Today Programme

Quoted message said:

You mean like -
DONAUDAMPFSCHIFFAHRTSELEKTRIZITAETENHAUPTBETRIEBSWERKBAUUNTERBEAMTENGES
ELLS CHAFT (just google for the meaning)

Apparently there is no real limit for how long a word can be in German
(other than a practical limit) as you can get pretty damned complex
with compound words.

"the club for subordinate officials of the head office management of the
Danube steamboat electrical services" (name of a pre-war club in Vienna)

Catchy.

in message <[email hidden]>,

James Annan (') said:

Jon Senior said:

I learnt French and German in school. Some
Spanish once on holiday. Discovered that Italian came relatively easy
when on holiday last summer. Have learnt (And almost completely
forgotten) basic Russian (Although I can still read the cyrillic
alphabet). And just discovered that I can understand a surprising
amount of the Dutch that I encountered on ligfiets.net.

Yeah, it's great to be able to exchange a few polite phrases on
holiday but tell me how much of that is useful *in your jobx*?

I've done a fair bit of lecturing abroad in my time; I've lectured on
every continent except Africa (I was booked to be technical judge of an
international web design competition in Cairo four years ago but sadly
the US participants got nervous about terrorism and so it got moved to
Geneva). I always like to be able to give the first sentence or two in
the language of the country I'm in. I find I can get by in French,
German, Italian and the scandinavian laguages for simple things like
asking directions and dealing politely with shop assistants and hotel
staff, although I've only ever formally learned French and German. I
can speak a very little polite Japanese and Malay for the same reason.
In my experience people treat you very, very much better if you try; it
shows humility and openness.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; 99% of browsers can't run ActiveX controls. Unfortunately
;; 99% of users are using the 1% of browsers that can...
[seen on /. 08:04:02]

Quoted message said:

"I was trying to introduce myself as America's woman champion, but I
said the french word 'Champignon,' so I introduced myself as a
mushroom." Nancy Niemann - USA road cycling champion 1953,54,56,57

IMHO it still can't beat the President of the United States of America
declaring to the world in print, on radio and on television, and in front
of a crowd of thousands, that he is a doughnut.

It is a pity that such honesty and humility is lacking in their current
president.

dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers said:

Nathan's done German GCSE, he's
good at it (better than his French), so he's carrying it on. That way he can at
least have choice of working in UK, Germany and Austria

.... and most of Switzerland, all of Liechtenstein, a large part of northern
Italy and a (very) small part of Belgium. It's also useful for reading
Dutch and (with greater difficulty) Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.

--
Michael MacClancy
Random putdown - "They never open their mouths without subtracting from
the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed
www.macclancy.demon.co.uk
www.macclancy.co.uk

"Tony W" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

"iarocu" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Apparently a coroner criticised police in a case were a pedestrian was

killed

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

by a cyclist in a "cycle rage" incident.

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=546110&host=3&dir=60

Not a collision with a bike. Scriptwiter Ted Rhodes was assaulted on
14th December 2003 after shouting at a cyclist going up a one way
street the wrong way and died two days later.

Hardly counts as death due to cycling. Wouldn't it have been better to rail
against the police for not enforcing the laws against GBH and violence
against the person.

It doesn't justify the coroner getting on his high horse about cycling
when this death had nothing to do with cycling. This thug could
equally as well reacted to being chastised over dropping litter,
playing loud music etc.
Iain

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, JohnB ([email hidden]'😉

Quoted message said:

My eldest daughter has just been doing her GCSEs too and has also been
visiting a number of companies to get an idea about careers. The
requirement of languages is high on their agendas. She is presently
looking to be an actuary (whatever that might be) but she needs to be
highly paid as she is crying out for a trice :-)

If she's going to be an actuary she'll be able to keep you in new tricen
to the end of your days,

That's why the investment is worth it now ;-)

Quoted message said:

but she'll need good maths as well as/rather
than languages.

