From: adam@address.invalid
Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:
> Adam writes:
> Over here it was like that (abridged):
> 4 years primary school
> 9 years secondary school terminating with Abitur
Secondary education here isn't divided into vocational and
pre-college programs as rigidly as I understand yours is.
> We never had Bachelor's/Master's degrees until a few years ago.
> Now universities award both of them. The politicians (some professors
> included) love it, the students hate it, industry and commerce
> whine in pain.
I'm confused -- were only doctorates awarded before that? And why
are the "new" degrees hated?
>>> That's from (transl.) "Dr. Murkes collected Silence".
>>
>> paperback [...] which also includes "Murke's collected silences".
>
> Ah yes. English loves the plural (and the possessive pronouns).
> Or should that be plurals?[2]
If you are referring to one noun (e.g. "sport"), then you would use
the singular form "plural", e.g. "Americans, unlike Britons, more
often use the plural 'sports' than the singular form." If you are
referring to more than one noun, "plurals" would be correct, e.g. "A
few English nouns form their plurals by adding -en."
Another interpretation of the story's title could be that "silence"
(or any singular noun) indicates one thing. That _might_ be correct
if referring to a single container that Murke stored all his tapes
of silences in. "Silences" implies several things, such as all of
Murke's tapes. Generally collective nouns like "collection,"
"group," "bunch," etc. imply more than one object. A "collection"
containing one object is almost a contradiction in terms. Also, in
the English translation, there's no reason Murke would be called
"Doctor".
"Apostrophe-s" for possession isn't a pronoun. It's a remnant which
is (depending on the source one reads) a contraction for "his" or a
way to indicate that the base form is just "Murke", not "Murkes".
> The o-Umlaut is pronounced similar to the vowel in girl but it's the
> first name which is difficult. Start with "Hine-rik"
I can pronounce a German "ch" (as in Bach) with no problem, as I was
forced to study Hebrew as a child.
> It's much easier than the English th.
Which "th"? English has a "soft th" ("thick and thin") and a "hard
th" ("this and that"). The stereotypical "German accent" here has
"w" mispronounced as "v" ("Vat vas dat?" for "What was that?").
>>> "principle of the least action" into German?
>>
> The difficult word is the last one: "Wirkung" which in reverse
> direction becomes "effect" except if you can measure it in
> Joule * seconds.
That reminds me of the English "less" and "fewer", where "fewer" is
only used for things that can be counted (AFAIK).
> Now translate "Normalteiler" into English. Look it up in
> de.wikipedia.org - you don't have to understand German to find its
> meaning :-&)
Apparently "normal subgroup" -- the German and English Wikipedia
pages are similar. Abstract algebra, which I've avoided ever since
a particularly bad Linear Algebra course at the university I mentioned.
> For further enlightenment, take any English<->$OTHER_LANGUAGE
> dictionary of at least 1500 pages and look up the possible
> translations of know and let.
Sorry, all I have are cheap paperbacks. However, my 1500-page
English-language dictionary shows that "let" is actually two
different words with the same spelling and pronunciation. One is
defined as, among other things, "to free" while the other (archaic)
means "hinder". It's not the only English word with contradictory
meanings.
> Now it's even worse due to women's lib and political correctness.
> Generic terms are usually of male gender, so PC-speak appends
> In (sing.) / Innen (pl.). I usually call such GutmenschInnen
> HerrInnenmenschInnen because I don't appease mindlessly goosestepping
> people.
Oh dear, has that struck over there too? I actually have a book
called "Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing". What if one's doctoral
adviser ("Doctorvater") is a woman?
>> I've never heard the expression, but I can usually figure out
>> metaphors. :-)
>
> I spot a silent "in my mother language" in there.
Definitely. Even supposedly concrete terms like "billion" don't
have the same meaning worldwide. Rounded off, how many bytes are on
my 1 TB HD?
>>>> My surname is an ordinary German noun which made it into this
>>>> country unchanged, but my father changed his given name from
>>>> Polish to English when he immigrated here.
>
>> That was back when immigrants /wanted/ to become "American".
>> Besides, how many non-Poles can pronounce "Jerzy" correctly anyway? ;-)
>
> I don't speak any Polish, but shouldn't there be a non-ASCII character
> similar to a 'c' after the 'r'?
I did a quick Google search and didn't find anything like that, not
even on web pages in Polish. However, I did learn that it's the
Polish form of "George", which was /not/ the name my father chose
(or was given). It's possibly from the relative he was named after,
who in English had the same name my father now does.
> [2] The question may look rhetoric to you, but it's serious.
When in doubt, I assume a question is being asked seriously.
And an addendum on an earlier topic: When I was digitizing the LP
with the oversize booklet (larger than my scanner), you asked what I
was doing to rejoin the scanned pieces. Today I dropped by a local
print/copy shop and asked them about their scanning it in, and the
price for that would have been over US $30. Then I had an
inspiration, and I asked them about the cost of making a
reduced-size photocopy (down to standard US letter size, roughly A4)
which I could then scan in myself, and it was $0.15/page. Problem
solved, for under $2.
Adam
--
Registered Linux User #536473
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
