Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 18:59:14 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, Yana Lehey <yana@lemis.com> Subject: Re: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c) Message-ID: <20020522185914.L45715@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <p05111729b9111051cbd5@[10.0.1.4]> References: <20020520195703.A79046@dragon.nuxi.com> <p05111701b90fb2744154@[10.9.8.215]> <20020521103710.C71209@lpt.ens.fr> <p05111703b90fc048bd8f@[10.0.1.4]> <20020521133026.L71209@lpt.ens.fr> <p05111705b90fe1afee46@[10.0.1.4]> <20020522112854.A26107@wantadilla.lemis.com> <p05111720b910f739ea12@[10.0.1.4]> <20020522182914.I45715@wantadilla.lemis.com> <p05111729b9111051cbd5@[10.0.1.4]>
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On Wednesday, 22 May 2002 at 11:12:51 +0200, Brad Knowles wrote: > At 6:29 PM +0930 2002/05/22, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > >>> There is a Japanese word for thank you. How do you think that >>> it is properly spelled using what they call "romaji", and how is it >>> pronounced? >> >> I don't know. But if you can't read or write, and you hear the word >> from a native speaker, how do you pronounce it? > > I always thought it was "domo origato" or maybe "domo oregato". > I looked it up in a Japanes-English-Japanese dictionary last night > (for other reasons), and it turns out that the word is apparently > properly spelled "doumoarigatou". Fine. > Now, tell me how you would be inclined to pronounce this word, > and whether or not it would be the same as you would be inclined to > pronounce either of the two previous examples. I would let a Japanese person tell me how to pronounce it. I certainly wouldn't try to derive the pronunciation from an orthography which I know to be quirky unless I had a very good understanding of the quirks. Anyway, I'll let Yana have her say. She's the Japanese speaker in our family. >> I was referring to German interpretations of French law. >> Theoretically it could have happened to us even if we had been >> married outside Germany, though in practice we could have been a >> little better off because the Standesbeamte probably wouldn't have >> looked the case up in his Big Book. > > Great. Weel, we're not likely to be living in Germany any > time soon, and although we moved to Belgium before we got married, > we've never run into the Belgian equivalent of your Standesbeamte, > so hopefully this should be a moot point for us by now. Well, as US citizens you don't have a problem in Germany. It's the French who have the problem. > However, I do feel your pain. It's over now. Maybe I should write it up as a web page. >> That seems to depend on your accent. Speak Flemish to a Walloon with >> a French accent, and you could be in trouble. I've seen it happen, >> and the one doing the complaining was a policeman. > > Yeah, well. Whatever other language I speak, it would be with a > "stupid American" accent, so I'm sure that I'd get it wrong no matter > what. > > Which is kind of why I think I'll like learning Dutch (as opposed > to Flemish), because if I'm going to automatically "get it wrong" no > matter what, I might as well have a little bit of fun tweaking their > nose. But there's so little difference between Dutch and Flemish (apart from the throat disease), and the Dutch are more tolerant. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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