She does.
Her ability with maths and statistics (she took that as an extra
subject) frightens me sometimes, although she is a godsend when it comes
to working out gear ratios and bike computer settings ;-)
Her maths teacher said she was the most advanced student he had ever taught.
It's just a shame she's not so hot with washing up, or the space under
her bed.

If she does continue with any languages they will be done as extra
non-core subjects.

John B

For a varied alternative to A levels, can I suggest the International
Baccalaureate?

Doing the IB resulted in me now speaking better Chinese than German or
French. Had I done A levels, the chances are that I'd have dropped all
languages without a second thought.

On 31 Jul 2004 22:27:03 GMT someone who may be Mark Thompson
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Germany would be a great place to live+work in -
Europe's biggest economy, nice climate, high wages, good employment laws[1]
and they share many cultural traits with us, such as drinking beer and
going to war with the French.

In the days before there was a Germany the Prussians were our
greatest allies in fighting the French. Much of the army Wellington
commanded at Waterloo was Prussian and it was the (somewhat belated)
arrival of more Prussian forces wot won it.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me using the RIP Act 2000.

On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 13:12:46 GMT someone who may be Graeme
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Apparently there is no real limit for how long a word can be in German
(other than a practical limit) as you can get pretty damned complex with
compound words.

My German teacher suggested that "the entrance to an underground
hovercraft station" was the longest one he and his fellow students
had come up with.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me using the RIP Act 2000.

On 1 Aug 2004 08:46:28 -0700 someone who may be [email hidden]
(iarocu) wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

It doesn't justify the coroner getting on his high horse about cycling
when this death had nothing to do with cycling. This thug could
equally as well reacted to being chastised over dropping litter,
playing loud music etc.

Coroners are odd bods. Some of the ones in London have been shown to
be extremely odd.

Had the assailant been a motorist I doubt if the bod would have
complained about motoring.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me using the RIP Act 2000.

On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 15:59:13 GMT someone who may be JohnB
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Her maths teacher said she was the most advanced student he had ever taught.
It's just a shame she's not so hot with washing up, or the space under
her bed.

Are any youngsters hot on such things?

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me using the RIP Act 2000.

Mark Thompson said:

IMHO it still can't beat the President of the United States of America
declaring to the world in print, on radio and on television, and in front
of a crowd of thousands, that he is a doughnut.

It appears it's a bit of myth, this one, unfortunately....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner

David

Mark Thompson [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

of my German ("Bullet-proof-rubber-tank-sausage-with-a-pulley-in-the-
middle" being the highlight of my German classes)

Eh? Is this how they get their long words then? Poor buggers. What's it
mean?

From memory:

Kugelsicherradierschutzengrabenvernichtsenautomobile-mit-ein-
flaschenzug-in-der-mitte.

I had a particularly inept German teacher in my first year of study (He
was German and had been learning English for marginally longer than I
had been learning French. Although I don't remember it now, he once
taught us to sing happy birthday in Polish.). We once spent an entire
lesson learning the different types of sausage. The above word
incorporates the original German word for Tank, which I suspect got
shortened when they started using them in battle!

Jon

JohnB said:

My 15yr old daughter gets up at 6am each morning, does the ironing and
makes us all a pot of tea :-))
The last few days she's been painting the bathroom and laying a new
floor :-)))

Is her name Saffy sweetie?

Tony

David Hansen said:

On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 15:59:13 GMT someone who may be JohnB
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Her maths teacher said she was the most advanced student he had ever taught.
It's just a shame she's not so hot with washing up, or the space under
her bed.

Are any youngsters hot on such things?

My 15yr old daughter gets up at 6am each morning, does the ironing and
makes us all a pot of tea :-))
The last few days she's been painting the bathroom and laying a new
floor :-)))

So yes, there are some around.

I seem to have one of each.

