No my Mother was french Canadian.
I learn to speak both languages, but I had a speech impediment and never wanted to talk french because it sounded much worse, but I could cover for it in English.
All of the men in my family were given very proper English sounding names, even two middle names and our last name’s spelling was changed to make us look very English.
It was a very different time.
Here is another funny Story.
Some of my relatives were suspicious that the Canadian Catholic church was not really the same as their church.
So some of great aunts " baby sat " my father and took him to a church in town where they could find a priest they trusted.
Just to be safe they had him baptized a second time !
They could get far because they did not drive, it was winter time too.
Knowing this town well and where everyone lived in those days the only Church I can think of they brought him too was not Catholic at all but Ukrainian (St Volodymyr ) and built around the time of my Dad’s birth in the late 30s.
I never got a clear explanation of this.
We were not Orthodox before or after HA HA.
Incidentally, the Spanish word for cheese is queso, from the German käse, dating from the fall of the Roman Empire, when the Goths occupied parts of the empire. Many Arabic words in Spanish too, as Iberia was the richest caliphate over centuries…
A very interesting string. I took German for a couple of years in high school, studied ancient Greek and Hebrew in seminary and now know a little Kinyarwanda form my African travels. I performed a wedding last week. The groom and his groomsmen were all from Nigeria and spoke English mixed with a tribal dialect and a heavy accent. Difficult to follow, but we managed to get along and had a few laughs. Most of my friends in Africa speak at least 5 languages. The musicality is very important in Kinyarwanda. The sentences rise in tone then kind of drop off to end nice and easy.
“Oh, Yeah” which is a very common expression for “yes” in English, sounds just like “Oyah” which means “no” in Kinyarwanda. That causes lots of confusion.
Yep. Lot of arabic words in Spainish, but one of most exported ones is “Gratis”. Comes from latin, “gratia” (Free, not from jail but the gift meaning). Probably due 'cause we are tourism superpower and hordes (we welcome yearly twice Spain’s population, ~40Million) of tourist loves that word in the resorts.
Furthermore, Spain, being just a mere 1000x1000 km square has 4 official languages (Spanish and 3 local languages in certain areas) and no less than other 6 minor languages, most of them local dialects of latin in isolated parts of Spain with different development through the centuries.
In recent year, English, German, Norwegian are common languages in certain areas, as there are permanent colonies of retired people from those countries living full time in Spain. Majorca Island even has a dedicated German Newspaper edition.
This is one of those moments you have to decide wether to let a slightly false statement pass or make things worse by correcting it. I chose the later
This is the thing:
It’s true Finland has a young written language and it’s true it’s only 200 years old. However they did have writing before that, but a different one.
The switch could have something to do with Finland and Sweden being the same country for 700 years. 200 years ago we lost Finland to the Russians. Still most people along the Finnish coastline speak nothing but Swedish.
Oh, and @madflower69, about the vihta. Do you have Finnish connection or are you just into nude spanking?
“I see” is confused with 'ay, sí" in Spanish, “oh, yes”. (At least in Mexico… )
Most every Spanish word beginning with “al” is Arabic origin, almohada, 'pillow" for example. Algébra. This would be a good point to note that Arabic (Indian, really) numbers, the convept of zero (cero) and the basis of mathematics were introduced to Europe through Arabic Spain, also astronomical terms, (azimút, zenít). Sugar became known through Spain (azúcar). Coffee - (café), citrus fruit (naranja - orange)… Were it not for Arabic preservation and expansion of Greek knowledge and science we would still be in the dark ages. It appears geared mechanisms and clockwork were developed by the ancient Greeks, but expanded on and preserved in the Islamic world, until reappearing suddenly as functioning tower clocks in dark ages Europe. Without that alone there never would have been an industrial revolution. Imagine how many boys watched the mechanism of the first powered, self regulating, cut gear machine in their world, and imagined greater? … Water mills, windmills, powered forges, pumps, hammer mills…
I haven’t had much to add to this discussion, because as I have said before I speak only one language. My alternate language has been “profanity” which is popularly used, but NOT popular to use.
I am so thankful that so many of you have taken English as your second language. The US has been blessed with plenty of petroleum. We have never resorted to alternatives such as wood gas. Other countries that haven’t been a bless as the US have done the research and writings on one alternative which interest all of us on this sight-- wood gas.
In the 1970’s we did have a shortage of petroleum and this some how prompted a series of articles in a rather popular magazine–Mother Earth. The shortage was short live, so little action happened on wood gas. In 2000 I got my first computer and only two articles were available on the entire net about woodgas. Somehow I became friends with Mike LaRossa and he introduce me to Yahoo Woodgas Group. This is where the English came in. There were already a few Europeans that spoke English and they were adding an eminence amount of information to the group that had been written in several other languages. ( Most US residence speak only English) The interest grew as we were able to learn from the early writings. When a local man came out with articles in a farm magazine and eventually put out a book at a reasonable price that gave such detailed information on how to reproduce his gasifier. He and a partner started another web sight which started to dominate the subject of wood gas. This web sight brought in a new batch of foreigners. Their ability to speak English has added much new information through their builds and the information that they have gleaned from foreign writings. It was a US resident, I think, who added the subject of charcoal to our woodgas discussions, but again, it has brought in information about charcoal wood gas, that we hadn’t realize was an important part of Europe survival with out petroleum. I speak of Europe, but we are now gaining from people all around the world that speak English as a second language. Thank those people who have learned English for a second language and the Gods for making it such a common language. I haven’t gotten completely passed by, because of other people who have taken the time and effort to learn English as a second language. TomC
While on language and woodgas. I like to think this site is worlds best, most organised and compact knolidge center regarding gasification but the truth is it seems Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine) apears to be wery strong on the subject of wood gasification too! There was a Russian felow that posted here not long ago and it seemed to me he realy knew what he was talking about. But he stoped responding. There is a language/political/moral boundry it seems. I am sorry for that. I hope some day the knolidge unites, history and ego gets forgoten and we can all live with the fact we all live in different worlds with one comon goal; to run engines with woodgas.
