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

That is in DEED a problem!
Har du prøved Panodil?
Have you tried a cat?
Kansje lite spritt?
Eller en dåseåbner?

Ay, no es bueno!

O M G

This is getting international, eh?

Imponerende!

Scadinavia rules!!
Ingen tvil!/ingen tvivl! (that last one is Danish, I'm right? who saves letters now, haha! Well, anyway, never mind )

Min personlige erfaring er at det aldri er morsomt å være på fest med tyskere... men jeg har ikke så veldig masse erfaring i å feste sammen med dem heller..

Yes, quite. (international, that is)

Jeg kan ikke sie hur fest med tyskere skulle kunne gå i Norge, jeg vet bare at jeg var dritt-lei av det her.
Jaha, det var bare å grine af, det...
(Grine is the Danish word for laughing. In Norwegian, however...) GNIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Hvem bryr sig likevel?

The millennium has passed and I have finally learned how to spell millennium. How grand is that?!?

Ich bin ein Holzfäller und fühl mich stark
Ich schlaf des Nachts und hack am Tag

Er ist ein Holzfäller und fühlt sich stark
Er schlaft des Nachts und hackt am Tag

Ich fälle Bäume, ich ess mein Brot
Ich geh auf das WC
Am Mittwoch geh ich shopping
Kau kekse zum kaffee

Er fällt die Bäume er isst sein Brot
Er geht auf das WC
Am Mittwoch geht er shopping
Kaut kekse zum kaffee

Er ist ein Holzfäller und fühlt sich stark
Er schlaft des Nachts und hackt am Tag

Ich fälle Bäume und hupf und spring
Steck Blumen in die Vas
Ich schlupf in Fraukenleider
Und lummel mich in Bars

Er fällt Bäume, er hupft und springt
Steckt Blumen in die Vas
Er schlupft in Fraukenleider
Und lummelt sich in Bars...?

Er ist ein Holzfäller und fühlt sich stark
Er schlaft des Nachts und hackt am Tag

Ich fälle Bäume, trag Stockelschuh
Und Strumpf und Bustenhalter
Wär gern ein kleines Mädchen
So wie mein Onkel Walter

Er fällt die Bäume, tragt Stockelschuh
Und Strumpf und Bustenhalter...?

Jeg har bare vært på en fest med tyskere, eller èn tysker, og det var
til å grine av...på norsk!

Jeg bryr meg iværtfall ikke.

Funny, I thought it's supposed to be with only one n.
Still, grand enough!

I think I'm starting to get addicted to coffe!
I drank about 3 litres of the stuff last night, while writing an essay
about the millenium.
I hate writing essays!

Millennium! Two L's and two N's.

Om du kan klare av 5 liter på en go kvell, da kan du bli me på en kaffeklub!
Om du kan klare av å skrive navnet ditt uten å skjelve, kan du bli chefen!

Let's face it, coffee rules. (BTW - that's coffee with two F's and two E's.)

When Coca Cola introduced their new caffeine-free diet cola in Denmark, there was a give-away in Aalborg. I received a bottle and took a look at it and then looked at the nice girl who gave it to me.
"What's the point in this if it doesn't contain caffeine," I asked her deadpan.
"Erh, healthier," she stuttered and looked at me much the same way people tend to look at people in movies where at least one of the main characters has a thing with hockey-masks, big knives and winding up dead three minutes prior to the *THE END* sign come up.
I considered refusing to take the bottle, but hey, I am but human.

Well, more or less...

BTW -

Tech, I liked the lyric. I have it in a book with nice letters on it.

And Fisk, I love writing essays!

Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Ha ha ha, kirtem stanislaw.

Slat ü immermöch die Poland?

Käpt heilst!

KimotoCat

You all may or may not have guessed by now that I can't actually speak german, and I am, in fact, just reeling off various german phrases that I know of.

Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug ist voll von den Aalen.

What makes you think that I can?

In fact I have had but one year of school education in this awkward language. And I have met a few of the native Germans, some of whom (typically German) do not speak anything but German.

Mind you, my last remark was NOT german. (I am not sure, what it really was, but it WAS something. A quote among others!)

