16 Apr
1999
16 Apr
'99
5:55 a.m.
> > > Just back from Warschau (Poland) -
Thanks. And BTW: since Karfreitag
>
> > Where? Oh, you mean Warszawa. Warsaw. ;-)
>
> (You're just lucky that's one of the few polish words without lots of
> accents etc.) Hmm do you want to start another War ? ;)
>
> If you live in a city like Munich you learn about the ways
> of naming a city - and of coure how senseless it is to
> belive in calling a thin worldwide with one single name.
Hmm. I generally try and name a city in a language that is spoken in that city
- so I am usually careful to write Muenchen, Nuernberg, Braunschweig for Munich,
Nuremberg and Brunswick. But I admit that I would probably simply have written
Warsaw for Warszawa.
The main difficulty is when the language doesn't use Latin characters. I
wouldn't even know how to write "Bangkok" in Thai, although I think I could
manage "Taipei" in Chinese. (But Taiwanese place names should be
transliterated
according to the Wade-Giles system still used in Taiwan, rather than in PinYin
as on the mainland)
Polish is one of the less bad languages for accents - Czech is far worse, to the
extent that in the UK we generally use Polish spellings...
Well, maybe you could explain it to me, I'm afraid
I don't get it. :^)
I always wondered why Munich sometimes gets shown as Munchen. I can't do
those funny accented characters, (umlauts?) even if I knew what they meant,
just as well, most people around here have enough difficulty with 26
letters. I don't know how you guys cope with all the extras, not to mention
all this masculine/feminine/neuter gender and case stuff. Confused the hell
out of me.
Umlauts are reasonable enough. Gramatical gender is an anachronism that should
be abolished as soon as possible. But English spellings (whenther British or
American) have been in sore need of reform since before they were
standardised...
Good things about living in a single island country
that's larger than most
of Europe.
1) Everybody speaks English. ('Cepting a few migrants/boat people....:^)
They expose kids to other languages at school, but theres is no real
need/pressure to learn one to a level where conversation is possible.
(Who we gonna practice on/talk to?)
Some do learn Indonesian or Japanese, but most don't bother.
What? Have we found in the Aussies a nation who are even worse at foreign
languages than the British? I never thought I'd live to see the day! ;-)
2) You don't need a passport to drive across the
road. Or travel 2000km for
that matter.
Well, we're like that in the UK, except that the island is smaller.
3) 240VAC 3 pin sockets are a national standard.
That doesn't seem to have helped us...
CNN is about the nearest I get. Upside is that I can
now read most of the
Cyrillic alphabet after 4 weeks of watching snippets of Serbian TV news
subtitles!
(Well I can read Belgrad(e) Pristina and Novi Sad anyway)
Watch out! The Serbian alphabet is as different from the Russian alphabet (the
de facto standard for Cyrillic) as the Polish alphabet is from the English
alphabet...
(I have somewhere a Yugoslavian banknote. Everything is written on it in four
local languages - two using Cyrillic and two using Latin characters. The
languages are similar enough that AFAIK nothing needs to be said more than three
times...)
Philip.
16 Apr
16 Apr
9:59 a.m.
On Fri, 16 Apr 1999 Philip.Belben(a)pgen.com wrote:
Watch out! The Serbian alphabet is as different from
the Russian alphabet (the
de facto standard for Cyrillic) as the Polish alphabet is from the English
alphabet...
It's not terribly different. I can read the captions as they are and get
the meaning. I can even read www.politika.co.yu, and understand every few
words. I don't have a Yugoslav dictionary and thus can't get the rest of
them.
--Max Eskin (max82(a)surfree.com)
http://scivault.hypermart.net: Ignorance is Impotence - Knowledge is Power
11:32 a.m.
