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

I'm not so far behind you AR80, only a little over 20 years A life times worth of experiences for you, I'm glad you, and others, have enjoyed fulfilling and happy lives. Mine has been as well

Dear nortirascal,

You ask me not to judge. If I had known what you have just told me about the Belgian Congo, I would have died on the spot. I was very involved with the Belgians when they fled from the Congo. As I was one of the few people who spoke french in Salisbury, I was delegated to go onto every airdraft as they landed bringing in the Belgian women and children refugeess and I was expected to welcome them to Rhodesia, and then tell them what was going to happen until the Belgian Govenrment sent out the relief aircraft to take them back to Belgian.

I am absolutely appalled that you can talk of such methods of killing and ask us not to judge. Well I do not judge, but I am not surprised that we in the west are regarded with so much suspicion and disdain by the new govenments in the Afridcan countries. We take all their minerals, pay them minimum wages, and then get cross when they want some equality.

Thank you for having enlightened me at last as to what the mercernaries were up to. I had absolutely no idea. More fool I.

No wonder I am a pacifist....

OMG. I must abandon this thread for the moment.

CME

AR80

4.11/2019 8.05 GMT

I am glad you are a pacifist AR80, I respect your views and will defend your right to hold them. Sometimes us ex-military types can be brutally insensitive to the sensibilities of others I do cocur with your views on the colonial larcency this, and other western countries have been involved with. Neither my father, nor I, were ever mercenaries, it was a product of training, discipline and in name of Queen and Country. As I said before, dirty work done for your freedom to hold your pacifist views, some one has to do it

Shall we move along the now and talk of swashbuckling and other more amusing items

I only just got caught up on this thread...

"Danke schon" means something else: "thanks already".

If you don't have those umlaut dots available in German, you can't just leave them out, as in most cases it distorts the meaning of the word. The most famous example is "schwül" (hot and humid) and "schwul" (homosexual).

But there is an easy solution. These two dots represent the letter "e" that, for some reason, used to be written on top of the vowel it followed (as still evident in very old books). So, all you need to do ist to insert that "e" after the letter again: "Danke schoen". This spelling is considered to be equal to the umlaut. Actually, ä, ö, ü is always replaced by ae, oe, ue in German e-mail addresses and URLs.

What about other languages that use umlauts - Turkish, Hungarian, or Scandinavian languages, for example? Do they insert an "e" as well?

Dear naughtirascal,

Certainly my friend. It was just such a shock to me when I was at the receiving end in Salisbury airport of the Belgian "refugees" who were coming out of the Congo. I only heard one side of the story but have been learning about the other slowly and painfully over the years.

Go well.

Christiane
AR80

4/III/2010 10.07 GMt

Dear Yarreau,

thank you for the exxplication about Thank you in German, which was wrong - and also about the mlaut. I shall try and remember it.

I thought you were french? but you are already trilingual. Wonderful.

Nice to meet you.

Un plairi....hope that is correct. ""

Sincerely,

Christiane - which as you probably know is a French and I believe also a german name.
AR80

4/III/201010.11 GMT

Dear Christiane,
I am a kind person and hoped everybody would see I'm just messing around here.

I apologise if I appeared unkind. cheers.

We all are guilty of publishing in haste and I am as guilty as anyone else, if not more so

So come'on lets all move on down the and have some swashbuckling fun My knowledge of german is woefully appalling as well AR80, thanks for coming back friend and understanding

Hi Christiane,
appearances can be deceiving.

My favourite online nickname was already taken, so I had to use a somewhat creative spelling instead. I'm plain boring German, with native fluency in English and Dutch, acceptable French, some Spanish and a few other languages besides that I can at least read.

Christiane is a very old German name. And it was the name of Goethe's wife!

Sorry Yarreau, I left out the "s" in "plaisir"
Bonne journee,

Christiane

Ar80

4/III/2010 12.10 GMT

So, Goethe's wife was called Christiane. I am really honoured.!!

My name came about because my Papa was born in 1902. The anglo boer war was on at that time, and the French, for a change - had taken the side of the Boers who were busily fighting the British .

There was aa famous boer General called General Christiaan de Wet, and so my grandparents, in his honour, gave his name to my father as his second name. Then for whatever reason, probably because they liked the name ( and I also like my name!!) I was their eldest child and so they named me the feminine form of christian which of course has an e on the end. Yarreau is an interesting nickname. I do not know if it has a meaning.

Kind regards

Christiane.
AR80

4/II/2010 12.15 GMT

Yarreau has a meaning when you say it oud loud: Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), a wildflower and healing herb of which I am particularly fond.

Hi naugtirascal.

When I first joined h2g2 I was full of enthsiasm, and there waas a guy from Austalia who had a very nice name and who lived, as far as I can remember in a tree over a lake full of crocodfiles. Anyway, I foolishly asked if I could be his friend. He offered me a ccomodation in his tree, that had a branch which hung over a lake full of crocodiles.
I realised pretty soon that he did not want to be my friend. I think he still posts. !!and I always have a giggle about it. I encountered quite a log of opposition when I first joined because a lot of people thought that I was too old to be a member of this exclusive club. !
However I also encountered an enormous fund of good will, not the least of which was from a wonderful person in the Netherlands called pheloxi. He died very suddenly a year ago next month. He was a great loss to a great many people on this site.
sincerely,

Christiane
AR80

4/III/2010 12.26 GMT

Thank you mu dea/ I must go and look it up in Wikipedia.

CME
AR80

4/III/2010 12.30 GMt

You're not really that much older than me AR80, and certainly younger than my Mother who has grown used to the strangeness of the males in our family over the years.

The art of friendship is in respecting the views of others, not being judgemental and immediately seizing the moral high ground when their tenets differ wildly from yours You do, I believe, have displayed that ability, thus I would welcome you as a friend However, that is your choice

I used to enjoy the singing of a folk singer named Peter Yarrow. He was part of the trio "Peter Paul and Mary." He still accepts singing engagements nowadays. Paul Stookey, another member of the trio, still sings too. Mary has died, I believe.

Christiane is a beautiful name.

Julie Andrews is still attractive. I attended a speech that she gave at the American Library in 2007. I enjoyed her work in the film "Tooth Fairy."

And then there's jazz singer Al Jarreau...

Yes, there he is!

Where, exactly, is he? Milwaukee? San Francisco? Hollywood?

Dunno, but this is where he will be...
http://www.aljarreau.com/tour.php