Re: Heroes, a plaque?
- From: zeborah@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah)
- Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 21:59:21 +1200
MikeQ <michael.qvortrup@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 5, 9:23 pm, zebo...@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:
MikeQ <michael.qvort...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 4, 10:11 pm, zebo...@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:[...]
No; it was in an edit to the Danish Wikipedia page which was later
reverted, but no explanation was given to why it had been reverted so I
thought it might have just been because the editor couldn't find a
specific reference for the claim. It just made a certain dismaying sort
of sense.
Ah, yes - wikipedia. Long threads can be written about that topic :-)
Oh yes. I wouldn't take anything there as gospel unexamined, but still,
it's a decent place to start an investigation on a subject one isn't
familiar with. Besides, the person making those edits gave every sign
of doing so in good faith and of working from a reliable source. So
while I wasn't going to blindly copy the information into my book
(especially as that editor had subsequently removed it) it did seem
worthwhile finding out more about the proposition.
(I assume you don't read Danish?
I wouldn't say I can _read_ it, but I can (and do) decode it -- made
myself learn for purposes of researching this book since for a lot of
the details I needed it was either read about it in medieval Danish or
make up wild guesses.
Interesting. How difficult is that, coming from English (I presume?)?
Danish is sometimes characterised as having a German vocabulary
with an English grammar, and I know Germans and Dutch can kind
of dig their way through short texts. Spoken Danish, on the other
hand, tends to leave even the Danes behind :-)
I studied German for four years in high school, and linguistics for four
years at university; the latter does not require one to be a polyglot,
but it helps if one is inclined to that way of thinking. Grammar comes
naturally to me (not that I'm fond of compound verbs -- they remind me
of hanzi, where knowing the meaning of the radical tells you little more
than that the word is related in some way to some kind of plant -- but
English is hardly innocent in that regard either).
It's the vocabulary that's the problem; hence the decoding: I set to it
with a dictionary at my fingers. (I've had the dictionary in question
on loan from the university library I work at for over a year now;
fortunately no-one else seems to want it.)
Sorry, what was the question again? Oh, yes. No idea, sorry: in terms
of learning languages I'm not a typical English speaker, and I learn all
my languages differently so it's hard to compare. I would say that the
grammar is easier than German, the numbers worse than French, and the
prepositions utterly intimidating. I gather that the
spelling:pronunciation relationship is almost as appalling as in
English, but as I have neither need nor opportunity to listen or speak
it I've chosen to pretend it's as pure as IPA for the purposes of
subvocalising.
Whee, thank you! <bounce>
You are welcome. The topic just grabbed my interest - like, "hold it,
copper is not blue - its copper or green!".
It strikes me as a bluish kind of green though, and there are languages
where blue/green are not distinguished in the same way as in English.
It seemed just possible enough.
Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
rasfc FAQ: http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
.
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