Random Stuff

[Galvatran]

The Language (other than English) thread is closed for "review" so can't post there.

I heard today that learning another language may help stave off dementia later in life.

[Galvatran]

It was good while it lasted, especially the banter & on occasion the inappropriate conversation topics. You guys & girls have been great to interact here on the boards & being good sports too.

I've never been one to be serious or carry an in depth conversation. Lately, I've jumped one too many sharks and it just ain't worth the trouble moving forward.

Wishing members good health, lots of prosperity & landing that TF holy grail you've been searching for.

Farewell & good bye.


Staff - Please delete my account. Thanks.

[GoktimusPrime]

I recently binge watched a Swedish TV scifi drama series and I've got Swedish on the brain. On one hand it's funny to listen to a language that, to me, sounds like every word has jumped out of an Ikea catalogue (), but there are also elements that I find quite fascinating. Swedish is of course a Germanic language like English, but it's a North Germanic language whereas English is West Germanic. There are striking similarities with English yet it's still incredibly different, unlike comparing English with other West Germanic languages like German, Dutch, Frisian etc. where there are striking similarities everywhere. Swedish has isolated "pockets" of similarity but then it's still mostly different, at least lexically speaking. Grammatically it's still quite similar to English (not surprising given our Germanic grammar engine).

Swedish is a direct descendant of Old Norse whereas English is descendant from Old English but has been greatly influenced by Old Norse thanks to the Vikings. It's also really interesting listening to a tonal European language. Tonality is something that we more commonly hear in some East Asian languages like Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Hmong etc. Tonality does exist in languages outside of this region but it doesn't seem to be as prevalent.

English doesn't have tone but it does have stress, and there are isolated examples of where a shift in stress can change the meaning of a word, usually between its declension.
e.g.
subject (n.) VS subject (v.)
"Please don't subject the students with meaningless work in this subject."
Notice the difference in where the stress falls in the word "subject" in the first and second instance. We place the emphasis on the first syllable when it's a verb but then shift that stress to the second syllable when it's a noun. Tone doesn't matter so much in English but stress does. This is something that native speakers of unstressed languages (e.g. Japanese) can have difficulty with, and similarly when English speakers learn an unstressed. As a Japanese teacher in Australia I'm frequently hearing Anglophones stress out their pronunciation when speaking Japanese when they really shouldn't - this tends to happen with beginning students; my more experienced students have learnt to reduce or eliminate their verbal stress when switching to speaking Japanese (well, most of them ). I'm sure that those of you who are teaching English in Japan must experience the reverse.

Anyway, here is a video of Swedish actress Lisette Pagler. It's a really interesting language to listen to! And it's given me a better idea on how to hopefully more accurately pronounce the name of stuff at Ikea.

[Ralph Wiggum]

It was good while it lasted, especially the banter & on occasion the inappropriate conversation topics. You guys & girls have been great to interact here on the boards & being good sports too.

I've never been one to be serious or carry an in depth conversation. Lately, I've jumped one too many sharks and it just ain't worth the trouble moving forward.

Wishing members good health, lots of prosperity & landing that TF holy grail you've been searching for.

Farewell & good bye.


Staff - Please delete my account. Thanks.

Aww don’t go. Its not all serious business here, we do need the occasional quirky and off-humour commentary you provide

[GoktimusPrime]

Food for thought...

RE: Amazon not paying tax
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazo...Q3pDthwSFYGkKk

Further viewing:
Adam Ruins Amazon

[Trent]

It was good while it lasted, especially the banter & on occasion the inappropriate conversation topics. You guys & girls have been great to interact here on the boards & being good sports too.

I've never been one to be serious or carry an in depth conversation. Lately, I've jumped one too many sharks and it just ain't worth the trouble moving forward.

Wishing members good health, lots of prosperity & landing that TF holy grail you've been searching for.

Farewell & good bye.


Staff - Please delete my account. Thanks.

What for this time? Pushed the limits of acceptable posting a bit far did we?

[GoktimusPrime]

The Goodies are coming back, bay-beee!

[Autocon]

How do they pay 0 tax? I couldnt read the full article. Shows you how broken the tax system really is in the world.

Did gok actually say what tv show he was watching

[GoktimusPrime]

Did gok actually say what tv show he was watching

Äkta människor.
Really addictive viewing! I just wish that I could find Season 2 on DVD.

[Autocon]

So there was a virus on my computer. It has been wiped and new hard drive installed. Feel like I need to change all my passwords now.