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

Hi there again

Owl told me that you wanted to have a chat with me so here I am
Did you want to talk in english or german? I don't mind if we have conversations here as well as online as I can see you are not always on yahoo msg but you are frequently here.

Any topic in mind then?

By the way, I would like it if you could add me to your friends list as well! The more the merrier

hmmm I have just spammed

It seems as if everytime I was on Yahoo Messenger you weren't and the other way around. But now that we're both here...

Oh, and of course I will add you to my list of friends. Well, not exactly add since I don't really have one right now - but how about I'm starting with you?

Methos

Yay!

I have added some more information on my personal page (I will do the big change in June right after my exams)if you want to have a look and some Greek at the start of it.

I too k a look and I like the changes so far.

Care to translate that Greek sentence at the top for me?

Oh, and reading your introduction it finally clicked - Cyprus, of course! Jeez, please excuse my not really existing knowlegde in geography. But now I got it... divided in two parts...

You speak Armenian, too? So all in all, you speak Armenian, Greek and English plus French and German?

I always envied people who grew up with two languages. I wasn't that happy and had to learn the hard way.

Methos

Oh, I gotta go. I have to meet my aunt at my parents house and since I need an hour to get there... Berlin is just too huge.

Methos

Thanks for all your compliments!

I thought I would let people know where I come from and a bit about the island for those that didn't know. By the way did you hear the big news about the opening of the borders between the two sides?

Yeah I have grown up in a billingual environment. My mom is Armenian and my dad is Greek-cypriot and while I was a child I attended an armenian elementary school where I learned how to read and write the language.

Well we shall talk later then! have fun at your aunt's. The weather is just so dry and warm in Manchester now that I feel like doing my studying outside today.

see you

So, I'm back again. I stayed at my parent's overnight. It's really warm here in Berlin, too. The summer has finally arrived, it seems.

You said - well, wrote, that you also learned the Armenian script. I think, I read somewhere that the Mongolian script descended from the Armenian one - or at least a script connected to the Armenian one. Is it written from the right to the left and has it isolated letters?

Methos

I am not sure if the mongolian language originated from the Armenian but I do know that some of the words in Armenian originated from the Persian language and no it is not written from right to left. It's left to right and the letters are together. Armenian has one of the longest alphabets as well. Take a look at this link if you want to see the alphabet and learn a bit more on the language :The http://www.omniglot.com/writing/armenian.htm

It is spoken in various countries especially Syria, Cyprus, Lebanon, Armenia etc. But of course there are different dialects to it and not everyone in these countries will speak it exactly the same way. I once met this girl from Armenia and she was from a specific region where the dialect and pronounciation there is completely different to the way we speak it in Cyprus. We could not understand each other at all! It was like hearing someone speak japanese or something. It sounded Armenian but it was like hearing a foreign langauge so we ended up speaking English instead.

Well, in German there are also very different dialects. I wouldn't understand somebody from "Schwaben" if he spoke in his dialects. The have totally different words for some things.

And I didn't mean that the Mongolian language as such originated from the Armenian. It doesn't. Just the script.

Methos

Yeah I know what you mean.


Yay just finished all my exams!!! I am free now! My husband though has 2 more exams left, one tomorrow and one on thursday. It's such a relief to know that I won't be studying for the whole summer! I went out with some friends today right after our French exam to celebrate and have some drink s. It was great

Congratulations!!! God, I really envy you. On the other hand - as a student you have the summer to yourself, too. So that's not too bad.

Do you want to take some time off or will you get a job right away?

Methos

I think, after 4 long years of studying, will take some time off first before I start working. I have a few ideas what I want to do so I think I will research and find out more about those areas before I start applying for those kind of jobs.

Most people I have asked don't seem to have an idea of what they want to do now as a job but the ones that do know are planning to do a masters (which is a magister in German right?). I certainly would like to do a masters or research degree either in an area of computing (one called natural language processing or even a conversion course), physcology or languages. I will see.

That sounds like a good plan. Not only the part with taking some time off but also doing some research to find the right job.

I'm not sure if a masters would be a Magister in Germany. "Normally" you study three years in the UK and if you do another year then you get your masters. Right? In Germany - at least if you study languages, history... - you normally study for four years plus another half a year for your final exams. And then you can get your PhD...

Methos

Yeah most degree courses in England last 3 years and with some courses you can have a year out in industry so if you did that, it would be 4 years. However, most langauge degree in England are 4 years long(like mine was) because it is compulsory, as part of you studies, to spend some time in the country or countries of the languages you are studying. In my second year, I spent 5 months in France and 4 months in Germany

After you get your undergraduate degree, you can do a masters which lasts about a year or do a research-based degree (an Mphil or Phd). Mphil is usually 1-2 years and Phd is 3 years. Are you doing your phd now?
During my course, we learned quite a lot of things on the education system in Germany.

Nope, I'm still working on getting my Magister. Unfortunately I've slipped into the new - do you know the word "Studienordnung"? I don't have a dictionary with me right now but I'll look it up later when I'm home again. Anyway, it means that I have to learn Russian for at least three semsters. Which is kinda prolonging my time at university.

And now I gotta go. I have another course. It's about the early works of Lessing.

Methos

well I know that 'studien' is study' and 'ordnung' is order or discipline but never came across that word before. I can only assume it means a study programme of some kind?

Well, now that I'm at home again, I'm going to look it up *grabs her big, fat dictionary and searches for "Studienordnung" - and finds nothing* Great, of course, that has to be missing in the thing.

Okay, so I'm trying to explain. The "Studienordnung" tells you the term of your study like how many courses you have to do, what the exams will look like and what kind of courses you have to do. In my case, the "Studienordnung" of Mongolian studies says that I have to learn two Central Asian langues. Stuff like that.

Methos

Well I do know from learning German that you get a lot of words which are combined together but don't actually exist in dictionaries, such as some linked words in newspapers or in the political magazine 'Spiegel'. I did a translation of a text in the Spiegel from German into English about the secret of the spies (FBI) and I found that a lot of the words were made up and it was really hard to find an english equivalent for them.

I understand what Studienordung is now in German. In English it's more like course structure explaining what courses you have to take and any optional subjects.

So what two central languages do you have to learn?

In my second year I took spanish as an option. I love the language and picked it up really fast