If tones are in question, Ladyquill, how are you getting on with the tones in Thai? I found them very difficult, whereas tones in Burmese, for some reason, came easy.

Quote: ' Speaking more languages makes you smarter' ...

OK, Badandy, not exactly, but I would argue that speaking more languages equips you better for lateral thinking. Each new language gives you a slightly different way of looking at the world.

I know what a nun is, but what's a nun sophit?

This is the first time I've agreed with George Bush, and it may well be the last. The first two things are not torture, and the third may or may not be. Torture is (according to the Oxford English dictionary) 'the infliction of excruciating pain'. It's fun to play with language to enforce your views...

When I posted those Dacian plant names (at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/extra/DacianPlants.html with a message here, as a long term reply to Brian Costello's post about Dacian kings) I had already got English equivalents for all but two of the plants. The remaining two had been identified by a Germ...

You surely know, O unfortunate BD, that Oscar Wilde has answered your question.

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune ... to lose both seems like carelessness.

[The importance of being earnest, Act 1]

Andrew

Thank you, good Doctor, I never knew till now that I drug. But at least I never dove: I always dived.

Andrew

I think the OED is right. In Britain we never snuck, we always sneaked.

I like gravy. I hate jus.

Sorry to have taken so long to reply. I was trying to remember what guides to Thai script I had used myself -- now that I come to calculate, it wasn't a few years ago but 22 years ago -- and, naturally enough, I can't remember. It wasn't the Web, anyway! But I just fed thai script learn into Google ...

Yes, Stargzer, I do see exactly what you mean. You want to pour eau froide on these pretentious chefs ...

Andrew

There's a history of monosodium glutamate, by Jordan Sand, in the current issue of Gastronomica: see www. gastronomica.org It seems from this article that if you use Umami to mean 'the fifth flavour' (as I have done in the past) you are using a trade name -- and this is exactly what the manufacturer...

Stargzer, in preferring good American green beans to showy French haricots verts you have Ernest Hemingway on your side. Americans in Paris, in Hemingway's /The Sun Also Rises/ (British title /Fiesta/), enjoy a restaurant meal including green beans -- not a word about haricots, whether verts or any ...

Those names of Dacian kings have a syllable structure reminiscent of some of the other Dacian words that are recorded in ancient sources. OK, not surprising, but it helps to show they are genuine Dacian. Most of the others are names for edible and medicinal plants. They are recorded by the Greek pha...

I wonder how difficult it would be to learn to write Thai... I did it, a few years ago now. I already knew Sanskrit script, which made it easier because the two work on the same principle and Sanskrit (devanagari) is more logical, but you can manage it without! I would say a few days of very hard w...