----- Original Message ----- From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Sent: Friday, April 16, 1999 3:31 AM Subject: Re: OT: City Names 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. 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. 2) You don't need a passport to drive across the road. Or travel 2000km for that matter. 3) 240VAC 3 pin sockets are a national standard. Disadvantages are mostly that we can't get feel of other European cultures without flying a few thousand miles. I can't drive to another country. I sometimes envy you guys for that, heck I don't even have a passport, there's nowhere for me to use without an air ticket. I'd love to travel, Europe, the USA etc, but on my income, it's unlikely I will ever get overseas, and I don't have the kind of job or work for a company that would need me to do so. I could probably manage a trip to Indonesia one day, (about the same distance as Sydney to Perth) but the tropics don't really attract me, it gets hot enough around here.;^) 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) Cheers Geoff Roberts VK5KDR Computer Systems Manager Saint Marks College Port Pirie, South Australia geoffrob(a)stmarks.pp.catholic.edu.au

I csn't help but to get in on this one... Why do we call it Germany when it's really Deutchland? I know that Cymru is called Wales because of the Saxon word 'wealas' meaning 'foreigner' or 'slave' which is odd because the Saxons were the foreigners. Yeah, the phonetic english letters confuse me also. Three reasons... Mutations due to surrounding letters (very much the case in Welsh), Poor and/or lazy pronunciation (i.e. 'spelt' instead of 'spelled') and the introduction of foreign words (i.e. 'fajitas' & 'resume'). hell out of me. Gender! YUCK! What a bad development (IMHO). Not in the US. (Which I am not criticizing) 240V was chosen to be the standard to reduce line losses??? Why 50cyc? ---------------------------------------- Tired of Micro$oft??? Move up to a REAL OS... ######__ __ ____ __ __ _ __ # #####/ / / / / __ | / / / / | |/ /## ####/ / / / / / / / / / / / | /### ###/ /__ / / / / / / / /_/ / / |#### ##/____/ /_/ /_/ /_/ /_____/ /_/|_|#### # ###### ("LINUX" for those of you without fixed-width fonts) ---------------------------------------- Be a Slacker! http://www.slackware.com Slackware Mailing List: http://www.digitalslackers.net/linux/list.html

At 07:29 PM 4/16/1999 +1, you wrote: Short answer: Smaller transformers and less copper used. ---------------------------------------- Tired of Micro$oft??? Move up to a REAL OS... ######__ __ ____ __ __ _ __ # #####/ / / / / __ | / / / / | |/ /## ####/ / / / / / / / / / / / | /### ###/ /__ / / / / / / / /_/ / / |#### ##/____/ /_/ /_/ /_/ /_____/ /_/|_|#### # ###### ("LINUX" for those of you without fixed-width fonts) ---------------------------------------- Be a Slacker! http://www.slackware.com Slackware Mailing List: http://www.digitalslackers.net/linux/list.html

