Magnus Bread

I HAVE BEEN EATING ultra-wholemeal Polish seedbread... Very bourgeois... very nice.


Usually I eat Hovis bread. Crack open a fresh pack, put your nose in ~ mmmm! That lovely malted wholegrain..!



It goes really lovely with Lurpak unsalted butter...



Last week I survived almost solely on fishfingers sandwiches... Unlike this one though, not dripping with baked beans!!!



Today I bought CREMA DI NOCCIOLATO ice cream: "hazelnut ice cream with nougat sauce (17%) and hazelnut pieces" ~ a bargain at £1.79 from Lidl.





Here's a tiny doggie film:
TWO NORWICH TERRIERS DOGGEDLY PLAYING AT HAVING A FRIENDLY LITTLE SAVAGE ON AN AMERICAN LAWN...





For those of you interested in a mysterious dialect moo'd by black-&-white cattle, here are some literary works written in the same... a couple of links I stumbled across yesterday on a Dutch website for literature in the Frisian tongue...

Frisian literature link: http://www.sirkwy.nl/intro.html

Article on Frisian literature with links on UbA blog Nederlandse taal en cultuur: http://vakreferent.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/sirkwy-digitaal-portaal-naar-friese-letteren

Polish Village Bread ltd company website: www.polishvillagebread.co.uk/en/manchester/products.html

A stab at Dutch...

I'VE HAD A GO at writing bestselling fiction in Dutch... Here, for your entertainment is a story about my late hamsters Pandable and Itchy and the never-existed cairn terrier, Sparky:

Deze ochtend lopen de Syrische hamster Pandable en de roborovski dwerghamster Itchy langs de Vondelstraat. Daar voldoen zij aan de cairn terrier Sparky.
"Goede morgen, hoe gaat het met je?" zegt Pandable.
"Zeer goed, dank je," zegt Sparky. "En hoe gaat het met jou, Itchy. Ben je krank?"
"Och ja!" zegt Itchy. Ik heb mijten in de vacht. Ik ga naar de dierenarts. Ik heb een afspraak om tien uur. Ne hoor! Ik moet nu gaan. Het bont is well jeukende!"
"OK, tot ziens," zegt Sparky.
"Tot later," zeggen Itchy en Pandable.

This is what it actually means. It's all in the present tense to be arty. (Not that I'm unable to use the past tenses in Dutch or anything...!)

This morning, Pandable the Syrian hamster and Itchy the roborovski pygmy hamster are trotting down the Vondelstraat (in Amsterdam). There they meet Sparky, the cairn terrier.
"Good morning, how are you?" says Pandable.
"Very well, thank you," says Sparky. "And how are you, Itchy? Are you ill?"
"Oh yes," says Itchy. I have mites in my coat! I am going to the vet's. I have a ten o'clock appointment. Now I must go, my fur is well itchy!"
"OK, see you later," says Sparky.
"Later," say Itchy and Pandable.

I ran it through Google translate, which produced this masterpiece!

This morning walk Pledges Able Syrian hamsters and dwarf hamsters along the Itchy Vondelstraat. Then they meet the cairn terrier Sparky.
"Good morning, how are you?" Able says Gage.
"Very well, thank you," says Sparky. And how are you, Itchy. Are you sick? "
"Oh yes!" Itchy says. I have mites in the fur. I go to the vet. I have an appointment at ten o'clock. Ne hear! I must go now. The fur is well itchy! "
"OK, goodbye," says Sparky.
"Later," said Able Property and itchy.

How do you say Fishfingers in French?

... das Fischstäbchen, de visstick ~ I think they're known as fishsticks in America, too.

I have been practising these languages in the most practical way I know how ~ by writing out trilingual shopping lists: die Milch/le lait/de melk (and just for good measure, Esperanto: lakto)... deze vissticken of mine come in cod ~ der Kabeljau/la morue/de kabeljauw/moruo and haddock ~ der Schellfisch/un aiglefin/de schelvis/eglefino ~ I bought both (special offer/Sonderangebot/promotion spéciale/speciale aanbieding/o Esperanto can go hang it's late... it seems to have taken all evening just researching 20 words, with much continental Wikipedia comparison... driving me round the twist. I really need printed information.

I've continued researching educational opportunities, but feel my old chasing rabbits in two directions syndrome threatening to reappear.

