Pedro Martínez: Yes, that's true! Even the almost absent article is inflected - crazy ;) And I made a mistake: for female nouns we don't say "n" but "ne", so only male and neutral are the same. And that just because the original words are both "ein". So I propably have to take back my whole post ;)

Walter Montego: Thanks for your post. Especially for the remark concerning 'outing'. Another piece of knowledge to my puzzle.

I know nothing about Japanese so I can't confirm that, but it may well be true...:)

Pedro Martínez: I heard the Japanese does not have articles at all.

رضا: You guys obviously aren't from Southern California and the land of freeways, cars, and traffic! :)
It's a trip to work. There are statistics that call them trips or cartrips.

Going to work can be a journey or a voyage or often times an adventure. It is quite common for people to drive over 50 miles one way to get to work. I used to work in downtown Los Angeles and it is 34 miles one way from here. "Good morning commuters, there's big rig jackknifed on the 405 at Imperial and it's caused a Sigalert, you'd better use an alternate route. Let's talk to Jeff in the 'copter over the six car pile up at the 605 and 91." And when it rains around here, it's a real mess. Good thing it doesn't snow. At least twenty radio stations will broadcast traffic conditions throughout the day. Two of them, KNX 1070 and KFW 980, do it every six to ten minutes. We have a lot of television stations do it too.

Drive is the other word that would be used.

For sentence 1, I'd use "trip" from your list, but it'd be common to hear "drive" or "commute" around here.

For sentence 2, I'd use "trip" from your list. Vacation would be common and if by ship you'd hear cruise. Canadians use the word "holiday" as Americans use the word "vacation."

Because of the word "day" in front of your blank in sentence 3, about the only word I would use is "trip." A day trip is a common expression for a trip that has you returning to the starting point the same day. It's said of hiking too.

For sentence 4 from your list, "excursion" might be used. I wouldn't use outing for part of a paid and organized trip. Outing to me is something spontaneous that a family might do, like jump in the car and just head off until something comes up or maybe just head to the beach to spend the day and walk around. I've seen another word for this in travel brochures, but it escapes me right now. It could also be called a "side trip", but I doubt if they'd word it that way in an advertisement. "Tour" is the word I'm thinking of. A full day tour or guided tour.

Sentence 5. Trip or journey seem OK to me. Journey usually implies having to make extra effort to get to somewhere, and the Himalayas qualify.
_________ _________ __________ _________ _______

Voyage doesn't have to be by ship or even a trip to anywhere. It is sometimes said when one is going through life that you're on a voyage. Or a voyage of time. It can also be used for a land crossing, but it's not a very commonly used word. It is as you say much more common for use with travelling by water, but also some type of conveyance. So a train trip could be a voyage across a continent or said of a covered wagon from the pioneer days to cross the continent.

Excursion is not word too many people use. Now that Ford has made this giant SUV and named it the "Excursion" I only hear it when someone is talking about those. The word has a thrusting connotation to it to me and I think of military terminology when I hear it. I suppose it can used to describe some types of trips or vacations.

Mr. Shumway: But you say something like "mit n'm schönen Hai" for instance...the case is almost always evident.

Pedro Martínez: when speaking loosely we often just say "n" - and that fits for female, male and neutral :)

Hrqls: Is there only one case in Dutch? I'm not sure now, but I think so. Well, it's easier to swallow het and de than einem, einer, etc...:))

Pedro Martínez: with short notes we always leave out the articles and person-pointers (he/she/..) .. often in speech as well, or the articles are spoken so fast (and almost swallowed) that they are hard to notice

رضا:
1) trip
2) excursion
3) trip
4) excursion
5) excursion (short time), holiday (longer time), journey (longest time, i think)

My choices are:

1)journey
2)trip
3)trip or maybe even tour?
4)excursion
5)trip

رضا: I'd use:

1) journey
2) trip
3) trip
4) outing
5) journey

Pedro Martínez: I agree. Just like the English people never think on using He or She but I have to mak eup my mind if it's a He I'm talking baout or a She. In Farsi thre's no gender-related pronoun. So basically be you a man or a woman, you're always تو and He or She are both او .

Walter Montego: The Germans actually don't learn the articles with the nouns. They learn the usage of the correct ones from how their parents and other people around them talk to them and later in life, they don't even think of most of articles and suffixes connected with them since they seem to be obvious.

What would you fill each of these blanks with?

• 1) My ... to work took more than 2 hours this morning.
  
• 2) For our holidays next year, we're going on a ten-day ... to Australia.
  
  
• 3) We always go on a day ... to France in December to buy Christmas presents.
  
  
• 4) The price of this holiday includes a full-day ... to a place of cultural interest.
  
  
• 5) He's hoping to go on a(n) ... to the Himalayas next year.
  

Walter Montego: Farsi has only one article too. And it's a definite article. However, unlike English, it's added to the end of a noun instead of the beginning of it.

Walter, Do you have any explanation regarding Trip, Travel, Journey, Voyage, Excursion?

Hrqls: There's just two articles in English that I know of. An indefinite one and a definite one.

