Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Jo wrote:Another prize will go to anyone who can name the tenses used in the original posting... (you'll have to come to Thailand to collect!)

Oh gosh, I do like a linguistic challenge - but I'm struggling on this one.

A.had just been thinking about - is there such a thing as pluperfect continous?
B.have just been thinking about - past continuous
C.are just thinking about - present continuous
D.had just thought about - pluperfect

Wiki suggests that tenses can be further categorised according to how far into the past we are talking about. So perhaps A is immediate pluperfect? B and D could also be immediate in that case.

Go on then..... what would your answer be?

It's interesting...when you start as a beginner, English is one of the easiest languages in the world for foreigners to learn at its basics (no genders, no adjective endings, barely any verb conjugation, easy plurals...).

But when you get to a more advanced level, it's one of the hardest languages in the world to perfect, and it's no surprise given the examples above.

Wuppertal wrote:
It's interesting...when you start as a beginner, English is one of the easiest languages in the world for foreigners to learn at its basics (no genders, no adjective endings, barely any verb conjugation, easy plurals...).

But when you get to a more advanced level, it's one of the hardest languages in the world to perfect, and it's no surprise given the examples above.

I'd put Norwegian as one of the easiest langauges. Yes - it does have genders and they are as illogical as those in German. It has been simplified in that, of the three I learned, one (the female) has been retired. Every letter is pronounced and has only one sound. To decline a verb you learn the infinitive, the present and the past participle. For example the word for to be (vaere) is er,er,er,er,er,er in the present tense, var, var. var ..... for the past. They do have "hadde" which is a straight translation of "had" as in I had been.
The definite and indefinite articles have to agree with the noun - for the definite it goes in front and for the indefinite article the same combination of letters (et or ei) is attached to the end of the noun. Plurals are created by adding "ene" on the end of a noun. The ?genitive denoting ownership is created by adding "s" to the owner - in English we include an apostrophe before the s.
Hard words? Not really - who has not heard of the Scottish Kirk? the north country fell, even gate in York (it actually means a street!) Yorkshire has a lot of Scandinavian words.

There you are - bokmal in 10 lines

sejintenej wrote:

Wuppertal wrote:
It's interesting...when you start as a beginner, English is one of the easiest languages in the world for foreigners to learn at its basics (no genders, no adjective endings, barely any verb conjugation, easy plurals...).

But when you get to a more advanced level, it's one of the hardest languages in the world to perfect, and it's no surprise given the examples above.

I'd put Norwegian as one of the easiest langauges. Yes - it does have genders and they are as illogical as those in German. It has been simplified in that, of the three I learned, one (the female) has been retired. Every letter is pronounced and has only one sound. To decline a verb you learn the infinitive, the present and the past participle. For example the word for to be (vaere) is er,er,er,er,er,er in the present tense, var, var. var ..... for the past. They do have "hadde" which is a straight translation of "had" as in I had been.
The definite and indefinite articles have to agree with the noun - for the definite it goes in front and for the indefinite article the same combination of letters (et or ei) is attached to the end of the noun. Plurals are created by adding "ene" on the end of a noun. The ?genitive denoting ownership is created by adding "s" to the owner - in English we include an apostrophe before the s.
Hard words? Not really - who has not heard of the Scottish Kirk? the north country fell, even gate in York (it actually means a street!) Yorkshire has a lot of Scandinavian words.

There you are - bokmal in 10 lines

I agree that Norwegian has to be one of the easiest languages that exists anywhere. I learnt Swedish first but learnt a bit of Norwegian afterwards and the grammar is easier still than Swedish. Not only that, but with the three mainland Nordic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish), they are so similar, often completely interchangeable, that if you can speak one, you can read all three without a problem, and you can understand spoken Swedish and Norwegian, if not Danish due to the more difficult pronunciation (or complete lack thereof).

When Swedes visit Norway, they often speak in Swedish and are replied to in Norwegian, and both can understand the other without problems. Same applies to Norwegians visiting Sweden.

Another example in nothern England: -by (= "-town") e.g. Grimsby, Whitby.