I am referring to that Chinese proverb I've mentioned before:
he who chases two rabbits goes home empty-handed
and it has been the story of my life. Full of interest in too many different things I'm unable to focus and very little comes of the efforts I do put in. Well now I'm too old, and will have to sit down and do something constructive (and profitable) before I die. I now realize that an undergraduate degree does not have to, and indeed is not meant to, encapsulate your interests in every academic subject going. It is quite OK to be well into one thing but to do a degree in another. When I was younger I was also against vocational degrees. At the more intellectual end of academia they were unfashionable and only the "new universities" (that is: the former polytechnics") tended to offer them. I was all into penning great intellectual critiques on classic works of literature (which I was good at, when I gave myself a chance). The idea of business German, to me seemed soulless.

Anyway I've had a peruse around the subjects that interest me. For the record these are basically European and Asian languages: German with one or more of: Japanese, Dutch, French, Chinese, Italian or Spanish. These are the languages I want to speak. Those are my goals. Obviously there are three or more BAs there so I'll have to be selective...

London Birkbeck do a part time German and Japanese BA.
Now German and Japanese is what I wish I'd done first time round...

Oxford do what sounds like a very good FIVE YEAR course in BA Japanese ~ which includes one year abroad. In five years' intensive study I would expect a very high level of fluency to be attained.

There are several universities in Germany offering Germanistik/Japanologie at BA. To get on one of these courses I would need a very high level of German proficiency as (unlike the translator's degree in Mainz) they are squarely aimed at mother-tongue German speakers and any language exercises would refer back to German...

Perhaps studying a third language through the medium of a second sounds very high-falluting ~ but students with English as foreign language study in British universities all the time, so I don't think it would be that unusual for me to do the equivalent in Germany...

Now I do really want to learn Japanese and I love the subject and when I pore over my kanji books I feel centred in a way that only heroin and novel-writing could ever compete with...

But I have to bear in mind, the point of any degree would be to get me as near as possible to QUALIFIED to do something, namely to translate. And I think at my age I really need to focus energies where they are best spent... Common sense tells me that for a translator, a course in translation would obviously be the way to go. I already have French and German to A level, which represents five years' study (seven years in the case of French)....

Bearing in mind that Birkbeck's Japanese promises to take students from ab initio to "one year post A-level" and you see how much further I could take German and French. The course I'm looking at promises "near mother tongue fluency" ~ which is considerably further along.

Whatever I decide to do I am going to have to focus my energies economically. If I want to do a European D language on top of the other two I need to start that now. Three languages at once isn't quite as confusing as it sounds ~ remember I'm pretty much at book-reading level in the other two, so my hellos, how are you? ~ please would you be so kind as to direct me to the railway stations... shouldn't get into too many tangles.

Here's Mainz's gloss on their options:

In the BA programme, as a native speaker of English you can either study German as your only foreign language (B language, excellent active competence), or you can choose a second foreign language (C language, excellent passive competence), which can be Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish. (Please note that there are admission restrictions for French and Spanish.) Ab initio courses are not offered in all C languages. However, you can attend introductory courses in Finnish and Turkish (D language).

(Every language offered as a C-language can be studied as a D-language also.)

Without any school certificates in Spanish, it doesn't sound like I'd be able to take that (the most obvious practical choice of D-language) anyhow. Another factor to bear in mind is the competition: loads of professionals can offer Spanish. As far as I know it is now the number one most popular choice of foreign language in British schools (being easier than French and, people suppose, more useful, though I'd dispute that (the number of speakers might be lower, but French is extremely widely spoken)). German is least popular of the big three ~ and yet, so I hear, there is more work for professional linguists in German than every other EU language combined! Perhaps Italian would be the most "sensible" choice. Finnish appeals because it is non-Indo-European (related to Lappish, language of the mysterious reindeer-herding Saami) ~ hence difficult and exotic ~ from a land of lonely pines, ice-lakes, snow-capped crags and the midnight sun... Italian: best food in Europe, easier than French (and much more crisply pronounced)... classical ruins, great literature and poetry and opera... high fash in Milan, porn stars in parliament. Yeah: Italian is cool. But none of those others really grabs me. To learn any language it's essential to be exceedingly highly motivated and the fire isn't there.

