Don't they usually drop the accent, when...

Post #22,097 by CRConrad 12/20/01 10:39:02 AM Reply	Don't they usually drop the accent, when... ...there's two e's to make it look French anyway? Ah, of course -- English uses double-e's of its own, too... Well, then I jus' don'no why they dropped it! Oh, and the reason the Merkins don't use "entree" to mean "starter", as would be right and sensible, is probably that they use "hors d'oeuvres" (which AFAIK know really means the fiddly little snacks you get even before the real entree (=starter), like while you're hanging around waiting for everybody to arrive before you sit down to a seven- or eleven-course meal) to mean that in stead. Once you do that, it kind of makes logical sense to go on, "after the hors d'oeuvres comes the entree..." -- only when you mis-apply that to a paltry three-course meal[], you end up calling the main course "the starter". Kind of like my home-built etymologies turn out to be sometimes: Eminently logical in and of itself, but so over-simplified compared to the real thing as to make no real sense at all, as to be just plain wrong. And it doesn't help either, that they[+] pronounce "hors d'oeuvres" with the last two consonants reversed, more or less as "oorderv"[!]. Anyway, thank you guys (DownUndahs too) for confirming what I thought. []: "Paltry three-course meal" -- heck yeah! Back when I hitch-hiked to Paris, Trucker Bob bought me dinnner at a little road-side restaurant; the closest thing you could get to a "Truck Stop" in France, judging from the clientele and their rigs parked outside... And three-course meals is what _truckers at a truck stop_ had for dinner, on a bloody normal weekday! [+]: OK, OK, not all Americans do that -- only something like 98.8 percent of them, or thereabouts... [!]: It's approximately "awr devr(uh)", in case you're wondering. And no, the "uh" bit isn't really necessary (it's supposed to be silent in French) -- but if it helps you get the consonants in the right order, then by all means (pleeease!) go ahead and aspirate a little at the end there. Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
Post #22,102 by Silverlock 12/20/01 12:14:43 PM Reply	Merkin meal order Goes approx like this in a fancy joint- Cold appetizer/salad Hot appetizer/soup Entree (main course) Dessert Coffee/Cognac Wafer thin mint Explode When I visit the aquarium, the same thought keeps running through my mind; Leemmmooonnn, Buuttteerrr, MMMmmmmmm good!
Post #22,128 by Meerkat 12/20/01 5:06:03 PM Reply	Reminds me of an Australian traveller. Friend of mine, travelling through the US many years ago, caused consternation and discomfort in most resturants she visited, by requesting that her salad was served with the main meal. Only very rarely did she succeed, and it garnered a number of tut-tuts and funny looks. (So I guess it's needless to say in .au salad is normally served at the same time as the main meal...) On and on and on and on, and on and on and on goes John.
Post #22,131 by CRConrad 12/20/01 5:20:41 PM Reply	Damn phony-sophisticate philistines. Kittykat John: Australian traveller [...] caused consternation and discomfort [...] by requesting that her salad was served with the main meal. [...] garnered a number of tut-tuts and funny looks. How to spot a phony sophisticate: They "tut-tut" about shit that real sophisticates take in their stride. I mean, it's not as if eating her salad with her steak (or whatever), like a normal sensible person, was actually disgusting or caused any real "discomfort", is it? I bet she didn't "tut-tut" them for being so weird and having their Filler Greens without any Food to go with them[], or their Food without any Filler Greens[+]. []: Which is, to be honest, a bit tedious. [+]: Which seems a bit ostentatiously wasteful. Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
Post #22,132 by Ashton 12/20/01 5:20:49 PM Reply	Yabut.. do they serve on those salads (usually) &#$^% bottled 'dressings'* mostly or, is it expected to be made fresh? Here.. the bottled stuff is so chock full' o chemicals, even a dull palate can Taste the icky shit. Y'know? As far as when.. well lots o' folk have salad after. Lots o' Muricans rarely have one at all, except when in a restaurant - just the triple-bacon cheeseburger please. Oz folk much different in this? Are veggies a no-no for many folk there? (I mean - ya gots lots o' space to amass huge herds of methane-producing protein sources + megatonnes of cattle shit to dispose of.. If you want.) When Corp bizness gets through with homogenizing all food, worldwide there shall be ONLY: Spam... Spam... Spam... Spam... Spam... Spam... Spam... Spam... (but the malt & hops might supply a little nutrition, I guess) Ashton
Post #22,143 by Meerkat 12/20/01 6:26:43 PM Reply	Depends on the establishment. At most fair-to-middling restaurant, like, anything thats not a franchise, you'll usually find in the menu a description of the dressing alongside the salad. Like, Caesar salsd with our home made dressing feature blah blah blah... At Bistro-style places (and I just learnt [or at least, was told] the other day that bistro was derived from Russian soldiers telling food prepareres to hurry up...) the slada is more often than not undressed. Chain-store restaurants are the most likely to serve tasty toxic manufactured dressings. As for veggies vs salad vs chips... bistro-style you usually get to specifcy salad of chips with your meal. I think it's only Maccas, Burger King, or a roadside diner that would serve a burger on its own. In restaurants, you sometimes get the choice of veg or salad or chips. The slightly more flash restaurants will serve the hot veg in a seperate dish, the even flasher ones charge seperately for it, too. Meerkat, part-time restaruant minutiae consultant. On and on and on and on, and on and on and on goes John.
