h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Something true - A842636
Author: Lady Lowena - U198734


Indonesian for beginners

hi Lady L,

I'm not going to comment on your entry in PR terms, coz I fear you may not be encouraged by what I'd have to say.

Notwithstanding, do you ever look at <./>ThePost</.>?

I only ask coz i looked at your u-space and u complained of the fact that fiction was not welcome in PR.

It is more than welcome in The Post, and particularly in the AggGag column, where we are delighted to feature creative writing, comic or serious, whacky or... well, not.

cyaround
spiff

ps, looking at the preview, i was a bit harsh about this piece: change the title to something more closely related to the content, change the intro a little bit, and why not?

Yes - change the title to someting like "Counting to ten in Indonesian".

The first thaing that struck me was the 'dua' for two. This seems to be a recurring theme. Dos, deux, two, ... Is Indonesian at all influenced by european languages?

In Japanese I believe two is 'ni', and in Turkish it's 'bir' (also not sure about the spelling).

Addendum. Is Indonesian at all influenced by european languages ... or vice versa

In Cantonese it is 'yee' as in 'yat yee sam' (1,2,3), which teletubbies Po says on occasions

you just can't resist dropping in those lofty literary references, can you?

Man of the people, me.

Po speaks cantonese? Thats a new one for me!

Just had an idea! This would make an excelent topic for a collaborative entry. Different people could submit 1-10 in different languages. And people like you could give us some sort of commentary.

What do u think?

I always assumed all the TTs were talking Mandarin!

Nice idea about the one to ten thing. Go for it.

I can only supply two very commonly known ones: French and German.

be happy to stick em down here, if it's of any use. But if you know them yourself, just stick em in an entry with any others you know and can get hold of, and send out a call for forrin numbers from the seething cyber-masses.

In fact if the fair Lady L would like to, you guys could take this Indonesian entry as the basis for the collab...

What a brilliant thread.

Seriously, the idea of counting to 10 in different languages is a good one.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/teletubbies/information/faq/po.shtml

Well, I never!

Where do you get all this information, DMT?

I just get lucky with the small stuff I do know.

You have waaaay too much time on your hands good Doctor.

Ok, I have started the 1-10 entry. It is now in CWW. You can find it here: A844274

I will add the indonesian soon.

What do you think? I have also started a numerals bit for different alphabets, do you know any more (and the entity numbers)?

It was my bleeding idea actually.

Oh dear!

do i hear the sound of toes being trodden on?

Don't Panic!

Don't worry, Lady L, just go take a look at the thread in the CWW and praps say your piece there.

You can always start thinking of 'Something new' to get into the EG. There is still lots to write.

Do you know,I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about? But you seem like a reasonable young man and yer fingernails look clean so I imagine you are not lying, all I did was count up to ten,well twelve actually. Goes down surprisingly well in the pub during on e of those natural lapses in the conversation that happens amongst even the best of friends n'est ce pas?

which bit didn't you understand?

there is a link earlier in this conv to the collaborative entry. There is also a thread in the Collab writing workshop, where people have had some discussion of the whole '1-10' in different langs thing...

it turns out, there is an amazing website where someone has provided 1-10 in some 4500 languages, making the h2g2 idea look pretty insignificant.

I just thought you might be interested to see where Tango went from here...

cyaround
and I hope you won't be put off from writing stuff for the guide,
spiff