As for Dutch, I've already prattled on about that before: Mainz is only a couple of hours from Dutch-speaking territory, I already have studied the basics of Dutch grammar and it's easy. As you can see from the examples I gave, most vocabulary echoes both English and German. And when I studied Dutch I felt centred, in the zone... like I do with Japanese and heroin (strange but true).

I need to make up my mind soon... and now it's a quarter to midnight, nothing has been done. I am drowning in word lists for fish, bread rolls and tomato sauce... How do I come up with a programme, by myself, to focus the skills I need to build up? (Without wasting time or running round in circles..?)

I have lost one decade solid of my life to heroin and mental ill-health. The decade before that was pretty much scuppered by health concerns, too ~ though I wasn't a full-on addict (it's difficult to date precisely when which problem began because they're so interwoven and in the beginning I was extremely cautious with heroin. I had no intention of getting addicted and so continuously "picked it up" (as NA say) ~ loved it, but forced myself to renounce it. This happened again and again over a period of years. Somehow the occasions when I used crept closer and closer together until I found myself withdrawing without even knowing it!... And THAT is a long story...

Now I must go. Has anyone any advice on what I should do? And how??

Links:
Mainz Translation, Language and Culture BA: www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/deutsch/261.php#balct
Birkbeck: Modern Languages with two of: German, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish www.bbk.ac.uk/study/ug/spanishstudies/UBAFRGEM.html

Here's an some interesting stats:
TOP 10 INTERNET LANGUAGES by number of users: www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm
English is number one with just under 500 million, Chinese number two with just over 400 million. German comes just ahead of Arabic ~ about 72 million... French is 57 million...

MUSIC:
KAREL FIALKA: HEY MATTHEW
Produced for just £200 from the singer's Bradford & Bingley account, this got to #2 in the UK chart, it's called "New Wave" and that's it really

OK I'll try and be polyglot:
Deze hier is een £200 productie van het engelse sangschrijver Karel Fialka. Het is wel goed. Och! It moet nu gaan! Ik heb niet maar toe zeggen!
OK, tot later

google.fr, google.de, google.nl

IF I'M GOING for this uni course in French/German/Dutch translation in Mainz I'm going to have to refresh my rusty French (no study in 18 years) on top of my German. I did study some Dutch when I was enamoured with the idea of moving to Amsterdam and completed half a Linguaphone course, which means in theory I would have had a vocabulary of about 700 words... but THAT was 18 years ago too!

So I decided the thing to do is give up entirely googling anything in English and migrate exclusively to their French, German and Dutch portals. I have just been reading up on blue roses and la situation linquistique en suisse (Switzerland) on French Wikipedia.

Looking back I can see I have been extremely lazy in my attitude. But I also see that my attitude has been nothing unusual for an English-speaker. In many parts of the world it is quite ordinary to have to read books, conduct business and look up information in one's second, third or even fourth languages. I think if I can pick up this attitude, instead of grumbling to myself that this is "like looking at a beautiful view through a dirty window" (which is pretty much what it's like having to read a text in an idiom where not every word is familiar and a few are downright incomprehensible) and remind myself that I'm killing four birds with three stones (or whatever I'm doing: what is the metaphor? I'm killing two birds with one stone three times then.)... If I can do this then maybe I will qualify to get on that course, maybe I'll actually get on it, maybe I'll go and do it and graduate with flying colours and everything will change for the good.

I can but try (!!)

Scots and Frisian

Continuing our survey of the dialects of Northern Europe, we come to: THE SCOTS LANGUAGE:
Here's my hilarity find of the day ~ The Scottish Parliament's official website in Scots ~ the stately language of Robbie Burns and Irvine Welsh.

Now I always thought "Scots" meant badly spelled English with a Scottish flavour, and that the Gaelic tongue ~ related to Welsh ~ was the "proper" language of Scotland.
But Gaelic never has been spoken in Lowland Scotland, where lots of people, including so it appears the Scottish government, believe Scots to be a proper language, distinct from English (and very distinct from Gaelic).


Walcome tae the Scottish Pairlament wabsite

Banner featuring images of the Scottish Parliament and Public Information Service leaflets

The Scottish Pairlament is here for tae represent aw Scotlan’s folk.

We want tae mak siccar that as mony folk as possible can finn oot aboot the Scottish Pairlament. Information anent whit we can dae tae help ye engaige wi the Pairlament gin ye arenae fluent in English can be haen at Langage assistance providit by the Scottish Pairlament (22.2KB pdf).