Post #22,179 by kmself 12/20/01 11:53:32 PM Reply	Food abroad My "impossible to order" items come from Germany. Water with the meal. Non-carbonated is rarely available at all. Bread with the meal. Served on request, but you pay for it. And it's so good. Vegetables. Better: fresh vegetables. "Continental cuisine" means what it means for a reason. Your odds are far better in northern Germany or major cities. Rural Bavaria and Franken were slim pickins. I finally ditched the relatives to buy a kilo of carrots from ein Grocerei. Triple espresso. Doubles they understand. "Ein dreifach Espresso, bitte" brought blank stares, if not a fight. "Wir kann das nicht tun....". "Doch!". Ozzie food ain't bad, if you don't mind eating from the bottom of the plate ;-) `-- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?`
Post #22,182 by boxley 12/21/01 12:00:27 AM Reply	Pickles, beets n Kraut aint veggies? remember trying to order cold milk in Mexico that was not canned, powdered or nastified. Also Mexico has great cofee so why the heck is Nescafe Instant so popular? thanx, bill My Dreams aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be
Post #22,194 by Ashton 12/21/01 1:14:41 AM Reply	Mexican Nescaf\ufffd is different from US (and likely most other countries this nasty Corp operates in). It's quite a different blend and goes well with hot milk directly added. I used to bring back a couple jars, so we could make our own cafe con leche authentic-like. If'n all ya can bear is Starbucks Corp grade: then forget Mexico for coffee, I say. (I also don't order champagne there.) Share your pain re cold milk. Dunno about lately, but we didn't trust uniform Pasteurization - especially as served at table. The milk for con leche was scalded; no es una problema. Ashton
Post #22,453 by Ric Locke 12/26/01 8:38:09 PM Reply	Milk in Mexico You'd better know your source if you drink fresh milk in Mexico. Most natives won't, outside a few areas. A new fillip in the last couple of years is irradiated milk, sold in impermeable containers that look like cardboard boxes. It doesn't taste like fresh milk for drinking, but for cereal, coffee creamer, etc. it works great. Extremely popular, too -- the larger markets typically have a 3 or 4 meter long wall of the different brands. And the kids do drink it. It doesn't taste bad, per se; it just doesn't taste quite like fresh milk (even pasteurized) should. No word yet on polydactyly and other birth defects caused by the irradiation :-) Regards, Ric
Post #22,510 by Ashton 12/27/01 3:42:53 PM Reply	Yes: but it is scalded when used in cafe con leche.. No Moctezuma from it for us, ever. Now as to what's in the milk, the "Nescafe"-type 'coffee': It's gotta be far less life-threatening than a single triple-bacon McGrease Lump. What we missed of course was - salads! Forget the lettuce etc. Still, never a problem with the licuados - guanabana, guayaba etc. Exotic flavors never found in US. We did however - usually buy those in larger cities. I don't buy Mexican Nescaf\ufffd in Mex. mercados here anymore.. their record of exploitation + the unfolding greed of the whole Swiss banking estab. in WW-II.. puts them on a list with Walmart as eminently boycottable. Indefinitely. Not futile exactly: they were deterred in selling infant formula to folk who couldn't possibly afford it - in the '70s. Dunno what new atrocities their BOD have replaced that one with (?) Seen one Corp BOD - seen (most-all) of them. Suited scum just too &^$*&#$ Often. A.
