Just a glimpse...

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else, and is NON CH related - chat about the weather, or anything else that takes your fancy.

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sejintenej
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by sejintenej »

Ajarn Philip wrote:(Thai: กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยามหาดิลกภพ นพรัตน์ราชธานี บุรีรมย์อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์,although I'm making some progress in speaking Thai, I haven't yet quite got around to reading and writing...
I remember when doing A level being supposed to learn German script - almost as bad as I suspect that cyrillic script is; I gave up on lesson 1 though I was supposed to learn German with English letters some 15 years ago - still baaaaaad. Just one reason why I have an abomination of languages. Norwegian is not too bad bad - they have three letters not in English but at least those are logical - å replaced the old double a (as in Kong Haakon) for example. The idea of learning forty-four Thai consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks (per Wikipedia I leave to those who relish such mindblowing complication). Heck I had problems pronouncing "please" and "thank you" in Thai!
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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Post by Ajarn Philip »

The scene: Lunch time(when I very rarely eat) at home...

Me: Hmm, that smells good, it's making me hungry...

Mrs Aj: (laughing her socks off) I don't think you'd like it!

Me: Why? Is it very spicy? I can't smell chillis, and my eyes aren't watering.

Mrs Aj: No, not spicy at all.

Me: Well, why wouldn't I like it then?

Mrs Aj: (slightly coy) You need ... erm... good teeth to eat this.

Me: (feathers slightly ruffled, and considering a lesson on British childhood habits and dental care during the 60s...)
There's not too much wrong with my teeth - at least most of them are my own.

Mrs Aj: (definitely smothering hysterical laughter) You might be better off if they were all false if you want to eat this.

Me: What is it anyway?

Mrs Aj: Chicken knees.

Me: Any chance of a cheese and onion sandwich?
sejintenej
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by sejintenej »

sejintenej wrote: Norwegian is not too bad bad - they have three letters not in English but at least those are logical
Nobody checked! OK so it was my mistake, of the three one actually does occur in English but I haven't seen it used in decades and those pesky merkins didn't include it in the basic alphabet let alone keyboards. The letter occurs in encyclopædia

Simple question: what minister of education decided to drop the letter and with what authority? IF the minister didn't decide then who authgorised headmasters to deprive pupils of almost 4% of their letters?

Our kids are being deprived by the Ministry of Education. Campaign for childrens' rights to their full alphabet.
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gma
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by gma »

Simple question: what minister of education decided to drop the letter and with what authority? IF the minister didn't decide then who authgorised headmasters to deprive pupils of almost 4% of their letters?

Our kids are being deprived by the Ministry of Education. Campaign for childrens' rights to their full alphabet.
Whilst waiting for the crackling to crisp up, Iaskd this question of the net and got the following response.
Well all this talk about umlauts and ligatures got me t'thinkin'... So I went upstairs to double check my memory and my memory was correct. I'm looking now at Deutsche Märchen vor Grimm, published by Rudof M. Rohrer Verlag, 1943, in Fraktur script. The umlaut in this script is represented not by two dots, but by a little "e" above the vowel it is applied to. So I would think this definitely counts as a ligature -- "ä" can be expressed as "ae" if you don't have a umlaut-enabled keyboard, and is sorted (as des notes) as "ae"; and if it was originally written as an "a" with an "e" above it, then it seems clear to me that a joining of the two vowels is what this character is. The only caveat I could see is I don't know if this is true for all Fraktur fonts; writing it this way could be an affectation on the part of the particular typesetter who printed the book I'm looking at. I don't have any other texts on hand to check.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner at May 12, 2003
I think this person's crackling must have been at a far soggier stage than mine!! I think we went to war about this time with Germany, was ae the hidden agenda? (I mean really, apart from the fact that we got it from the northern European invaders mixed with a few Roman legions in the first place, what right did those same people have to remove it fromcommon usage?)

Crackling's done, have fun!
Gerrie M-A (GMA) - 2:34 71-75

"If you cannot have what you want, then learn to want what you have"
Anon or The Guru or someone worthy like that.
Wasn't DR.
Definitely not.
Ajarn Philip
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by Ajarn Philip »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... c_Alphabet


æ

I think it's still in use in the phonetic alphabet, which I thought I knew something about - until I looked at the above link...
sejintenej
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by sejintenej »

gma wrote:
I think we went to war about this time with Germany, was ae the hidden agenda? (I mean really, apart from the fact that we got it from the northern European invaders mixed with a few Roman legions in the first place, what right did those same people have to remove it fromcommon usage?)
You mean that Hilter won after we went to all that trouble to sing "Deutschland unter Allies"
gma wrote:Crackling's done, have fun!

