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Please answer my 6yr old child's question
Message
De
15/06/2005 08:21:09
 
 
À
15/06/2005 07:41:28
Information générale
Forum:
Visual FoxPro
Catégorie:
Autre
Divers
Thread ID:
01022435
Message ID:
01023432
Vues:
17
>>>>Thankfully, we don't have these problems in norwegian at all. Unlike most of the languages I know, we don't change the verbs depending on I/you/he-she-it/you/we/they,
>>>
>>>In English it's only done for 3rd person singular
>>
>>Except to be (I am/you are/he-she-it is)
>
>To be anfd to have tend to be irregular in opther Euro languages too.
>
>>>I'm not sure HOW they teach English in schools nowadays but I went to a grammar school where they were sticklers. However, it was only when I was learning French that I realised how slack English is, and how precise you need to be in other languages.

Which is one of the reasons why french is, or at least used to be, the preferred language for diplomats, french gives less room for misunderstandings or misinterpretations.

>>German is even "worse", I promise you!
>
>Yes, like Latin but with fewer cases: Nominative, accusative, genitive and ablative (Latin also has vocative and dative), putting the verb in a particular position, after the subject, etc. I did learn some German.
>
>>
>>>e.g. you can turn "That's the coat of the man who came here yesterday", in normal speech to "That's the man who came here yesterday's coat" as if "the-man-who-came-here-yesterday" were one word!
>>
>>In norwegian we also don't have anything like "the", and we don't use anything similar to "do" in questions or together with "not". So "I do not know" is "Jeg vet ikke" ("I know not"). "Do you understand" is "Forstår du" ("understand you"). "A house" is "et hus" and "the house" is "huset". Much easier than enhlish! (duck)
>
>You can use these forms in English too, but they sound a little dated ("Jane Eyre" et al), e.g.
>
>"Have you any wool", "I know not when he'll return", "Understand?", but "Like you that?" although correct would never be used.

In history at school we learnt about a king, or was he a general or something, who got the message from a messenger that his rival or enemy was captured. His message back was "Skyt ham ikke vent til jeg kommer" ("Shoot him not wait until I return"). Since he had forgotten a komma, it was impossible do understand what he ment. Either "Don't shoot him, wait until I return", or "Shoot him, don't wait until I return". In most other languages, the message would be clear even without the komma.

>>I guess you have heard that in italian a single verb can mean the verb and who "does" it, all in one word? Like in "Ti amo", (I love you), "amo" means "I love".
>
>Si. Si. Ti amo anche, il mio cuore :-)
>
>>My favourite word in french, is ninety-nine: quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (or something like that, without the dashes), they really say 4-20-10-9 !!!
>
>A score is 20. In archaic English we can say "three score years and ten" (age Man reaches in the bible), so it's likey that "three score years and nineteen" would have been said, and many people still today say like, "five and twenty" for 25

Yes, it's a little bit like danish counting, but they have a twist to it. Sixty is "tress" meaning three sness, a sness is 20. Eighty is "firs", meaning four sness. But fifty, seventy and ninety are "halv-tress", "halv-firs" and "halv-fems" respectively. "Halv-tress" (fifty) means three sness, only that the last sness is half. For all people, except for the danes themselves, danish counting is very confusing, and you have to be completely sober to understand it. Hmm, that may explain why the waiters in Denmark always smile to me. In stead of admitting that I don't have a clue about how much I shall pay, I maybe give them too much tips. Or they give me too little change back. I'll try to be more alter the next time I go there!

>>By the way, I spent a week with Ken Levy last year, and I asked him if he spoke any foreign language. His answer was "Yes, I speak FoxPro"!
>
>I would have thought that his FIRST language was Foxpro! :-) Yes, probably...!
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