Post #22,546 by Ric Locke 12/27/01 10:39:34 PM Reply	Ah, yes, part of the recipe and personally, I don't care for caf\ufffd con leche much... I'd rather have my coffee black. Nor do I drink the Nescaf\ufffd very often; the folk I deal with make coffee the old-fashioned way (sometimes literally, with the grounds directly in the water). I have drunk enough of it to know that, yes, the formula is very different -- there's actually some gasp choke coffee in there. And the very little Nescaf\ufffd I do drink is my only support for Nestle. Part of the problem there is that with chocolate, as with coffee, I consider milk an undesirable adulterant. Can't remember the brand I go for in Europe; Spanish, IIRC, very black, not too sweet, great stuff. In Mexico? ::shudder:: One of the byproducts of being an extremely sloppy housekeeper married to one of the same is beneficial. M's Revenge (or whatever obfuscation you want for diarrh\ufffda) is the result of competing intestinal flora; I seem to have either a wide variety (always able to find friends) or some very strong ones. My usual problem in Mexico is quite the opposite due to not drinking enough liquids. I eat from the pushcarts in Mexico City! and just about everywhere else. But if you're visiting and don't have my advantages :-) Sanborn's and VIP's are your friends. Sanborn's at least is authentic Mexican; I've been to the original, opened ca. mid-Forties? on Insurgentes. You can even eat the salad, I promise. Regards, Ric
Post #22,554 by Ashton 12/28/01 12:10:13 AM Reply	Hey you're right! Sanborns - also another and strangely named restaurant in the Zona Rosa - Bellinghausen. (I never bothered to enquire if they were formed shortly after 1945, though I thought most of those subs headed for er Argentina?) Huachinango en el mojo de \ufffdjo at B's. Red Snapper like nowhere else! and yes, salads OK there pero muy expensivo.. (My sweetie was born in Brownsville - yeah your neck o' the woods. Liked to drive when we went through small villages - so the muchachas could see that they could be una automovilista tambien..) Haven't been there since early '80s; always a mixture of wonderfulness and then la mordita. Loved especially the utter sanity! of Dia de los Muertos - perhaps their reclamation of pre-Catholic times: Staring death in the face, making candies, pastries of skeletons and.. eating them, as in Fuck You Death! we ain't skeerd of ya. Their version of Donne's "Death be not proud.." But it's taken all those years to finally begin rooting out the PRI, and the general level of corp. and govt. lying almost makes us look goodish. (But not quiite) I hope they do better at banishing the scumbags than we - before they're seduced into YAN conforming consumerism, ruled by (in their case) maybe only The 2% ? As it is now: Mexico DF air causes cancer :( Viva Zapata y la Revoluci\ufffdn! {sigh}
Post #22,586 by Ric Locke 12/28/01 10:56:29 AM Reply	You should go back; you'd be both pleased and appalled Sanborn's is now a chain \ufffd la Denny's -- much of the Norteamericano consumer culture has been imported. Your sweetie need not make political gestures any more; large proportions of the drivers everywhere I've been have been women. Much Pride in the announcement: all but a vanishingly few villages in the southern jungles have electric power and telephone service! Most of my visits over the last ten years have been to the interior. Interior Mexico and border Mexico are two very different places -- and in general, Mexico varies in ambiance from place to place more than the U.S. does now; more like what we were in the Fifties. Aguascalientes (the Mexican Rhode Island, in many ways) used to be PRI, is now a mixture, with a PRD governor and a PRI mayor. Mordida is still there, but much reduced in most places -- it's actually possible to get and pay a traffic ticket without winding up in the carcel, for tourists and natives alike; much appreciated. Anything major -- export/import, serious charges -- still needs, ah, subsidy though. Stacks of twenties are the ticket (if you carry C-notes, you're probably a druggie). I got stopped for inspection (looking for drug dealers) going into Zacatecas. The lieutenant of the Mexican Army who inspected the car was businesslike, polite, and honest -- apparently did not even notice the corner of a bill sticking out of my shirt pocket, and waved me on with a smile after a much more thorough search of the car than our side seems to accomplish without disassembly. I truly enjoy Aguascalientes, Leon, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, and the northern parts of Mexico state. I detest Mexico City -- twenty-five million people crammed into the stupidest place in the Western Hemisphere for a major city -- and the border areas are appalling. Never been to the southern part or to the jungles. Baja California Sur can be fun, though in some places it's hard to find anyone who speaks spanish :-) If what you want is kick-back-and-relax, it's hard to beat La Paz -- stay at one of the older hotels along the Embarcadero, and watch the sun set over