Date sent: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 15:55:18 +0100
Send reply to: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
From: Philip.Belben(a)pgen.com
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: OT: City Names
>> > > Just back from Warschau (Poland) - Thanks. And BTW: since Karfreitag
>> > Where? Oh, you mean Warszawa. Warsaw. ;-)
>> (You're just lucky that's one of the few polish words without lots of
>> accents etc.) Hmm do you want to start another War ? ;)
>> If you live in a city like Munich you learn
about the ways
>> of naming a city - and of coure how senseless it is to
>> belive in calling a thin worldwide with one single name.
Hmm. I generally try and name a city in a language
that is spoken in that city
- so I am usually careful to write Muenchen, Nuernberg, Braunschweig for Munich,
Nuremberg and Brunswick. But I admit that I would probably simply have written
(in the case of Munich and Nuremberg they are
in fact just literal usage of old spellings :)
Warsaw for Warszawa.
:)) Thats a PC way without a real goal. For example, you
write Muenchen, but it is Mu"nchen .. so you still can't
reach - also , if you speak to let's say you neightbor -
will you use Munich or Muenchen ? I guess Munich - so
where's the idea (please don't get me wrong, I ceer for
your effort, and like it a lot, but in my personal opinion
it useless - maybe I'm just a bit sensible in this question
we have to much PC type thinking - again, not personal, I
know that your intension is honest and that this is not one
of this PC stuff things).
For example, I've been in Warzsawa (Did I foret to tell you ? :)
to do an analysis of a SIEMENS susidary for implementing a service
management system. They have a network of partner companies throughout
Poland (Polen, Polska) operating in different cities. While the talks
(mainly in German) I used the German names (most time), and the polish
guys used sometimes their Polish names, sometimes the German names.
We had no communication problem at all.
Polish is one of the less bad languages for accents -
Czech is far worse, to the
extent that in the UK we generally use Polish spellings...
Please ? I can't see a big difference (I'm about to implement
both systems in our Mainframe software *) - the Polish have 9
additional characters, while the Czech have 14.
I guess, if you use your 'polish' notation, you use the German
way of writing slavic languages :) - otherwise you need more
letters. But you're right - the Czech did a complete script
reform to eliminate all dual character combinations but one.
> Well, maybe you could explain it to me, I'm
afraid I don't get it. :^)
> I always wondered why Munich sometimes gets shown as Munchen. I can't do
> those funny accented characters, (umlauts?) even if I knew what they meant,
> just as well, most people around here have enough difficulty with 26
> letters. I don't know how you guys cope with all the extras, not to mention
> all this masculine/feminine/neuter gender and case stuff. Confused the hell
> out of me.
Umlauts are reasonable enough. Gramatical gender is
an anachronism that should
be abolished as soon as possible.
Why ?
What? Have we found in the Aussies a nation who are
even worse at foreign
languages than the British? I never thought I'd live to see the day! ;-)
Maybe, since if he counts in large, non primary english speaking
parts of australia just as english ? (The experiance of driving
some hunderts of kilometers thru the outback and then getting
'Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss' as the first song on the first
radiostation is like beeing hit by a 1000 ton hammer)
> CNN is about the nearest I get. Upside is that I
can now read most of the
> Cyrillic alphabet after 4 weeks of watching snippets of Serbian TV news
> subtitles!
> (Well I can read Belgrad(e) Pristina and Novi Sad anyway)
Watch out! The Serbian alphabet is as different from
the Russian alphabet (the
de facto standard for Cyrillic) as the Polish alphabet is from the English
alphabet...
AFAIK only 5 additional letters (DJE, JE, LJE, TSCHE and DSCHE)
but you're right.
(I have somewhere a Yugoslavian banknote. Everything
is written on it in four
local languages - two using Cyrillic and two using Latin characters. The
languages are similar enough that AFAIK nothing needs to be said more than three
times...)
