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Muzzles | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| flabbergasted Triglot Groupie Latvia Joined 6301 days ago 75 posts - 97 votes  Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Latvian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin, Serbo-Croatian, Catalan, Persian | Message 1 of 6 25 April 2015 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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"There was a muzzle on the dog's muzzle". Sounds kind of clumsy. How to say this
differently without omitting the "face" of the dog? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4044 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 2 of 6 25 April 2015 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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"My dog was muzzled." — A dog that is muzzled has a muzzle on its face. Stating what's muzzled (aside from the dog) is redundant. It's like saying "I was wearing trousers on my legs."
If you absolutely have to have the protruding part of the face included: "My dog's snout was covered by a muzzle." or something to that effect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3520 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 3 of 6 25 April 2015 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Piping up here as a long term dog-onwer who's a native English speaker (living in a dog loving
community, so such conversations come up often... ) Making up a sentence on my own, I'd be more likely to say, "The dog was wearing a muzzle" or even just, "The dog had a muzzle on." I would use "The dog was muzzled," in a more formal situation, like a police report. I might say, "There was a muzzle on the dog's snout" to give additional information if I thought my listener was unusually uninformed about dogs, or was not fully proficient in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4235 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 4 of 6 25 April 2015 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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The simple "The dog had a muzzle" sounds fine to me. The muzzle can only be on the snout,
so this is assumed (it really cannot be on any other part of the body, that I know). I used to work in a veterinary hospital, and this is what I would say. I would be wary of "The dog was muzzled" because it sounds a bit odd. Or perhaps I am too used to the figurative meaning of "muzzled" which means "censored", like "The police muzzled the protesters" or "muzzled" as being banned from a chat service. Edited by 1e4e6 on 25 April 2015 at 11:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4044 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 5 of 6 26 April 2015 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
In my experience, it's far from an uncommon phrase (as far as talking about canine equipment goes), even in UK English. "All dogs must be muzzled." "All restricted breeds must be muzzled and on a lead while in a public place." and so on and so forth. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3487 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 6 of 6 30 April 2015 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I still don't get what's wrong with the original sentence. For example, some people call T-shirts tees. Suppose I'm the kind of language user that like's to call my T-shirt a tee, and suppose I've got a cup of tea and I spill it on myself. Then obviously I should say:
I spilt tea on my tee! Not a thing wrong with that sentence. It sounds funny for like 1 millisecond, but whoever hears it will get the message. No need to adjust your vocabulary just because you're reusing the same sounds in more than one way. It's called language, it's ambiguous (sometimes) for a reason. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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