the bay. But nowadays, if you try a bit, you can move and act as if you were in the United States. Convenience stores, convenient (and clean!) gas stations, decent sanitation (and getting better), and representatives of the major North American hotel chains, usually with alternate names -- Hoteles Posadas is part of the Holiday Inn empire, for instance. Not to worry. You can still get caf\ufffd de olla in a lot of places, and a few cups won't hurt you enough to notice :-) I get very impatient with people who claim they're contaminating the "real Mexico." The real Mexico is part of the Western Hemisphere; I've become convinced in my travels that from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego we have more in common with one another than we do with anybody Over the Water. When (and if) Mexico gets rich, it'll be different from the U.S. in details, but just as easy to get around in for everybody. You can see the bits emerging. Quite hopeful, really. You should go back, you really should; just being able to pull into a Pemex without feeling as if you were descending into depths that hadn't been cleaned since around 1950 will probably astonish you -- Regards, Ric
Post #22,622 by Ashton 12/28/01 3:09:38 PM Reply	Thanks for the update That's much more germane than any travel industry encomium. Hmmm Pemex w/o squatting with feet on the seat? Nice about the $20 remaining in the pocket. Story - toodling through a sorta village when a guy in usual mil uniform steps out in front (I'm driving this time) .. wants to know if we'd like tickets to the ~ "military ball" IIRC (!). Was testy at the moment, thought.. OK if we're gonna die we're gonna die (asked P. for her vote too, natch) and we just slowly accelerated away. Nothing like a guy with a Thompson, receding in one's carefully watched rear-view mirror! (We died. Orneriness has kept this illusion going.. another time-line.) Another story about waking up a sleeping guard with gun on lap ... .. . carefully. Oaxaca, Monte Alban - worth the trip, maybe still? Our fav place was Barra de Navidad, kinda like Puerto Vallarta was before Liz and Dick turned it into a full time Hollywood set. Dunno if Barra has withstood the same inclinations. Anyway - if one goes there to make comparisons - you won't discover the subtleties at all. (Or on more modern note - that their mechanics are among the most innovative in the world [screw you again Billy for crapping up Language itself, you miserable entrepreneur-pipsqueak!]) Could give details re when P. ran the Saab into a dirt bank to avoid an oncoming idiot (no shoulders!) - and what these guys accomplished in 'hands-off at 70 mph' alignment of a bent space-frame. One part they had to make via a small picture in the manual. They put (most..) US R&R rote part-changers in perspective. Guess you're right again - been away too long. Need to drop in for a recharge, on Dia de los Muertos.. as the dice roll. Agree re Mexico City - alas it's simply (likely irreversible?) chaos - the poor bastards. Not even Bellinghausen enough of a magnet.. Trouble is - now it'd take me two weeks to speak the language semi-properly, where once a few days would have brought a lot back :( Fav. quote of a friend, by Juan Ram\ufffdn Jimenez: Esa distancia infinita de volver que se corre tan rapidamente al ir. (Para los otros: ~ "That infinite distance to return to that from which we so quickly ran ...") {sigh} All those great Mex/Spanish-speaking poets and writers we never heard a single excerpt from! en la escuela Gringo.. We be so cosmopolitan and all. Another pox on Pizzaro, the forerunner of Corp-Am and Billy - may his chains clank alongside of Marley's - to the high-volume squawk of overblown saxophones. Feliz A\ufffdo Nuevo, Y'All ! Ashton {sniff}
Post #22,634 by boxley 12/28/01 4:49:04 PM Reply	The Mexico I love is the east coast From Tampico South to Coatzcoalcos. Vera Cruz is beautiful. Angel R. Cabada's is a side road place where I met the real folks and spent some time visiting. South of Coatzcoalcos to the americities are a little different due to the tourista's. Still pretty friendly though. Never had a case of the trots, if the locals dont drink out of the tap, you dont. Agua mineral is your friend. Eat off the street vendors because they usually buy fresh early in the morning from the market as they have no cooled storage. They dont have a clue about fried biftek so dont try to show them how to cook a steak, it will only annoy them and still wont taste right. The seafood is excellent and I still cant get the right flavoring for their cocketeil de cameron served in huge sundae glasses a meal of itself. Might consider a run there again sans rug rats. thanx, bill My Dreams aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be
Post #22,669 by Ashton 12/28/01 10:46:02 PM Reply	Added to fantasy itinerary or maybe .. a direction to head if Ashcroft's Amerika continues according to plan (?) I could survive there with or w/o techno assists; a great Hobbit adventure in any case. (Less'n the Yuppies get there first and $crew it up, too.) Cheers, A.
