Posts by bmk
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to Islander,
Also, I'd never heard of an intransitive verb before I started to learn Maori in a formal way, as an adult.
And I had never heard of an intransitive verb until I just read your comment which lead me to google it. And I have just learnt another new thing for the day. Language is fascinating. I really think more study of language itself should be encouraged including encouragement of learning second languages.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to nzlemming,
Agree with this. The engagement model in music has as you mention worked for NIN and Radiohead neither of whom are the Dan Brown's et al of literature. The big pop acts don't use that model because they rely on their record label pushing their product heavily in the same way that Danielle Steele, Dan Brown, Jodi Picoult etc books are promoted heavily by their respective publishers.
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Yeah I love Mark Twain’s quotes on Austen, (I do like most ‘classics’ but for some reason just can’t stand Austen) my favourite one:
Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book.
I am a little scared now having lurked on here along time before I started posting and always told myself that I should endeavour to never get on the wrong side of Craig. And now I have just insulted, albeit by proxy, his favourite author.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to Rich Lock,
All the German-language jokes I know seem to be deeply, deeply black.
If you tell a German (gross stereotype here – but play along) that you have a sore hand/head etc he/she will say “well you should just chop it off then” and all the Germans in the room will laugh uproariously. In my two months I spent in the country it got old pretty quick but they seemed to never tire of it.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
I throughly encourage people to learn another language, and it doesn't even have to be foreign; learn engineering/legal/medical language, or sign language.
+1 also. In my case learning programming has helped expand my mind and give me a different way of looking at things plus an ability to problem solve in a much more logical manner.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to BenWilson,
And not just a normal cookie recipe but a hashish cookie recipe:)
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to BenWilson,
What you say about learning a foreign language makes perfect sense. I have also heard that if you get to the point where you can think in another language that is very mind expanding being able to conceptualise your thoughts with two different symbol systems.
I accept that language changes but for some reason I can't help but find those grammar errors annoying. I use changed language myself eg. 'data is' rather than the traditional 'data are', 'dice and dice' rather than 'die and dice' and am happy using 'fail' as a noun. I suppose I shouldn't be irked by incorrect grammar but for some reason I just can't seem to help it.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to BenWilson,
Yeah I know what you mean about the sound. In high school my friends and I would have great fun talking to each other in German because the most innocuous words can sound full of threat and meaning. To an English speaking ear German can sound very hard and argumentative. I remember as a young child when I would hear my father speaking on the phone to someone in Germany I always thought he was in an argument and only later found out they were perfectly normal, civil conversations.
The gendered nouns were hard but I found the tenses hard to knowing how word endings were supposed to change according to the tense. Probably because I was never taught how that worked in English 'I just knew'. In fact I learnt more about grammar taking German than I did in English which seems silly - for some reason they don't seem to teach grammar as part of English any more (or at least not where and when I went to school). Which is probably why I always seem to hear "I seen it" "I done it" "He did good" etc. You know you are getting old when you find yourself thinking how ignorant the younger generation is:)
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to BenWilson,
I only took German because my father is German. But then I enjoyed it only because I had a really good teacher - the language itself didn't interest me but the teacher made it interesting. What I liked about German was the logical spelling - it is a completely phonetic language. What I found hard was the complex verb, tense structures. I have vague memories of things called dative, accusative etc without having a clue what they mean anymore.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to BenWilson,
No wonder you found it dark. We were only translating traditional fairy tales into German for example the one I did was the Tortoise and the Hare (can't remember the proper title - but I am sure you know which one I mean).