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Now, Munich has a lot of different names, like most old cities. Over the centuries the people developed their own name as they needed to name the city lets say for trading purposes. Also the name changed thru the centuries. Some of these chages depend on available information technology(!). Somewhen in the 11th century the name was Muninsch(n) (hard to write down a sound without having the propper letters :() But as used back in those days, paper was expensive, writing was expensive so the writers tend to leave out letters. Also every writer had his own code (rules) for writing a sound (word) - for example, the usage of c, s, ch, sh and sch was common for sch (English sh). Further the language of the inteligencia was Latin, so it had to be translated. Depending on these old source, Munich was written Munichen, Munich, Muni, MNCH. As you might see, the English term is derivated from one of these version, althrough, even in English the sound, associated with these letters has changed. For other Languages, they have also adopted this pelling, but with a complete different sounf, like in French (Munich), or they did evolve into their own spelling. Some Examples: Munich (English) Munich (French) Monaco (Italian) Mnichov (Czech) And not to forget, our own language: Minga (Bavarian :) Pronounced Do-itsh-laand (?) Simple, Very Simple: The language is 'Deutsch' and the name implies just: 'Country of the Deutsch speaking' - Mayge cruel for todays nationalism influenced idea, but the idea of nations and areas designed for nations is a bit alien to German history - Maybe because evolved from an empire spanning most parts of the (usefull to considere) world - I don't now. Also some 1000+ years in the past, Empires and people where different entities. The now used term Germany (and Germany) is quite new - until some 2-300 years ago, the usage of Deutsch/Dutch included all the German Lands, from the North sea until the Mediteran sea was, but due political changes the term was restrict the Netherlands, and do come up with a different name German/Germans/Germany was established. In fact, this process did continue until the turn of _this_ century, until the name was standard. No, not accented - letters like U"/A"/O" are real basic letters, jot just a morification (like long or shortpronounciation). The German language contains some 28(30) letters and 35 sounds 24 Sounds displayed on the 26 Latin Letters (no Y and V = F) the 3 Umlaute, the 'sharp' s, ch, sch, eu, au, tz/tsch, st and ck (maybe also th, but this sound is almost vanished from todays standard German). With the exeptions of these 7 additional combinations, all german letters just represent ONE single sound - there is (basicly) NO modifications. German IS spoken as it is spelled. Unlike English, where the pronounciation of one letter might differ within a context AND one sound might be encoded in many different ways (in this sense German is a lot more computer friendly than english) That are some explanations why spelling is changing, but the basic problem, and his basic question is why more than 26 Letters, and the answer is simple, because the there are more sounds than letters. The idea behind German is that every sound should have his specific and unique encoding, unlike languages like English or French, where encoding is random and historical based. Nice Fact, if you look at some non-german languges that have been encoded using Latin letters, you might see the German influence - especialy in Languages like Polish, Czech, Hungarian or even the Latin based Serbocroatian script (most codesystem has been formed while under German rule, or from persons with a German background (like the actual Czech script). All these scripts follow the German one-sound/one-letter rule and add a specific number of letters (expressed as basic Latin letters with additional marks) to represent their language sounds. You could even see the progress and 'age' of the usage of this system. Generaly, the 'younger' systems use the idea more strict than the older. For example, in Polish, the 'tsh' sound is expresses as 'cz', while the Czech did use the same system, but reformed their rules to use a c with a Caron (an inverted Circuimflex (ASCII 5E)) Serbocroatian with Latin letters as developed in/for Croatia (opposed to the cyrillic coding as used in Serbia) not only adds marks to some letters, they also did define some digraphs - combinations, that are treated as single letters, althrough written as two seperated - to match specific cyrillic letters. These digraphs include even again marked letters :). Also, when sorting these digraphs are treated as special letters in acording positions (the Czech also include one digrahp, the ch - a sound like a special h, ans cansequently sorted after h rather than between c and d). Sorting is also an interesting field for historic traces - for example, Basicly the German rule is sorting as equivalents or 'pictures' (if not possible as equivalent), oposed to sorting as additions. Example: In german A" is translated to ae before sorting, if you want to get the 'real' order. If this is not possible, A" is sorted between A and B - this 'picture' sorting is also the way used in French or Spanish. Other Languages, within the German language family (which includes English - oh BTW, English has a lot of additional letters :) sort their additional caracters after the Z (for example Swedish or Norwegian). Now, the interesting historic fact is if you look around: some Languages treat their letters seperate, some with special rules, and some like in Germany. English got also gender specificas, but most of them are faded in modern, US influenced English. Also, If you have problems with that idea, never ever try to learn polish - you have not only to obey gender when refering to persons or to insert the right article, you also have to change almost every second word - every verb is different, depending on the gender of the speaking person, or the addressed person, or even depending on the gender of a thing ... BTW trivia fact: Gender is Language dependant, even if looking at two languages of the same language family, using the same rules: In Standard German 'butter' (you know the yummy stuff below the Wurst on your Butterbrot) is female, but in Bavarian, butter is male :) Got it's advantages :) (private opinion) Gruss H. -- 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

We certainly do have gender, but usually the forms are identical. Inflection in English is very restricted, compared say to German or the classical languages. Since our adjectives have the same form for each gender, it's not noticeable, and hasn't been that way for say 800 years or so.

Well, the pronouns are the easiest example to hand: he she and it. There you have gender. English uses logical rather than grammatical gender usually, but ships addressed as she show this is not always true. If you want to follow tradition, a VAX would be neuter, because plurals in -n are old Anglo-Saxon neuter forms. Beyond pronouns, though, you don't use gender very much because the forms are the same. good (f), good (m), good (n) and good (c) all look the same in English. Look at the forms in French, and you'll see quite a difference, as in Latin. Middle English, I think, had some remnants of this, but they soon fell out of use. Something like King Horn might show some inflection still, or Northern dialect. Actually I think King Horn is Northumbrian. If you go back to The Ruin, or Beowulf, you should see quite a bit of inflection. M. K. Peirce Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc. 215 Shady Lea Road, North Kingstown, RI 02852 "Casta est qui nemo rogavit." - Ovid

