2007/10/7, M Daniel R Magarzo <b2.mdr.magarzo@gmail.com>:
El dom, 07-10-2007 a las 00:24 -0400, Gian Paolo Mureddu escribió:
>
> Would (roughly) translate into:
>
> "Fedora: Liberty included"
>
> Now, I *chose* __Liberty__ instead of "freedom" given the ambiguous
> meaning of "free" in colloquial English.
"Free" is ambiguous indeed, but "freedom" is not.
> Alas even though "freedom" as
> such is reasonably enough "universally understood" as a synonym of
> liberty (or so is my [limited] understanding of the English language),
It's easy to solve:
http://diccionario.reverso.net/ingles-espanol/freedom
(está clarito, ¿no?)
Liberty and freedom are synonymous, but they are used in completely different contexts.
Liberty is mainly used in social contexts, "may I take the liberty to..", in political contexts, "liberty as a universal aspiration of man", "the attack of the US government on civil liberties is, alas, not met with much resistance", etc.
Freedom is a much more existential and down-to-earth word, much preferred to liberty when it comes to slogans such as discussed here. A prisoner wants freedom, not liberty. Freedom is the abstract yet very concrete 'version' of liberty.
I think it is a much abused word, especially in some regions of the world. "God" is much more abused, though, so we can safely use the former.