3 Language 4 scripts:
Slovenian (Latin)
Serbocroatian (Latin)
Serbocroatian (Kyrillic)
Macedonian (Cyrillic)
Servus
Hans
(*) This is a kind of a once a lifetime job ... or when do you get
a chance to develop a new characterset system :)) The task is to
enhance an 20 year old (still new releases and development) EBCDIC
mainframesystem to support not only some umlauts, but rather all
main European languages _and_ some foreign scripts like Cyrillic,
Greek or Arabic - I havn't had so much fun since a long time.
--
Stimm gegen SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/de/
Vote against SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/en/
Votez contre le SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/fr/
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
10 a.m.
Yawn, Yawn, Yawn.
If people want to send _way_ off topic stuff to this list, my requests are
articles about ice fishing, reprints of old Home & Garden magazines, or
hardcore pornography.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
6:37 p.m.
On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, William Donzelli wrote:
Yawn, Yawn, Yawn.
If people want to send _way_ off topic stuff to this list, my requests are
articles about ice fishing, reprints of old Home & Garden magazines, or
hardcore pornography.
Might as well make it worth it. My vote is for the hardcore porn.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out.
Coming this October 2-3: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0!
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 04/03/99]
11:11 p.m.
On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, William Donzelli wrote:
Hmmmm, hardcore, hardware, maybe it would be OK as long as its pre 1989 porn.
Yawn, Yawn, Yawn.
If people want to send _way_ off topic stuff to this list, my requests are
articles about ice fishing, reprints of old Home & Garden magazines, or
hardcore pornography.
Might as well make it worth it. My vote is for the hardcore porn. 
10:47 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 17, 1999 5:03 AM
Subject: Re: OT: City Names
> What? Have we found in the Aussies a nation who
are even worse at
foreign
> languages than the British? I never thought
I'd live to see the day!
;-)
Probably. We do have an excuse though. :^) The Brits are close enough to
France and Spain to throw rocks at 'em.
Maybe, since if he counts in large, non primary
english speaking
parts of australia just as english ?
Large, non-primary English speaking parts of Australia????
Where? The Tanami Desert?? Pidjantjara is possibly more prevalent, but
with a density of 1 person per 20 Square miles, it doesn't make a lot of
difference.
In major cities the only things that spring to mind are places like
Cabramatta which is predominantly Vietnamese.
(The experiance of driving
some hunderts of kilometers thru the outback and then getting
'Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss' as the first song on the first
radiostation is like beeing hit by a 1000 ton hammer)
I believe that. Where did you come out? The Barossa Valley?
> Watch out! The Serbian alphabet is as different
from the Russian
alphabet (the
> de facto standard for Cyrillic) as the Polish
alphabet is from the
English
> alphabet...
Good Grief.
AFAIK only 5 additional letters (DJE, JE, LJE, TSCHE
and DSCHE)
but you're right.
> (I have somewhere a Yugoslavian banknote. Everything is written on it
in
four
> local languages - two using Cyrillic and two
using Latin characters.
The
> languages are similar enough that AFAIK nothing
needs to be said more
than three
> times...)
Only 3. Right. And I thought the Canadians had problems. :^)
3 Language 4 scripts:
Slovenian (Latin)
Serbocroatian (Latin)
Serbocroatian (Kyrillic)
Macedonian (Cyrillic)
Ouch.
(*) This is a kind of a once a lifetime job ... or
when do you get
a chance to develop a new characterset system :)) The task is to
enhance an 20 year old (still new releases and development) EBCDIC
mainframesystem to support not only some umlauts, but rather all
main European languages _and_ some foreign scripts like Cyrillic,
Greek or Arabic - I havn't had so much fun since a long time
How long does it seem likely this will take? 60 years? Or only til you
retire? ;^)
EBCDIC is in good company it seems. Best of luck..
Cheers
Geoff Roberts
9210
days inactive
9211
days old
6 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
dastar＠ncal.verio.com -
geoffrob＠stmarks.pp.catholic.edu.au -
Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de -
max82＠surfree.com -
mikeford＠netwiz.net -
Philip.Belben＠pgen.com -
william＠ans.net