As you slide down the bannisters of life, may all the splinters be facing the right way.
Just how do you do those?

1) My crackling is either toothsmashingly hard or soggy

2) When I change my sig then everything I have previously posted has the signature changed. Here you are coming up with a sig I discarded a few years ago!!!! Obviously you have Irish good sense.
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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gma
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by gma »

Here you are coming up with a sig I discarded a few years ago!!!!
The best jokes always come around again!! Someone gave it to me on fridge magnet and it's been on the beer fridge door forever, saw it the other day and thought of this forum!!

Crackling too soft - rub with salt and dripping, when resting meat the cut the crackling off and whack it back in the oven on the rack not a tray
Crackling too hard - get a meat thermometer then follow above!!
Easy crackling - go to my Mum's for sunday dinner, somehow she always seems to turn it out perfectly, (although I accept that Dunstable's a hellova trek from France just for crackling!)

As far as Herr Adolf and 'Deutschland aenter Allies', we may have been forewarned, do we really know what was actually written Chamberlain's piece of paper? Perhaps we should ask Jeremy Osner, does anyone know where he's been since 2003?
Gerrie M-A (GMA) - 2:34 71-75

"If you cannot have what you want, then learn to want what you have"
Anon or The Guru or someone worthy like that.
Wasn't DR.
Definitely not.
sejintenej
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by sejintenej »

Last time I contributed here I described it as cold, cold, cold. Winter seems to be over for a few days (until tomorrow morning according to the forecast) so I actually got some shorts out today (OK so brass ........... but I'm not a monkey).

An interesting couple of days;
Thursday lunch with some people previously unknown to us who used to live in the same UK village and were next door neighbours of a close friend.
Friday - the transatlantic invasion. :x :x Linda had come across these two Canadian women - one a pastry chef and the other owns a small chain of restaurants - and they decided to come to lunch .......... and then to supper ........... and then overnight to get breakfast. One was born in the US and they both hate what the US is doing to destroy their local economy plus Iraq and ..... and .......
We got another couple of visitors Friday - a small and a large swarm of honey bees. They have taken over the space between Saturday, the shutters (closed) and the windows of the attic and hopefully will be removed tomorrow (or perhaps the year after next - there are some bank holidays coming up) but the authorities no longer remove them.
I also got roped in by a long time Brit resident who lost his martner a few years ago; he is getting concerned about after he dies (he is 78) and wants me to do a few specific jobs. Unfortunately there could be legal complications but SWMBO refuses to let me try to avoid them in advance.
Got home and made 11 jars of strawberry jam (about 5 1/2 kilos) and I have enough strawberries and sugar to make the same again. Also got to make a cople of kilos of mint sauce for the next 12 months.
Today, Sunday, we had yet another visitor - a large moth 15 and a half centimetres (slightly over 6 inches) across. I'll try to get a photo on our GetJealous site (not the one on the businesses message). We were tidying up around the pool - weeding flower beds, cutting grass, clearing out the lavender bed (it is about 14 metres long so we get masses of dried lavender).
The seedlings are coming along well - probably 100 tomato plants (we make sun-dried toms and tomato paste for the winter), peppers, courgettes, onions - you name it. In summer we have a "wall" of tuberous begonias - coming on nicely though I will have to cut some into two plants because they have got so big. Two of the roses against the house are covered in blooms with another two geting buds. Lovely scent wafting along the drive - no wonder the bees moved in.

Otherwise a pleasant couple of days - 22º - 25ºC and strong sunshine.
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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blondie95
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by blondie95 »

If anyone is interested.....

yesterday was spent in a delightful flurry of house work shoppping and a trip to the garden centre, where i tried to get bf to agree to a pink pot for my lettuces to grow in but no that would look silly apparently. So i settled for a mustard coloured one and some lettuce plants!!! I then spent the rest of the afternoon in a haze of gardening, planting lettuces, tidying boarders and making varios support frames for plants!
Today i have my parents and sister and her bf over for a bbq and lazy afternoon of eating and drinking...have ended up slightly drunker than intended all due to my mum's trifle that was sherry with trifle rather than trifle with a bit of sherry :)

now tomorrow i think i will do nowt :)
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Check out my blog http://leadpencils.blogspot.com/
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englishangel
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by englishangel »

For perfect crackling, get a fan oven. My husband is our cook and his crackling has alwyas been good, but since we got a fan oven it has been AMAZING.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
sejintenej
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by sejintenej »

englishangel wrote:For perfect crackling, get a fan oven. My husband is our cook and his crackling has alwyas been good, but since we got a fan oven it has been AMAZING.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Brought an oven thermometer over from UK this time. 200ºC (as marked on the gas cooker) is actually 170ºC whilst maximum (as marked) is actually about 200ºC. No way can I make bread in that. As for fans - yes - the bride's brother (in black kimono) presented me with one a few years back - it's made of paper and too attractive to use for the oven.

