ambiguity opens the door to different people reading it different ways. But then again, to say, "I sympathize" may be more specific but it's still an ambiguous phrase, compared to something like, oh, "I share my friend's hurt..."
I remember my mother talking about doing major surveys and how Every. Little. Word. had to be considered, and I remember nodding like, oh, of course! But I really had no idea how much a single word or phrase can be read in such different ways. I mean, maybe it's that we get used to seeing/reading a word or phrase per our own exposure to it, and close our minds off to the potential ambiguity... and it takes people with different experience/exposure to snap us back open again.
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Date: 22 Feb 2011 04:06 pm (UTC)I remember my mother talking about doing major surveys and how Every. Little. Word. had to be considered, and I remember nodding like, oh, of course! But I really had no idea how much a single word or phrase can be read in such different ways. I mean, maybe it's that we get used to seeing/reading a word or phrase per our own exposure to it, and close our minds off to the potential ambiguity... and it takes people with different experience/exposure to snap us back open again.