Post #22,642 by mhuber 12/28/01 6:20:28 PM Reply	Insane travelling companions My Mom and us kids drove from Panama City, Panama to Maytown, Illinois in a week and a half to catch a wedding once. We hooked up with another mom, with a son and a daughter, for a bit of security in numbers. All three suffered from a bad case of Disneyland syndrome. Other mom was joking around with border guards (I don't remember which little bitty dictatorship) and, in jest from her perspective, offered to sell her teenage daughter. Well, they didn't actualy shoot those machine guns when we blew out of there. But they had every right to, we ran a checkpoint during one of the constant little wars of the time. My mom can drive hard when she has to. ---- "You don't have to be right - just use bolded upper case" - annon.
Post #22,666 by Ashton 12/28/01 10:39:30 PM Reply	Damn.. I'm usually the one who has to remind self - Don't tease the animals! I think I'd have been just too wary to take along a small daughter through all that territory, less'n all the kids had AK-47s except then the border crossings would have been even hairier.. and [tilt] Catch 22. Glad you made it; yer mom be The Woman.. baaad-assed! Hmmm maybe she can help with the paint-balls on the surveillance cameras? or maybe when Ashcroft starts the airport cavity inspections.. Ashton
Post #22,676 by Ric Locke 12/29/01 12:26:02 AM Reply	All my stories like that are about Colombia :-) To an American, Mexican attitudes toward the police are truly bizarre. I stood at my hotel window one late evening, watching as a pair of Mexico City police cars waited, with red-and-blues flaring, to make a left turn across Insurgentes [south central Mexico City, for those who don't know]. It took them quite a while to manage it -- the southbound traffic didn't give an inch! Did my heart good, it did. And yet, the simplest stop by the Federales (Pol\ufffdcia Feder\ufffdl des Caminos y Puertas) is a heart-stopper. The guy may just want to pass the time of day, or it may ruin your whole year. But yes, I could live in Mexico, even though my language skills are laughable. It's sometimes remarkable that I'm able to get along at all, but English is widespread and most people are good-humored about it. Something to keep in mind -- lots of people don't like Mexico, but I don't think anybody actually hates Mexico; possibly the Zapatistas, although the one I met denied it. Regards, Ric
Post #22,130 by Ashton 12/20/01 5:08:02 PM Reply	Dead right on the d'oeuvres And 98.8 is close enough. I can't be sure of the effects of jingoism in all European languages, but my take on the common misprununciations here, is.. 1) Muricans are lazy about most all etymology and place no large value upon using language 'well' - effectively..? well yes: but only in the context of selling something [usually.. more Stuff; then comes - selling some cockamamie Bowdlerized version of a once-meaningful concept.] In this category lies [both or several connotations] 2) The genuine Circus which is - just after bizspeak - politico-babble. That wherein the aforementioned 98.8 % tend to imagine that every Murican may be neatly categorized as A Conservative or.. Liberal. This while -long since- BOTH words have so far diverged from an inkling of meaningful concept - as explains the sniping everywhere (not just zIWE) with all parties tilting at each participant's caricature of the other's caricature of... (something?). Yes I realize that other cultures do a similar hatchet job; ego takes care of the rest, to ensure a certain surreal quality to Most political debate (Tory/Labor yada yada). BUT here, it has long ago reached the stage where no sane discussion, let alone debate is possible - unless prefaced by a small essay defining terms. (Hey.. sometimes this does happen!) 