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Also sprach Dmitry Ivanov (dimss@solutions.lv)
> On Sunday 02 October 2005 21:09, Magnus Eriksson wrote:
> >
> >    Perhaps it is time for a new slogan?  I don't see that portability
> > is such a great selling point anymore anyway
>=20
> What we have now is non-portable slogan for portable OS.

That is normal, languages differ in concepts they can describe. Thats
why foreign words are imported. Of course .. can be translated without
problems into German, since English and German are related. I guess
this applies to other Germanic languages like swedish and dutch too.=20

But, translating "Of course it is running NetBSD" into German would be
hard, since there simply is no special form to express that sth. is
going on *now*. At least in standard German.

Now I'm in the mood to make an etymological analysis[1] of the slogan ;-)

Of 		Old English, from Proto Germanic of, af, known as "ab" in
		modern German

course	Old French from Latin "cursus", the past participle stem of
		"currere", which indeed means "to run" as now used in
		"current"

it 		Old English "hit" from Proto Germanic "khi", now known as "Du"
		in German or "het" in Dutch or "he"/"her"/"him" in modern English

run		merged from related Old English words, but in this meaning
		from "rinnan", Old High German/Gothic/Saxon "rinnan" (now
		"rennen" or "rinnen") to run, flow (of a stream)

net		Old English net "mesh", from Proto Germanic "natjan" spread
		all over Germanic languages as "net", "n=E4t", "Netz", "nati"=20

B 		George Berkeley, Irish philosopher

software 	woolen or cotton fabrics, from soft + ware, computer sense
			coined in 1960 based on hardware

distribution 	Latin, distributionem,  from distribuere "deal out in
				portions,"



As far as I remember my russian lessons,  "rabotaet" means "to work" but=20
does it also mean "to run" in the sense it is used in the slogan?
("Dasche sdes rabotaet NetBSD" would be my version)=20


However, it is almost impossible to find a slogan that can be translated=20
into any language available. So we should keep it. English *is* the Lingua=
=20
Franca of the internet and computer science, so we can expect the user
to understand at least basic english.



[1] I'm no linguist.=20
--=20
PGP FPR: CF74 D5F2 4871 3E5C FFFE 0130 11F4 C41E B3FB AE33
--=20
Der Geist des Kriegers sollte mit Beginn des Neujahrstages bis zum Ende=20
des Jahres vom Gedanken an seinen Tod beherrscht werden.

Daijouji Shigesuke in "Budo Shoshin Shuu"

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