John B

In news:[email hidden],
Lardychap <[email hidden]> typed:

Quoted message said:

JohnB said:

Even if you do not intend to escape from the UK, a number of
languages are useful in many professions as dealings with other
countries increase, particularly with the far east.

.. where most business is done in English...

I've found that the vast majority of those who do languages to degree
level don't have any other skills required. REmember all these Spanish
engineers have degrees in Engineering and also speak fluent Spanish as
well as often English and French.....

Indeed, but I do get to proofread for my non-English speaking colleagues
quite often.

Quoted message said:

PS: On Topic: If you've got a dodgy spoke that keeps coming loose
every 50 miles, would you risk riding it or is that it and you'd get
the wheel fixed immediately?

Get it fixed pretty soon. I'd do it myself, but I've already bought a wheel
jig so that makes my decision easier. If it's coming loose, then it's
probably quite short of tension.

Quoted message said:

Excuse word wrap. It's on. Emacs doesn't appear to care that
much. Random blasted software.

You have lines longer than 79 characters. Really post?

M-q on the appropriate paragraphs should solve it. There's some things Emacs
does really badly. Locking up a modern machine for 20 seconds to reformat
300 lines of code is another really annoying thing it does. But it does some
things nicely, too.

A

"David Hansen" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On 1 Aug 2004 08:46:28 -0700 someone who may be [email hidden]
(iarocu) wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

It doesn't justify the coroner getting on his high horse about cycling
when this death had nothing to do with cycling. This thug could
equally as well reacted to being chastised over dropping litter,
playing loud music etc.

Coroners are odd bods. Some of the ones in London have been shown to
be extremely odd.

Had the assailant been a motorist I doubt if the bod would have
complained about motoring.

I agree with what others have posted on this. I read the bit in the Indie &
the coroners comments made me frothing mad. Absolute Bull.

It just re enforces an anti cycling message. And as for running red lights,
am I more dangerous on my bike at c120kg or in my car at c1200kg or heaven
forbid a 4x4 at c2000kg?

--
Andrew

"andrew" <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

It just re enforces an anti cycling message. And as for running red lights,
am I more dangerous on my bike at c120kg or in my car at c1200kg or heaven
forbid a 4x4 at c2000kg?

It's just that cyclists are a despised, easily-identifiable minority.

Maybe we ought to be pressing for some sort of 'celebration of
diversity' of road-users...

--
Helen D. Vecht: [email hidden]
Edgware.

JohnB <[email hidden]> writes:
[OT]

Quoted message said:

Even if you do not intend to escape from the UK, a number of languages
are useful in many professions as dealings with other countries
increase, particularly with the far east.

... where most business is done in English...

I've found that the vast majority of those who do languages to degree
level don't have any other skills required. REmember all these Spanish
engineers have degrees in Engineering and also speak fluent Spanish as
well as often English and French.....

G

PS: On Topic: If you've got a dodgy spoke that keeps coming loose every 50 miles, would you risk riding it or is that it and you'd get the wheel fixed
immediately?

Excuse word wrap. It's on. Emacs doesn't appear to care that
much. Random blasted software.

Lardychap said:

JohnB <[email hidden]> writes:
[OT]

Quoted message said:

Even if you do not intend to escape from the UK, a number of languages
are useful in many professions as dealings with other countries
increase, particularly with the far east.

.. where most business is done in English...

Is it?

Quoted message said:

I've found that the vast majority of those who do languages to degree
level don't have any other skills required. REmember all these Spanish
engineers have degrees in Engineering and also speak fluent Spanish as
well as often English and French.....

PS: On Topic: If you've got a dodgy spoke that keeps coming loose every 50 miles, would you risk riding it or is that it and you'd get the wheel fixed
immediately?

Not sure how OT this is related to the thread, as I can't see any
reference to spokes, but...
I'd tighten it and ride it home then replace the spoke.
So long as the rim is true, riding with a loose spoke, or even a spoke
removed, won't do any lasting harm.

John B