3) There appears to be a perverse pleasure taken here - in deliberately Bowdlerizing the sound of even the most euphonious of words from other languages. A stubborn pride ~~ maybe: I'll show them furriners what I think o'their unMurican stoopid blather! I've already given specific examples. Worst mangling occurs to Spanish/Mexican - despite or because of their geog. proximity (and now increasing proportion of 'the Murican Peepul' too). In some quarters, correct pronunciation is deemed either effete intellectual snobbery or .. Commyunist-inspired [don't ask]. So what does one call, taking pride in flaunting both one's ignorance and one's recalcitrance .. in remedying it ? In contrast: Surely the French possess one of the more euphonious languages extant (another word used here, hardly) - and are perhaps the most assiduous in trying to prevent its devolvement into biz-speak and Murican-style sloppiness generally. They love to mimic the rilly bad attempts of furriners barely even trying to speak it.. BUT - my experience in France (and Quebec) is that, any earnest attempt to speak.. is rewarded with goodwill (and the occasional whispered translation!). And if you do a pretty good job, on some oft needed phrases.. you might get a genuine smile of appreciation. Vivent longtemps la diff\ufffdrence! En fin: Waddaya call a person who speaks two languages? bilingue, Three languages? trilingue One language? America(i)n(e) Yeah.. beating a dead horse again. Still.. I believe it is mostly because of our ignorant disdain for correct language that, We keep electing assholes to high office; keep believing their self-attached labels mean something! It's the cause of matters last coming down to a Dubya and a Gore and.. there being damn few who today, come to mind as possible successors to the present Constitutional trashers.. who imagine with some reason to: that most Muricans don't know / don't care and are a bunch of scared sheep. (Disdain for the smart Muricans is also built-in, on another level: our inherent anti-intellectualism from the first) "hors d'oeuvres" and "Lozangelas" are just the harpoon at the tip of the iceberg of arrogant jingoism here. So what do the Finns generally fuck-up? Are elections as stoopid-based but with better language enroute? Cold climate more conducive to cerebral exercise than er temperate one? (Maybe the sauna improves the specific pericosity of neurons, too ??) {sigh} Ashton ranter Pro Tem n'Ad Hoc for the Wisdom of Confucius about such matters, who said - (what I quoted eons ago) PS IMhO your "awr devr(uh)" example is a sufficient clarification and.. eventually eliding the 'uh' comes with just a few days of Listening to Others speaking.. a radical concept; too much trouble for lots o' Murican manic travelers (Hey.. we gots 5 days left! enough to do France, Italy, Spain and Portugal.) Mother forgive them, for the @$%^& assholes know Not What they Do
Post #22,137 by CRConrad 12/20/01 6:08:14 PM Reply	Sorry, but now I just have to ask... Ashton: In some quarters, correct pronunciation is deemed either effete intellectual snobbery or .. Commyunist-inspired [don't ask]. Come now -- after that titillating invitation, how could I not? I mean, "correct pronunciation is ... Commyunist-inspired"?!? Where the FUCK would they get THAT from??? In contrast: Surely the French possess one of the more euphonious languages extant Actually, no -- IMO, it's really rather ugly. And I don't say this lightly or jokingly; I used to unthinkingly subscribe to the same "common knowledge" prejudice, but feel somehow vaguely bothered about it... Until a few years ago, when for the first time I really sat down and thunk about it. OK, so y'all'll (if that isn't a legitimate contraction, it ought to be! :-) probablly think I'm totally bonkers when I say I think German, for instance, sounds better... But that can't be helped, 'coz I do. BUT - my experience in France (and Quebec) is that, any earnest attempt to speak.. is rewarded with goodwill (and the occasional whispered translation!). And if you do a pretty good job, on some oft needed phrases.. you might get a genuine smile of appreciation. Vivent longtemps la diff\ufffdrence! Fuck yeah -- and it works everywhere, not just among Francophones. Heinlein observed, in one of his "juveniles" (can't recall precisely which one -- perhaps _Podkayne of Mars_?), that just learning to say "Thank You" in the local language was likely to give you a huge leg up on anyone who couldn't even be bothered to do that. An approximate quote of his young protagonist learning a few: "In Finnish, they say 'Key Toss'; in Danish it's 'Money Talks' -- perhaps they're a very mercenary people..." (The sentence as a whole is almost guaranteed to be wrong, but I'm 100% sure the homophonous English phrases are the correct ones.) So what do the Finns generally fuck-up Hey, they're human -- so what don't they...? Are elections as stoopid-based