One more "easy" language I think is Dutch. Sadly it seems to have a reputation for being exactly the opposite. Once you get the hang of the pronunciation (which is one the hardest aspects in itself), it's not too hard, and if you know some German you will find it even easier. It's completely in the middle of English and German, and it doesn't have all the cases and adjective endings like in German.

If you want to cause a ruckus at a Norwegian party, ask them what the Norwegian for "my book" is. With a bit of luck, you'll get three different answers: Min bok, boken min, and boka mi. The first is basically standard Danish with a Norwegian pronunciation (Ibsen's language), and is posh. The second is moderate reformed Norwegian, and the last, with the re-introduced feminine gender, is radical. Norwegians will get very worked up about these differences.

One of the problems with Dutch if you speak German is that many words look the same and mean something different. For example Dutch buses have a notice asking you not to disturb the driver's "aandacht". This means "attention" in Dutch, but "Andacht" in German is "devotions".

Christiaan Barnard the heart surgeon had a similar problem on Dutch TV. Speaking in Afrikaans, he used a word for a "team" of surgeons which in Dutch only means a team of oxen.

michael scuffil wrote:One of the problems with Dutch if you speak German is that many words look the same and mean something different. For example Dutch buses have a notice asking you not to disturb the driver's "aandacht". This means "attention" in Dutch, but "Andacht" in German is "devotions".

That is a common situation. In French a "car" is what we would call a charabanc (coach) whereas an English car is a voiture. In Portuguese "pois nao" literally means "but no" which is the European meaning but in Brazil it means "but of course or certainly".

Just think if, in a moment of passion, you asked a Brazilian (and I think an Australian) to use a Durex the result would have no connection with Scotland (Scotch tape = sellotape) and wouldn't work anyhow.. The technical term I learned is "false friend" and my wife gets caught out so often .......

Wuppertal wrote:

I agree that Norwegian has to be one of the easiest languages that exists anywhere. I learnt Swedish first but learnt a bit of Norwegian afterwards and the grammar is easier still than Swedish. Not only that, but with the three mainland Nordic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish), they are so similar, often completely interchangeable, that if you can speak one, you can read all three without a problem, and you can understand spoken Swedish and Norwegian, if not Danish due to the more difficult pronunciation (or complete lack thereof).

Generally speaking, as you go south from the North Cape to the German border people speak faster and faster; in Denmark it is so fast that they omit the second half of words; that is the difficulty. My Norwegian is from Finneid (ie far north) so it is slow and sing-song; at a wedding in Denmark a few miles from the German border they deliberately spoke very slowly and clearly for me and I could understand almost all. Equally they could understand me.

However, even within Norway it used to be that people from one valley often had difficulty understanding people from another valley because communications were so difficult. On top of that there were language changes officially inspired so even words changed. Wuppertal will understand how I was confused by not knowing that "sjue" was the same as "syve" (seven); that was the amount they wanted me to pay in the shop!

sejintenej wrote:However, even within Norway it used to be that people from one valley often had difficulty understanding people from another valley because communications were so difficult. On top of that there were language changes officially inspired so even words changed. Wuppertal will understand how I was confused by not knowing that "sjue" was the same as "syve" (seven); that was the amount they wanted me to pay in the shop!

I am not by any means a Norway/Norwegian expert but I can see that! (Though the fact that I don't know that much Norwegian just illustrates how similar and friendly the languages are if I can understand it fine). That "sjue" you mentioned is almost the same as 7 is Swedish (sju), with that difficult pronunciation that involves basic pushing the air out of your mouth, it's hard to explain to anyone not familiar! I read that that is unique to Swedish and there are no other languages anywhere that have this exact strange "sju" sound (I don't know if that's true or not). It's encapsulated in this tongue-twister (or should it be lip-tooth-twister, as you don't use the tongue?):

Sju sjösjuka sjömän sköts av sju sköna sjuksköterskor på ett sjunkande skepp

seven seasick sailors are taken care of by seven beautiful nurses on a sinking ship

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The most extreme differences within one language that I know of is Swiss-German (though closely followed by British English!). I was once on a tourbus somewhere in the Valais. There were some people from the canton of Grisons/Graubünden, and they were each having difficulties understanding each other even though they only lived a few kilometres apart - apparently every valley has its own phrases and a few different words for ordinary common objects which people who come from a different, but still nearby, town or valley, cannot understand.

