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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2011 5:59:07 GMT
Of course, the first step in loving a language is to love a place where it is spoken. The Spanish tourist board has been creating some very nice ad campaigns targeting various interest groups to make people want to come to Spain. Here is an example showing the most famous football players of the Real Madrid, to elicit interest from their fans.
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Post by lola on Oct 18, 2011 1:50:28 GMT
Kerouac. Have you used or heard used the phrase "ne plus ultra" in the past say two months? Year? Or do only American journalists say this kind of thing? Could you use it and sound natural? I'm not writing a book or anything, just wondering.
I did think at one time that I could write a novel in the light comedy vein featuring some of the characters from Fodors. I had a plot. Then I realized I wouldn't have the rhythms or the words for much of the dialogue without at least a couple of years' research overseas. I'd need a John D. and Katherine T. MaCarthur Foundation Grant.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2011 4:53:28 GMT
In the past two months? No, I don't think so. (Isn't it nec plus ultra?)
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Post by hwinpp on Oct 18, 2011 7:29:53 GMT
In German 'non- plus- ultra' has been common for 20, 30 years? Maybe even longer.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2011 7:59:38 GMT
I only see it in advertising campaigns (the nec plus ultra of electric shavers... or whatever).
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Post by auntieannie on Oct 28, 2011 14:52:45 GMT
yes, it's not in the everyday language anymore as far as I am concerned. My dad may use it from time to time, but he's not a reference linguistically speaking.
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Post by mickthecactus on Dec 9, 2011 13:27:24 GMT
On the radio this morning was a German politician who spoke almost faultless English. Yet he persistently reversed the letters V and W so "revise" was pronounced "rewise" yet "work" was pronounced "vork" (verk).
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Post by onlymark on Dec 9, 2011 16:55:53 GMT
Yet they pronounce the word 'Volk' as in Volkswagen as it is. But the 'w' is also pronounced as a 'v'. German confuses me still - 'ei' as in nein is pronounced as 'i' and 'ie' as in Sie is pronounced 'e'. Plus the letter a is in the alphabet said as r, e is ay, i is e, j is yot, and y is epsilon.
And another thing - why do they have to have one of the few languages that when counting say the last number first? i.e. twenty four is four and twenty. When you ask for a phone number of someone and they give it, like you often do in two digit numbers - like - twenty four, sixty seven, eighty nine, fifty three - you end up writing the second number first and then the 'tens' number - so the number above would be - vier und zwanzig (4 and 20), sieben und sechzig (7 and 60) ....etc
And another thing - why do you have to wait to right at the end of the sentence before they say the verb? It wound Mark Twain up something rotten. And all this Der, Die, Das and changing them (the sex of the word) when you flit through nominative, dative and accusative? Never mind having to use half a dozen or more capital letters in each sentence - and none of them know where a comma should go.
Finally, and to end the mini rant - one virtually sure way to tell if it is a German speaking English is to ask them how long they've been here or there. It takes a truly fluent English speaker not to say, 'since three years' or whatever the time span is.
However, I can only admire the amount of Germans who do speak English as opposed to the other way round.
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Post by patricklondon on Dec 14, 2011 8:22:53 GMT
Erm...... who came down from Inverness, musically speaking?
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Post by bjd on Dec 14, 2011 9:10:25 GMT
Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie?
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Post by onlymark on Dec 14, 2011 11:02:07 GMT
Damn, I was going to say that.
Anyway, I'm sure it was just done that way to make it rhyme or fill up the syllables or something.
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Post by mickthecactus on Dec 14, 2011 17:12:00 GMT
Erm...... who came down from Inverness, musically speaking? Four and twenty virgins in the version that I know....
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Post by foreverman on Dec 15, 2011 10:36:47 GMT
Its hard to find one these days, let alone twentyfour..............
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Post by onlymark on Dec 16, 2011 14:16:05 GMT
Aren't they all in Spain pressing the olive oil?
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