but with better language enroute? Not quite as bad as yours; for one thing, they have more than two parties. It has interesting contrasts to the (much more similar than the American) Swedish system -- some in its favour, some not. Cold climate more conducive to cerebral exercise than er temperate one? Isn't that the Other Hoary Olde hypothesis, akin to the one about how the harsher conditions in the European climate made people by necessity more industrious, and thus just logical candidates to conquer and own the world? In some ways, it just seems to stand to reason -- in other, it smacks heavily of "White Man's Burden" justifications for, basically, racism. (Maybe the sauna improves the specific pericosity of neurons, too ?? I'd speculate more along the lines of stimulating the flow of blood to the head (a cooling reflex), and thus more or less incidentally to the brain... Actually, I think there is such an effect -- it certainly feels as if there were! -- but if that's so, any such intellectual stimulation is probably only temporary, not permanent. PS IMhO your "awr devr(uh)" example is a sufficient clarification Eucharisto! :-) and.. eventually eliding the 'uh' comes with just a few days of Listening to Others speaking.. Well, to be perfectly honest, I think even the French have some, albeit micro-minuscule, sound there. For one thing, it's just physiologically easier to pronounce v-r in that order, even for them, if you have some amount of aspiration after them; for another, remember that "silent" vowels were actually fully pronounced, once upon a long-ago -- maybe they just never went completely away? (And when they finally do, wouldn't it be about fucking time to eliminate them from the spelling too?) Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
Post #22,169 by Ashton 12/20/01 11:09:19 PM Reply	Thought That one almost obvious (?) Xenophobia Means! .. you are suspect! [of Something - not important what] should you happen to imagine that the Murican version [of anything] could be at all improved by: someone Else's version. So in the Mc Carthy era [now making a quick encore - oops! a furrin word. OK - rerun], when you combined the daily Drum-roll of Commyunists, even under yer bed - all a tryin to Kill ya dead, and season with the anti-intellectualism / attacks on tenure at Universities - Sample: One UC Regent suggested, no difference between a professor and a janitor: both employees of the University That time it took about 3 years - to reverse the loyalty oath, restore professorships (those who would come back there) and eventually - back pay too. Not sure what will result: if it comes up again shortly.. French not euphonious? OK take second first. A popular prejudice among the barely literate: German sounds too.. too gutteral! (When I ever hear this; unlikely given who I hang out with - I just play Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing lieder: he of the almost infinite dynamic range and perfect diction as well. Case closed forever. (Well.. except for Treue Xenophobes o'course; nothin works with some) Back to the heretical proposition: Thinking.. remembering.. Well, there's Edith Piaf or even Josephine Baker. C'est si bon !! murmured under right conditions. Je t'aime's a winner in any environment. Does Ich liebe Sie come close enough? carburant-inject\ufffd moteur vs kraftstoff-eingespritzter motor ... Trying really hard.. I can give a certain nod to the idea of 'overrated', as I see lots of the drill being about learning some new (some would say unnecessarily weird) glottal adjustments -- of the sort which must drive AI attempts at translation - bonkers as in Please wait - reinstalling kernel, flushing cache. But I'll have to ponder this one - yes perhaps left-over brain washing; I admit I'm at least 1.42% imperfect in such matters! Y'all'll ? why sho'nuff lil brother, that'n's a good'un; good as ary I ever did seen. Crimanentlies, Batman.. 'Money Talks' .. well, haveing actually paid attention to er maenge taks and to be smartass, maenge toosend tak - I'd call that a bit wide of the mark. Think it's more like.. 'mang' (pronounced more like Kong as in King) with a bit of an 'uh' at the end + 'tock' (as in Tick-). No One\ufffd can ever pronounce R\ufffdd Gr\ufffdd med fl\ufffdde! until at least a year in Dk. Howsomever.. We Are Needed, fellow nit-picker. As the slope \\ _\\ __\\ moves towards a fraction of a centipoise in slipperiness, with the biz-mangling of All Language.. Ours is the Decent, the Honourable, the Fucking Sane Way to oppose all that mercantile maudlin Shit... everywhere in garish neon and 100 dB noise. And I am unanimous in that. Ashton the Vincible