This pairt o the wabsite hauds information anent the Scottish Pairlament that we hae producit in Scots. Uise the link aneath tae find oot mair.

* Garrin the Scottish Pairlament Wark for You (1.59MB pdf)

Contactin the Scottish Pairlament

Gin ye hae a quaistion anent the Scottish Pairlament or the Memmers o the Scottish Pairlament (MSPs), ye can contact the Public Speirins Service in ony leid by post, email or fax.

Address:

Public Information Service

The Scottish Parliament

Edinburgh

EH99 1SP

Email: sp.info@scottish.parliament.uk

Fax: 0131 348 5601

See the above in Scottish Gaelic

And here, from Wikipedia's Frisian entry, are sentences in the Frisian and Low Saxon dialects.
Of all the languages in the world, the closest to English is said to be Frisian, a separate tongue from Low Saxon/German, spoken in the Eastern Netherlands and parts of Northern Gernmany up to Southern Denmark, where, according to Wikipedia, quadrilingualism used to be widespread (North Frisian, Standard German, Low German and South Jutlandic Danish)..
And there I was, thinking Frisian was a language moo'd by black and white cows...


Comparative sentence




Saterland Frisian
Die Wänt strookede dät Wucht uum ju Keeuwe un oapede hier ap do Sooken.

North Frisian (Mooring dialect)
Di dreng aide dåt foomen am dåt kan än mäket har aw da siike.

West Frisian
De jonge streake it famke om it kin en tute har op 'e wangen.

East Frisian Low Saxon
De Jung straktde dat Wicht um't Kinn to un tuutjede hör up de Wangen.

Danish
Drengen aede pigen på kinden og kyssede hende på kinderne.

Dutch
De jongen streelde/streek het meisje rond haar kin en kuste haar op haar wangen.

Dutch Low Saxon
De jonge strek 't dearntje um de kinne en gaf heur een smok.

German
Der Junge streichelte das Mädchen ums Kinn und küsste sie an den Wangen.

English
The boy stroked the girl on the chin and kissed her on the cheeks.

Lancashire dialect and accent
Th' lad strorkt 'lass on 'jib an busst er on th' cheaks.

Lancashire dialect and accent
Th' lad strorkt 'lass on 'jib an gev er a smeawch on th' cheaks.

Scots
The laddie straikit the lassie oan the chin an gied hir a smouch oan the chouks.

Notice Lancashire II: smeawch ~ just like one of our modern words for kissing: smooching ....

GERMANIC LANGUAGE MAP
Showing the High-Central-Low German to Dutch continuum in green and English-Frisian in orange...



FRISIAN LANGUAGE MOVEMENT
No gabbly Germanic dialect here ~ you can pretty much follow what they're getting at. They want road signs in the language, children to learn it at school and so on



FRISIAN VICTORIA'S SECRET SUPERMODEL DOUTZEN KROES
... speaks about Frisian in Lower Franconian (Dutch!)

Sad

I STARTED READING THROUGH various university prospectuses re: language studies and wish I hadn't done it because now I feel this longing building up and I don't trust myself ever to apply and successfully complete any university course. Ever.

The one that got me the most was Cambridge (why apply anywhere crap?). Two stipulations I have about a course in German are that 1: the department should also teach Dutch. Because if you speak French, German and Dutch you an almighty swathe of Europe becomes "yours". Dutch is very similar to German so learning it is a process of conversion rather than discovery anew... The last place I studied didn't even offer Dutch (though they specialized in Scandinavian languages ~ more people speak Dutch than ALL Scandinavian languages together!) And Oxford, by the way doesn't do Dutch. And point 2: they MUST give details of modules or "papers" and reading lists in advance. Which Cambridge do, and perusing down them only increased this sad longing. And Cambridge is such a beautiful town (much nicer than Oxford). In the end I just wanted to cry.

I'm going to leave it there before I have a pathetic breakdown ...

Illustrated: King's College Cambridge (the one with the most spectacular buildings). Cambridge University is split into 20 or so colleges peppered about the town (ie there is no "campus" as such). And as you can see it's a gorgeous place ...

PS: talking of SAD, someone at my old house, what I now look back on as a bourgeois paradise, the house I first moved to in London, once remarked how bizarre it should be that I, by far the most "academic" person in the house, should be just about the ONLY one there without a degree ...