Wuppertal wrote:
I am not by any means a Norway/Norwegian expert but I can see that! (Though the fact that I don't know that much Norwegian just illustrates how similar and friendly the languages are if I can understand it fine). That "sjue" you mentioned is almost the same as 7 is Swedish (sju), with that difficult pronunciation that involves basic pushing the air out of your mouth, it's hard to explain to anyone not familiar! I read that that is unique to Swedish and there are no other languages anywhere that have this exact strange "sju" sound (I don't know if that's true or not). It's encapsulated in this tongue-twister (or should it be lip-tooth-twister, as you don't use the tongue?):

That really surprises me. The whole idea of the language revisions was to get rid of Swedish and Danish influences. For example they created a new letter to replace the old double a (as in Haakon). To go from one word (I could have spelt it wrong) to a apparently Swedish one is illogical - but that is what they did.

I don't know Swedish pronounciation but in Norwegian it is like the shoo you say to an animal to tell it to go away.

Wuppertal wrote: Sju sjösjuka sjömän sköts av sju sköna sjuksköterskor på ett sjunkande skepp
seven seasick sailors are taken care of by seven beautiful nurses on a sinking ship

There is a monologue in Norwegian which I could only keep up with for the first few minutes along the lines of

Hans far hans far var var hans far ........

Hans is a name and also "his", var = is, Far is a name and also "father" I have deliberately omitted the capitals

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Wuppertal wrote: The most extreme differences within one language that I know of is Swiss-German (though closely followed by British English!). I was once on a tourbus somewhere in the Valais. There were some people from the canton of Grisons/Graubünden, and they were each having difficulties understanding each other even though they only lived a few kilometres apart - apparently every valley has its own phrases and a few different words for ordinary common objects which people who come from a different, but still nearby, town or valley, cannot understand.

Where I stay in France we have the same. Apart from Occitan (Catalan is a dialect!) each village has its patois; my own village is different to the one 100 metres from me where I frequent the "cafe". Apparently they also have different words and pronunciations. I'm not going down that route. Public buildings often have bilingual signs (Occitan and French), an hour away the menus can be in 4 languages (Occitan, Catalan, French and Spanish - I suspect they have English as well ) Fortunately Occitan is close enough to Franco-Spanish that I can read most of it.

I haven't forgotten the advice of a perfect English speaking Japanese friend who advised getting a pillow dictionary to help learn a foreign language. Unfortunately W H Smith don't sell them

If you want to cause a ruckus at a Norwegian party,

Actually, the real showstopper at a Norwegian party is to say "By the way, there are two bottles of whiskey in my rucksack."

Foureyes wrote:

If you want to cause a ruckus at a Norwegian party,

Actually, the real showstopper at a Norwegian party is to say "By the way, there are two bottles of whiskey in my rucksack."

Standard procedure but it was 2 half bottles because of import restrictions. Of course where I stayed it was almost illegal for the married warden to have alcohol in his quarters. Weak beer was available, at a price. To get spirits you started off by getting a doctor's certificate that you were not an alcoholic. This you took to the Police who sold you a licence to buy alcohol - I think it was one bottle a month. You then slipped down the back street ensuring you were not seen (being seen going into a brothel was less of a public disgrace) where you bought your bottle in an unmarked brown paper bag before trying to get away unseen.

My real introduction to that was at a charity event I helped organise. Halfway through the evening somebody I hardly knew used his eyes across the room to indicate that I should go downstairs. Having ascertained that there was nobody around he withdrew a half bottle of I think gin and lime from his back pocket and we each had a furtive swallow before it was concealed again.

Later, at another hytte I was introduced to locally made "beer", gut rot or whatever you like to call it. All of us were ill next day after a small glass and they were medical students.