But hey, we should feel sorry for the Germans. Did you know that Denmark is one of the leading L2 nations of the world? (L2 being Second Language Teaching.) Why? Because we are such a small nation that nobody outside can be bothered to actually learn our language. Hence we have to learn the 'big languages' of the world; English, Spanish, the likes. (Yah, I guess also a little German, French and Italian or, for the masochists; Latin.)
Therefore we have spent a long time learning how to acquire and teach those languages, and we have become quite good at it.

Why that should make us feel sorry for the Germans? Because they, like the Brits, the Americans and, for some reason, the French, speak a language that they themselves consider a world-language. In Germany - and most of the other big ones) they watch television synchronized / voiced-over to their own language and when they travel abroad (like to Denmark) they can manage in their own language. How should a nation so wrapped upo in its own language ever spend much time or ressources on learning other languages?

Me? I grew up reading the subtitling in English programmes, listening to English songs, learning English in school and seeing it on my C64, on my Amiga and now on my PC - even more as I advance onto the Internet. How can I NOT acquire some of it?

Dat, natrally dont meen dat I haf pikt up anyteng at all!

One thing bugs me, though.
Why is German a world language?
English, French and Spanish, yeah, I can see why.
These nations once had colonies and stuff all over the World, and the
inhabitants of these former colonies have the respective language (of the colonizer) as their primary or secondary language!
But Germany?
For all I know, they once had a few colonies, perhbs in Africa, what do I know? But 99% of those who have German as primary language live in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, in that area, anyway.
If you're in Europe north of France, and south of Russia, yeah, German would come in handy. But what do you do if you're in South America?
There's about 80 000 000 people with German as their primary language(that's what my German/Norwegian glossary book says, anyway) ,which is, in my opinion a lot. That might be the reason.
But then, what about Chinese, and Russian?
They've got plenty, plenty more!
I just don't get it!

Ah, but then there are two kinds of world-languages!
The first is that, which is spoken by a considerable part of the world population.
The second is that, which is spoken by people who consider themselves a considerable part of the world population.
This should explain some of it, even if not in a very flattering way to the people of the latter determination...

There is also a third kind of "world language", which is a language which is spoken over a large geographic area of the world. The German-speakers, for all their limited numbers, are all over the world, whereas the Chinese and the Russian-speakers are really confined to their own lands. Still not terribly flattering to all those people who speak Chinese or Russian, but it does mean something, I guess...!

Is there really German-speakers all over the World?
Of course there are a few immigrants who speak German around, but not like large groups of them, I think.
I bet there are lots of Chinese-speaking immigrants around as well.
And if you say that Russia is not a large area of the world, I guess it's been a while since last time you opened an Atlas...

Russian is a world-language, solely due to the huge number of people speaking it! Like it or not, that's how it is.

Russian and Chinese are slightly more complicated than that. Both Russia and China have large geographic areas, but the people in all parts of them don't necessarily speak the "official" language. The Chinese, for example, have an ongoing competition between Cantonese and Hanyu, and the only thing which makes Hanyu the more popular is that it is the official language of China. There are lots of parts of Russia, too, with different ethnic makeups from your common or garden Muscovite. The Ukrainians, for example, have a different language - or at least a dialect, I think.

The Chinese Empire succeeded in spreading the Chinese written language throughout Asia. The Russians did not have so much success in this regard. The Germans spread through Africa and southeast Asia (Papua New Guinea, for example, was a German possession) and then went on to antagonise everybody in Europe for a while, too. The German language has, as a result, been spoken by more different peoples than either Russian or Chinese, I suspect.

Finally, it is well to remember that a large part, but certainly not the larger part, of the world's peoples speak English, yet it is classified as the ultimate "world language". If the status of the language is determined by how many speak it, why would this be so...?

A world language is, among others, determined from the number of people speaking it.

For English to become the leading world language, you need remember that it is in deed the most commonly spoken, when you also take into counting alle the people tho whom English is a second language.
I am Danish but speak (and write) English, which makes me an English-speaking person by world-language determination.
With the Internet being primarily English and most programmes likewise, including programming languages, English is bound to win in the long run.

To be honest, that doesn't mean that English is the best language to acquire as a second language, just that facts show that most people use it.
Basically, English pronunciation is a killer to many different people. More people write an adequate English than actually speak it well.

English rules - it's a fact!

All right then, point conceded...