Applied Linguistics

greenGeneral Internet Utilities: The Alta Vista Babelfish & Ethnologue

green"Belgian": Flemish, French (Wallon), German

greenGerman: Special Characters and Correct Terms, Speed-Typing Convention and Resources


From: "Philip C. Robinson"
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 10:53:51 -0500

Also- A question or two has arisen about translations....a resource EVERYONE should be aware of is the Alta Vista babelfish at:

http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?

Very handy for European language translation!

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From: Jeff McSpadden
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 22:25:01 -0500

I was following up on the swiss languages and came up with a great site to get detailed language backgrounds. It even has gypsy languages from around the worrd and obscure dialects.

http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/

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Date: Sat, 25 Apr 1998 14:29:01 +0000
From: Matthew Pook

I'm new to the list, but Delta Green has to be one of the best supplements in a very long time, really reworking how CoC is played and it is one of the few RPG supplements I have read completely.

One or two problems though:

1. What language is Belgian? (one of the sample agents is given it).

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Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 12:56:04 -0400
From: Graeme Price

>1. What language is Belgian? (one of the sample agents is given it).

Flemish perhaps? We may have to rely on one of our continental cousins for this info.

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Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 18:18:25 -0700
From: Alan L. Krause

wrong.

They speak Flemmish or French, although the national language is French.
Approximately 50% of the population speaks Flemmish. All this is from information gleaned from a covert operative (my wife) stationed there from 1986 to 1988.

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Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 21:01:57 -0700
From: Nezach

1. I always thought they spoke French and German. I didn't know they had a specific language.

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Date: Sat, 25 Apr 98 16:28:38 UT
From: "John Gallant"

They speak Flemish, French, and German. I looked it up in the New York Public Library Desk Reference. Originally I was being a smartass. Wasn't there an episode of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" wherein Indy joins the Belgian Army and they ask him if he speak Belgian? That's the only place I'd ever heard the word "Belgian" without reference to waffles. Then again, maybe he said Belchin'. I wouldn't know.

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Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 12:42:29 +0200
From: PM

1. They speak either French (they cal it Wallon) or Flemish (with slight variations from the one used in the Netherlands). Many Belgian people speak German and most speak English, as Belgium is located at a "crossroad" in the middle of Europe. Consider too that Belgium was created with provinces taken from Netherlands and France. The French language used in Belgium differ slightly on a few words with the one used in France (best known examples are the words for Seventy, Eighty and Ninety) plus a few colloquialisms.

Interestingly enough the differences (70,80,90, etc.) exist for most of them in the Swiss version of the French language, indicating they're from the classic French and have stayed in Belgium and Switzerland, while France saw these words evolve to the ones used now.

Still I'd say that "Belgian" would most probably be the Flemish one, as (in the YIJ episode) it would have been less probable for Indy to speak this language than French.

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Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 11:01:56 +0100

From: "Florian R. Hanke"

David Farnell wrote:

<<< On language, two questions: 1) For you native German speakers (my German is much like Mark McFadden's these days, and now I keep blending in Japanese when I try to speak it), could someone please post the correct usages of singular and plural (and maybe possessive?) forms of Bischof, Ritter, Bauer, and any other Karotechia-related vocabulary that's going to come up with frequency during all this EH stuff--preferably along with the proper articles (der, die, das, etc.) as they might come into use?

Ok, tell me if I forgot something - I leave out the words that are written correctly in the book

The ü, ä, ö can be a pain for some of you guys - I think they can be found (on windows) by holding Alt, then entering:

129 for ü

132 for ä

148 for ö

(then release Alt)

Mac users do have the special characters menu

<insert>

Sorry, I didn't have much time right now, so I put only the most important here.  But I'll do a complete write-up for the Ice Cave or EH, if you wish.

</insert>

a(like in: a bischop),singular, plural

ein Bischof, der Bischof, die Bischöfe

ein Ritter, der Ritter, die Ritter

ein Bauer, der Bauer, die Bauern

The famous one: Die Lebenstentoten

Either (ein Lebendtoter/eine Lebendtote) (he/she)

der/die (he/she) Lebendtote, die Lebendtoten (preferred version)

or (ein lebender Toter/eine lebende Tote) (he/she)

der/die (he/she) lebende Tote, die lebenden Toten

some words that were ritten wrong:

die Kriegsmarine p. 99 bottom left

ODESSA: Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen p.100 right

das dritte Triumvirat p.101 bottom right

die SS-Totenkopfverbände p.102 top left

die Fallschirmjäger p.102 top left

And 2) Could someone at Pagan Pub grab Glancy and make him reveal the origin of the word "Karotechia"?

Oh, yes, even if it has no meaning whatsoever...

But Andrew's explanation with the karo's working well, altough the techia part is a real pain...

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Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 22:15:43 +0100

From: "Florian R. Hanke" <fhanke@jetnet.ch>

>>>>>

David Farnell wrote:

> Agent Hanke wrote some very useful stuff (vielen Dank, Florian!).

Bittescho:n! o: = o with "Umlaut"

> However:

> >The ・瘢雹 ・瘢雹 ・瘢雹can be a pain for some of you guys - I think they can be found (on

> >windows) by holding Alt, then entering:

<snip>

> The final word came out as "Bisch*e" kind of. Yes, the perils of having a
> computer with a Japanese OS. I'm probably not the only one with such a
> headache.

Gnah! My teutonicentric worldview again! Sorry - a hopefully corrected version awaits you

here: http://www.vis.inf.ethz.ch/~fhanke/DeltaGreen/karotechgerman.htm I hope the special character in front of fhanke will be seen correct (it's the snakey wave thing, (tilde?))

If not, you can reach it through http://www.vis.inf.ethz.ch/students/#H , clicking on my name (Florian Hanke) and then adding DeltaGreen/karotechgerman.htm to the address.

btw:

To test your blood on German, maybe aryan, try to spell an u: correctly on the first time ;-)

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