Pecuariam felis

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by tc4332

And there was me thinking you were a cat lover.
We had 17 at one point. SWMBO is a soft touch with all kinds of animals, but I have no room to talk.
Friends of ours run a web page "siliconhell.com", worth a look if you are into cats.

17?

I have two maine coons:

Gizmo



and Lisbeth

[David's8]

I guess there's an Australian version of the "herding cats" saying which plays on the fact that getting a group of invidualistic people/animals to get going in the same/right direction can be, as MJ says, a futile task. Herding possums?

[Regulus]

Wow! This an interesting read, Marty. And I love how you explained about the feminine form of the word. Excellent analysis, all in all
And the word felis, so that's where the English word feline originates. Cool!
I studied a few languages myself, and love Syntax.

As a kid I had to learn both the Norwegian languages, bokmål and nynorsk. And I got a good grade in both, even if I hated nynorsk. My feelings toward nynorsk would probably have been different, if we had been told the historical background. Both were developed around 1850s. Bokmål means the written language, and since Norway used Danish in official context, bokmål has only a very slight difference to the Danish language (when it is written).
Nynorsk means the New Norwegian language, and is a collection of words used by the natives themselves in different parts of Norway. Hence, nobody speaks "proper" nynorsk. But some variation of it, called dialects. So really just a construct and an attempt to have a distinct Norwegian language.
The further west, or north you get from Oslo, nynorsk dialects are the norm.

I struggled as a kid with English, but that all changed when I started to read books written in English as an adult. As basically all the books I have read as an adult were written in English, so that is the language I have the best vocabulary in. And I read non-fictional books, only rarely fictional.

I moved to Sweden and went to school again as an adult. Among other topics I chose to study languages, as that is something that I love to learn.
I studied German and can read pretty well, I can write and speak some.
I also studied English at that time, but my teachers sometimes struggled with me. As they at times believed I was in error, but upon checking found that I was indeed correct.
So they asked me to dial it back a level, as not to intimidate my fellow class mates.
I studied Russian as well, but learned only a little. I can hardly understand anything as my vocabulary is so weak.
This was back in 93-95. And of course, I had to translate everything to Swedish along with learning the new languages.

At the University I chose to study old greek, or koine greek. Along with my religious studies. My greek is pretty weak, pretty similar level to my Russian.
But I sometimes entertain myself trying to read Russian or Greek words to see if I can understand them


What I really learned by all my studies, is what my teacher in German and Russian taught me. As he was in fact a translator, he had a very different approach than any other language teacher I have met.
He focused on syntax. He explained to us that when we learned the the syntax of a language properly, we could move on and start adding to our vocabulary. But it didn't make much sense to him to have us try making conversation.
Best teacher I ever had

[27litres]

Originally Posted by David's8

I guess there's an Australian version of the "herding cats"... Herding possums?

Nah,
Herding Kangaroos! Damn things won't go backwards

Originally Posted by Regulus

On the subject of languages, I remember quite fondly when I visited Sweden, just how easy it was to communicate with the locals.
So a question was posted to my Swedish friend: "why do the Swedish speak such good English?"
His answer was an exercise in understatement:
"Well, there's only 8 million people in the world who speak Swedish"!

[moltuae]

I'm in awe of people who can speak multiple languages. Apart from English, the only languages I'm fluent in are programming languages.

I did study Latin and French at school for a couple of years but dropped them in favour of the sciences. I do remember some of the Latin I learned (which is a great language to learn if you want to better understand the origins of many modern languages), but I remember little of the French I learned. Our school was one of the first to use audio tapes and headsets as language teaching aids. Ironically, just about the only French phrase I remember from those tapes is "écoute et répète" ("listen and repeat").





Speaking of Swedish (Regulus), something I've often wondered ...

Those silly IKEA product names ... You know, the ones that often sound like something related in English. Are they completely made up (for comic effect) or do they actually mean something in Swedish?

For example:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/leonoraepst...vWw#.qxyPzn7A3