Yes, I've always thought the eccentricities of language quite fascinating. The contrast between some British spellings and pronunciation as an example. And really on target, as speech is really the OS for an organic computing engine, over 10 years old. I tend to see Vaxen more than Vaxes, but variant forms simply add a note of interest. As far as -n goes, IT is ancient, and it doesn't matter how new the root is. I've always thought that unusual plural added a touch of class to the DEC line, even if it might be a bit precious. On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Huw Davies wrote: M. K. Peirce Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc. 215 Shady Lea Road, North Kingstown, RI 02852 "Casta est qui nemo rogavit." - Ovid

----- Original Message ----- From: Merle K. Peirce <at258(a)osfn.org> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 1999 10:51 PM Subject: Re: OT: City Names ROFLMAO remember I Hmm, probably poor grammar. Perhaps "Briefly exposed to French...." would be more correct.... Cheers Geoff

Because that's what the Germans call it? Extras? It's the same characters. Accented. If you think about it, it actually helps pronounciation. Can you explain why English words are pronounced the way they are? Like not how they are spelt? m/f/n is no that difficult. Just different from language to language. When you grow up with it, that's it! Now they do... Fair enough. You get that in much smaller single country islands - like UK. You don't need a passport in the EU either. Just valid ID. I think only the English (and Swiss?) are the ones that want to be different to the rest of Europe - in this case anyway (there are many others). :)= Nasos

On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Geoff Roberts wrote: English? I thought you chaps spoke "Strine". At least that's what a former neighbor who came from there acknowledged. He allowed as how folks in the east and west have difficulty in communicating :) - don donm(a)cts.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology. Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) Z-Node 9 - 619-454-8412 *--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--* see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj/ visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Web site at http://www.devili.iki.fi/cpm/ with Mirror at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm/

On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Geoff Roberts wrote: ________O/_______ O\ Glad to be straightened out, Jeff. But even some of you educated chaps can be difficult for Yank ears to understand :) - don

----- Original Message ----- From: Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 1999 5:43 PM Subject: Education vs. School (was Re: OT: City Names) LOL. Perhaps I should qualify that and say that my FORMAL education was not extensive. I did/do read constantly, and I have had specialist training in some complex stuff. Frankly, I hated school. From about grade 3 on. I believe so. I also believe he is correct, especially in view of some of the products of the alleged education system I have seen in recent years. We're talking Year 12's that can't spell to save their life, or do simple arithmetic without a calculator. It's a worry. Cheers Geoff

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On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Tony Duell wrote: I would never go to work for a company that would judge me based on the schooling I've had, nor will I ever. 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]

On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Hans Franke wrote: Start your own company and prove everyone else wrong. 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]

On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Marvin wrote: Well, call me lucky but I never had a piece of paper to rely on, and I still managed to do all right. What I'm saying is that people shouldn't think they need a degree just to make a good living for themselves, or even to reach the highest levels of success. I feel strongly about this because I don't want the younger people reading these threads thinking their future hinges on their earning a degree in college, when they very well could be spending their time pursuing their own goals, not those that society has determined for them. The world is a changing place, now more so than ever. The old paradigm of "go to school, get a job, live happily ever after" does not apply any longer, and has been slowly on the way out since the late 80s, coincidentally as the world started to become more connected. Ever hear of that thing called the "Information Age"? It's not a cliche. Getting in the door is a matter of how well you sell yourself, regardless of how many "pieces of paper" you bring with you. And nobody ever said one couldn't build ones own doors. Confidence in one's own self is the only tool one needs to be successful. Really. 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]

On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Tony Duell wrote: Ok, the way I see it you have two options: a) start your own business b) go back to school and enroll in a <insert your desired technical degree here> program, and if the university system there is anything like here in the States, challenge every course you possibly can to accelerate your degree, and take as many credits as you can in each semester. You'll probably have a piece of paper that certifies you as "qualified" in about a year. A or B. Choose one now and stop feeling sorry for yourself. 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]

At 05:50 17/04/99 +0930, Geoff Roberts wrote: Well I was at an American run management course last year in Newcastle. One of the (male) attendees made the comment that he was cold and that he was going to get a jumper. This caused a hysterical reaction by one of the female presenters - apparently from her part of the USA a jumper is a dress! Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)latrobe.edu.au Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479 1999 La Trobe University | "If God had wanted soccer played in the Melbourne Australia 3083 | air, the sky would be painted green"

----- Original Message ----- From: Ward D. Griffiths III &lt;gram(a)cnct.com&gt; To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers &lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu&gt; Sent: Sunday, April 18, 1999 5:40 PM Subject: Re: OT: City Names One was dress! So a "jumper" (Aus-speak) is a, um, uh, "pullover" in (US-speak)? Old joke:- Q: What do you call a cross between a sheep and a kangaroo? A: A woolly jumper. Cheers Geoff Roberts