I question my Dad’s grip on things.
He spoke in broken English and was born here.
Then once I had a boy of my own I learned why he could not string together words when angry.
He skipped all the swearing in his head.
This must have been a great strain HA HA
My Dad never learned to speak any french.
But he could read it and follow it. ( like hymns in the church, in french )
But the most interesting conversation I ever listened to was in the late 80s at the family cottage.
My grandfather, his brother and two cousins that all grew up on or near the family farm would move from English to an archaic Polish dialect, struggle for a word, switch to something Ukrainian to fill in a gap and the conversation would flow.
In hind site they probably would have had a struggle to speak to a modern Pole
I think it is a very European thing.
On this side of the ocean we never suffered fuel shortages like others.
We never had to be as creative.
Seems like I always have a story to tell, however this is a good one that lead to some better nights sleep 15 years ago.
When peak oil ( and I still think its going to come back) was a fear of mine I was talking to an older Dutch fellow on my street after I cut his grass ( I like to cut grass on the lawn tractor ).
My chum Frank told me how during the war years he had a car that ran on charcoal and he explained the process and theory behind it.
Then he said after the war he came to Canada, owned two service stations and laundry mat, drove a big Cadillac and never thinking about those charcoal powered cars much.
He also said this about my fears about economy and peak oil pollution and crazy days we lived in.
You don’t worry as much in normal life if lived through a war.
You can always find wood to cut if you drive a wood powered car so don’t worry about oil…
Now the Finlander that lived next to him once told me his Dad could castrate a Moose and train it to be almost as useful as a horse.
Bad news is Russians would shoot you and the animal ( eat the moose make sure you could never train another ).
So never get caught riding a moose…
I have an In law that ran some black market scams and such in Poland.
He made a real nice electric guitar amp out of tubes from radar set and his advice is never pass up a chance to get in line, you never know what might be left when you reach the end.
Also he says the reason there are always three of something on a military warehouse shelf ( in communist times )
You fix something with one, drop and break one, and stick the third in your pocket to sell on the black market.
Sometimes sometimes there are only two parts or one on the shelf and someone beat you too it.
We don’t have a culture of mend and make do or improvise like some were or even are forced to do even today
we’ve been studying Swahili for our work in Congo. It is relatively easy language though completely different than English. Problem is that many of the words (phonetically) have opposite meaning of my Spanish. It’s hard not to start thinking in Spanish. It’s interesting how often it occurs.
A simple example is this: “si” (see) in spanish means “yes”. While in Swahili, it is a word you put in front of a phrase to indicate the negative. So, “si taki” is “I Don’t Know”. So when your mind goes looking for the idea of negativity, it quickly catches itself thinking “improperly” or “mis-speaking”. It is especially hard to try to translate the two languages together.
Not really related to anything, but these little ( Georgian ??? ) girls are stunningly talented.
This is a folk tune most people of Ukrainian decent know.
I can sing it, really welll known drinking song.
Interesting thing is when you are in a social situation with the right mix of people from over there you are not self conscious about singing even if your voice is bad.
( need a fire, drinking and old men of slavic decent )
And I have this album ( got it from a Finlander HA ) predating my time here on DOW but these days this particular side of the album makes me think of Kris.
Seriously I think these guys and Niemen are some of the most underrated progressive rock from Europe.
Listen to the vocal range on this guy!!! ( Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki… my best translation to English is Chezsaw Juliach Vidrazky better known as Niemem )
And he could sing in English, Polish, Ukrainian/Russian and German…
Now my wife is sitting other side of the table listening to the next tune and says what she thinks she hears in English ( Jet ski… Biscuits ect ).
She says I don’t think these are words.
And she reminds me I can not speak polish ( just get in arguments when drunk and order food ) so I can not translate it it really, ya pick out words is all.
But man could the MAN sing…
OK, I wasn’t going to post anything here, but here is a link to some Go-A music I like!!
A group of talented young Ukrainians.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMA5Oka9r4g
Direct embed won’t work…!!
(Right click on link and choose “open in new tab”.)
Leningrad cowboys are a good group. Specialy good with Russian Red army choir.
While on drinkung songs, Slovenian national athem is one too writen by one of our best poets. Here is a English version. Seventh paragraph is our athem.
Needless to say, Slovenian version is much better. But still, my hat is off to the translator. Lok close to the shape of the paragraphs. I will give you a hint the translator did a good job allso retaining the original shape!
)
writen by one of our best poets. Here is a English version. Seventh paragraph is our athem.
the translator did a good job allso retaining the original shape!