Post #22,164 by Ric Locke 12/20/01 10:39:02 PM Reply	Linguistic Americans "The English language is the result of Roman soldiers trying to chat up Saxon barmaids, and about as legitimate as the other issue." -- H. Beam Piper (from Space Viking, 1962 or thereabouts) Once upon a time I was in Germany, conversing with some techs. They were trying to find a way to express, in German, the word "vignetting" as a technical term in photography -- the effect that causes the center of the frame to be more exposed than the edges, without measures taken to avoid this. They worked at it for some time without a clear result, coming up with some rather Twainish jawcrackers in the process. Finally I told them that they were working hard to no purpose; they should adopt the practice of English speakers. Linguistic Imperialism! That is, if another language contains a short or somehow attractive term for something difficult to express in English -- English speakers will simply steal the said term, file the serial numbers off, and put it in the dictionary. Gestalt is an English word, and isn't pronounced anything like the original German! [There are multitudes of other examples, some from the French rehearsed above.] Vignette is a French word meaning something entirely different; how it got to be a photographic technical term is a long story -- The Germans in question, being good Stalinist East Germans (this was 1983, back when there was such a place) were properly aghast at the notion. But that's the way it works, and has since antiquity. The practice of treating French borrow-words as high class, and Saxon-derived ones as plebian, probably dates to the Norman Conquest, after which the Normans' doxies were elegantly nhuid, while the Anglo-Saxon peasants bathed ne kod in the creek. So, nothing new under the sun, eh, Ashton? Regards, Ric (PS Arabic strongly influences two categories of words in English. One of them is mathematics [al japhr, "the zero"]; what's the other, trivia freaks?)
Post #22,172 by a6l6e6x 12/20/01 11:21:21 PM Reply	Cipher (cypher). Alex Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Post #22,173 by Ric Locke 12/20/01 11:25:21 PM Reply	Bzzt! --wrong. That's the same word. Regards, Ric
Post #22,175 by Ashton 12/20/01 11:37:43 PM Reply	My guess alphabet. (the word not the thing) Yup, as Tom Lehrer says in his advice to mathematicians everywhere - ..so let not a thing evade your eyes; dont shade your eyes but plagiarize.. plagiarize.. plagiarize! But please to call it.. .. research. All true. We steal, often the Best. And that's Smart. Imagine a replacement for nuance or aperitif, though one writer has determined that cellar door is perhaps the goodest-sounding Murican phrase (we'd have to steal to say euphonious ;-) - and we did: Euphonium! - a damn nice sounding brass. Got nothing against Engrish, Murican style (well.. except for.. almost.. Every Single &($%$ Ad-jingle* - and most biz-TLAs and ____ ). Shakespeare properly read: proof enough. Now with vignette ya gotta watch that first letter! or you might be understood to be askin fer some tete.. if'n ya know what I mean and I think ya do - so there's some danger in puttin on airs. Nyet? 'Course when the subject turns to the Econ scam and the 5% E-lite.. and all the patent BS a justifyin the perpetual fat cats a makin 1000x of sane people: only Rus can capture the situation, tui grosnya kapitalistichiskaya svinya! Cheers, Ashton body-language says it best .. (lucky for us all) Which body language would You express to Billy or Bally? (I think I like the European version which involves a forearm)
Post #22,369 by CRConrad 12/24/01 8:30:57 AM Reply	Computronics? (Al-Khwarizmi, "Algorithm")
Post #22,370 by CRConrad 12/24/01 8:32:31 AM Reply	Or hot-climate food, clothes, and soldiering?
Post #22,454 by Ric Locke 12/26/01 8:39:22 PM Reply	Comfortable furniture; "sofa", etc.
Post #22,474 by CRConrad 12/27/01 9:29:55 AM Reply	Duh! Ah, isn't that what the whole Ottoman Empire was about?

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