Just realised that also trying to clean the pool - it is a lovely shade of algae dark green at present. Think I'll go back for another Cuba Libre and commiserate with Amy
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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icomefromalanddownunder
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by icomefromalanddownunder »

sejintenej wrote:
sejintenej wrote: Norwegian is not too bad bad - they have three letters not in English but at least those are logical
Nobody checked! OK so it was my mistake, of the three one actually does occur in English but I haven't seen it used in decades and those pesky merkins didn't include it in the basic alphabet let alone keyboards. The letter occurs in encyclopædia

Simple question: what minister of education decided to drop the letter and with what authority? IF the minister didn't decide then who authgorised headmasters to deprive pupils of almost 4% of their letters?

Our kids are being deprived by the Ministry of Education. Campaign for childrens' rights to their full alphabet.


I don't understand where this discussion arose, and am probably about to type a load of drivel, but please forgive, as this is my first day off prescription painkillers, and my neurones seem to be having trouble realigning themselves.

Isn't the double vowel (just going to type them as adjacent singles, as I can't be bothered trying to find their ASCI codes) a dipthong, and doesn't it originate from Greek? I have always assumed this because the dipthong-containing words that I am most familiar with are foetal, oestrogen, homoeopathy, etc.

The Americans insist that the double vowel is dropped, therefore you don't find oestrogen listed under O in the dictionary, but under E, and we have to rewrite all journal articles that are rejected by American journals and resubmitted to European ones, and vice versa. Which brings me to bl**dy Microsoft's usage of 'that' and 'which' - the very thought of which causes me to hyperventilate, and in my current fragile condition, this is not good.

So ........................

all for now.

xxx
sejintenej
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by sejintenej »

icomefromalanddownunder wrote: I don't understand where this discussion arose, and am probably about to type a load of drivel, but please forgive, as this is my first day off prescription painkillers, and my neurones seem to be having trouble realigning themselves.
Drivel? so what? that's what this thread is about, isn't it, Philip? Anyway lets hope those neurones start behaving sharpish. For some reason we simply styarted discussing different languages and then onto other systems of letters and then to those countries which use the same as us but add a few
icomefromalanddownunder wrote:Isn't the double vowel (just going to type them as adjacent singles, as I can't be bothered trying to find their ASCI codes) a dipthong, and doesn't it originate from Greek? I have always assumed this because the dipthong-containing words that I am most familiar with are foetal, oestrogen, homoeopathy, etc.
The one in mind ie the ae combination as a single letter - I'm not going to try to copy it here again - too early in the morning. the other words you mention do use the letters as separate letters
icomefromalanddownunder wrote:The Americans insist that the double vowel is dropped, therefore you don't find oestrogen listed under O in the dictionary, but under E, and we have to rewrite all journal articles that are rejected by American journals and resubmitted to European ones, and vice versa. Which brings me to bl**dy Microsoft's usage of 'that' and 'which' - the very thought of which causes me to hyperventilate, and in my current fragile condition, this is not good.

For goodness sake, Americans don't speak English. Remember that football / baseball player who came over here and asked whether we speak English. Just because they claim John Wayne won WWII alone, singlehandedly, they think they rule the world plus Iraq. You're nearly (but not quite) as bad as me; I thought I was bad until I met those Canadians (see earlier post!)
I think it might have been JR who posted the Australian Tourist Office answers to enquiries. One was from the US was "Do you speak English?" and the Aussies replied "Yes, but you will have to learn it first"
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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englishangel
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by englishangel »

Just an aside, but when I trained as a midwife in 1978 I was told that it was fetus and babies were weighed in kilos!! How times change.
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sejintenej
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Re: Just a glimpse...

Post by sejintenej »

englishangel wrote:Just an aside, but when I trained as a midwife in 1978 I was told that it was fetus and babies were weighed in kilos!! How times change.
and I remember when members of the labour party wanted distances to be measured in "voersts" (? spelling - it was apparently the Russian word for a kilometre)
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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