Re: Heroes, a plaque?

On Aug 6, 11:59 am, zebo...@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:
MikeQ <michael.qvort...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 5, 9:23 pm, zebo...@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:
MikeQ <michael.qvort...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]
(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.

That will make you sound like a Norwegian!

The spelling:pronunciation relationship is horrible. A
language which manages to contract 3 distinct words
into something like one syllable deserves no other
sobriquet.


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.

I'd say modern Danish distinguishes green and blue about
the same as English does. If medieval Danish also did - no
idea - and that is probably the more relevant question here.
And the bluish tint is there.

Regards,
MikeQ

.

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