Mehdi Gezali was in no way innocent That guy must know something the rest of the world is unaware of. No charges about anything have been pressed; no information on any indictable offense or even misconduct has been delivered to Sweden. Ghezali was under investigation for criminal activity in Swede...

But, certainly, I am not against detaining people "caught" in the middle of a battle zone and interrogating them, and keeping them until it is determined that they are combatants or collaborators with the enemy. Why was he uncooperative? (post a link to this story, anders) How were the in...

All the digit names 1-9 (with the possible exception of sebn) are one syllable only. Rhythm and consistency calls for a one-syllable zero. For you Glenn Miller fans, can you imagine "Pennsylvania six five zero zero zero"?

All those supporting torture assume that they'll get vital information out of the process. But what if the assumption is wrong? How much useful information will you get from this Swedish student caught in Pakistan about for example who's where in Afghanistan? I find the fact that this poor guy was s...

Well, now they have a alphabetical system called Zhuyin or Bopomofo . And there's the Hànyú Pīnyīn 汉语 拼音, using Latin letters. Not perfectly intuitive to "Westerners", but quite sound :P from a phonological point of view. And surely, Even before that, the long linquistic tradition of Chin...

Tks, Flam! I hope your Hebrew writing software supports Biblical niqudot for a nun sophit. There are some other ways on my HD, but to be Unicode compatible, I just use Word: Insert: Symbol and go for something like Arial Unicode MS. All the dotty things are there. There will seldom be a need for me ...

Nostalgia is what it used to be.

The wav links didn't work for me, and I'm too lazy, it's too late and I downed too much wine to find out why. Anyway, li Wallon is a language I don't expect to understand, from what I've seen of it. People who think it's French must be crazy.

I have a question...how are you doing with pronunciation in your Chinese class? I had a student that could hardly make herself clear when speaking English, but could write better than most Americans her age. And when she tried to teach me to speak a few phrases, she would laugh and laugh. I thought...

How does your brain learn languages?

Well, just back from 3 hours of 3rd semester Chinese, I can only say ... slowly.

Domine deus, but a consonant didn't work. jebarekka?

Of course. Mea culpa. My eyes shortened the upper part of the final, and I've forgotten most of the enclitic pronouns so I didn't realize my error.

If I know the person's preferred greeting, I'll try to use it. If I don't know it, I'll use one of my preferred and hope they respond civilly, even if theirs is different. I think I would raise my eyebrows if the other person loudly, agressively and belligerently insisted that everyone use his or h...

Drinking Belgian beer in Belgium. There's nothing like it. Sitting at the Muntplein in Brussels, successfully having avoided that tourist trap Grand Place, enjoying a rrreal Belgian monastery produced very dark and aromatic beer in an oversized brandy snifter - that's pure bliss. But I might equally...

I'd like a tranclation better like:a sweet tasty pain.

What Swedes name 'pain Riche' is 'baguettes' to a Frenchman. Not very sweet or even tasty though, but far away from that plastic abomination of a bread imitation that the English dub "Mother's Pride".

The more languages you learn, (or try to :wink: ), the greater your understanding of how languages work becomes. And if you try languages widely differing from those you already know, you'll as an extra bonus gain more insight into how other people think. In my case, I teach English to foreigners. ...