Thanks, Tim. Is this a very common expression?

No it wasn't, it was just restricted to a very small portion of Rome.

In Dutch it's het Vaticaan, but vaticaanstad without article.

Thank you, everyone (and especially everyone who replied )

Thank you, henri. I just returned from a well deserved holiday on the planet Zork and am eager to try it all out.

I would say that's partially correct. My dictionary defines die Band [bend] as Kapelle für Tanzmusik oder Jazz and die Bande as Vereinigung von Verbrechern unter einem Anführer; Schar, Pack; Gesellschaft (bes. von Kindern od. jungen Leuten) . Brazilian dude I agree, dude. It's the same in Dutch: &q...

And, of course, we dislike "confused unintelligible language" as our old friend, buzz, taught us so well.

Apo

shhhhhhhh...don't invoke him, he hasn't been 86ed from here...

Katy

86ed???

Oh, well, perhaps we should start learning our kanji, Tim!

Learning to read squares would be more appropriate on my computer.

Is there a difference, and if so, what is it?

Maybe it's "a boy named Sue"?

• verre / glass
• vers / verse
• vers / towards
• vert(e) / green

Not to forget: ver / worm.

(un ver vert dans un verre vert )

On napišet pismo "He will be writing the letter", where the latter has a present form (and a prefix), but the meaning of an accomplished future. The explanation about the perfective is right, but I would translate the above sentence as He will write the letter, or even He will have writte...

Replace "Swedish" by "Dutch" and I'm totally on your side, anders.

This place seems like a very familiar galaxy.

Brak means 'salty' in Dutch, so brakish would be 'saltyish'. It is a rather stranded word with few relatives in Dutch.

And it's only ever used in connection with water.