"a" and "the". I have the hardest time figuring out why so many of the other European languages have all them articles and genders. I suppose when you grow up speaking German you just learn the article with the noun, but in English you just learn the noun. Der, die, das, den, and dem. They all mean "the". English has one thing that is easier to learn, now if we could just figure out how to spell English.

Pedro Martínez: Thank you again. Hey at this rate, I'm going to at least learn how to type Czech.

Crissie: You're welcome.
"Taky taky" means "same here" or "the same to you".:)

Pedro Martínez: Oh thanks!!

What about TAKY TAKY ???

Crissie: "I'm off to home - have a nice weekend. :)

JDU DOMU - PEKNEJ VIKEND PREJU

Could someone please translate this?? It is Czech.

رضا: *nod* i always make the mistake of using ul and il or lu and li .. the names make it easier to remember to use the correct syntax :)

Hrqls: I was gonna ask you if you knew what they stand for, and you gave it to me yourself!

They are easier to memorize if I know what they stand for.

Thanks.

رضا: Yes, I think it's fascinating.

رضا:
(ul = unordered list)
(li = list item)
(ol = ordered list, but i dont think fencer allows that one)

Pedro Martínez: It's interesting how languages, especially European ones, have similar words.

Haha! It worked

رضا: "Mají doma krokodýly" means "They've got crocodiles at home". :)

Hrqls: Thanks for the dot explanation :-)

• I
  
• you
  
• he
  

رضا: This kind of question can be most easily answered by the native speakers. I would say that:
Trip is interchangeable with journey, voyage is a journey to some very distant place taking lots of time, travel is the act of travelling - it's more general term encompassing the other four, and excursion is a short journey.

Pedro Martínez: Just out of curiosity Pedro, does this krokodýli hav eanything to do with crocodiles?

رضا: could be .. i never used the word .. but that doesnt mean anything :)

to create a list (the black dots) you can do the following

you define place [ul] and [/ul] around the list
each list item has [li] in front of it
(after each list item you can place [/li] but it isnt really needed)

so a list of animales would be
[ul]
[li]dog
[li]cat
[li]horse
[/ul]

• dog
  
• cat
  
• horse
  

(replace the [] by <> to make it work for real :))

Hrqls: Well, I'm almost certain about the voyage one. It's a trip or journey by sea. Water should be involved somehow.

Let's wait for our native friends to give us a hand with it.

By the way, how do you make those black dots?

رضا: my 'feeling' tells me

• trip : short distance
  
• travel : the act itself, or when the trip is still busy
  
• voyage : longer time
  
• journy (journey?) : about the same as voyage, i think voyage is an older word and not used much anymore ?
  
• excursion : you have something of interest to watch during the trip/voyage
  

Pedro Martínez: The explanation you provided supports what that link Marfitalu gave us and the book I have. So I guess it's all clear now what the difference really is.

English is full of words that are different in English, but in Farsi we use the same, or almost the same words for them.

Trip, Travel, Journy, Voyage, Excursion are a few such words.

I know how voyage is different from others, it's a trip by sea, but the rest are quite similar.

Take these examples:

1) My ... to work took more than 2 hours this morning.
2) For our holidays next year, we're going on a ten-day ... to Australia.

3) We always go on a day ... to France in December to buy Christmas presents.

4) The price of this holiday includes a full-day ... to a place of cultural interest.

5) He's hoping to go on a(n) ... to the Himalayas next year.

Mr. Shumway and Pedro: Interesting.

رضا: The English verb 'visit' is derived from the Middle English visiten, ev. from Old French visiter, from Latin visitare, frequentative of visere, which means to want to see, go to see, from videre, to see.

رضا: yes, both are derived from latin visitare.
edit: not sure about the exact word ;)

Marfitalu: So do you have any idea if that VISTA is any related to VISIT in English?

I bet it must be. Both the spelling and meaning are quite similar.

Pedro Martínez: lol! well at least they had the courage to change something ... to bad they were as blonde as me though ;)

Hrqls: Heh, if I were like you, I would be constantly yelling when watching TV or reading newspapers.
I remember a situation when there was this sentence written on TV: "Mají doma krokodýli" (There should be 'y' at the end). After a minute or two, I guess after a phone call from some viewer, they changed it to "Mají doma krokodíli". LOL Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Pedro Martínez: yes very ugly :)
we have 2 plural forms in dutch indeed -en and -s .. most words use -en though i think ... i dont know of any rule to know if i should use -s or -en .. thats pure 'feeling' :)
(i guess foreign words use -s ?)

'articles' ? hmm never knew about that .. no wonder i couldnt find it :)

i also see a lot of people (in every job, level of education, etc.) use 'een hele mooie auto' while it should be 'een heel mooie auto'
(a very beautiful car)

this is because 'heel' in that sentence points to 'mooie' and not to 'auto' ... its a personal pet peeve of me ... every time i hear it on the news, see it in the news paper (its even written down! not just speech), etc. i yell out! :)
(my gf recently joins me in the yelling ;))

Hrqls: That's an interesting point about the articles. In Czech, there are no special words for them, but they are formed as suffixes and their usage is more complex. I often have the same feeling that in the future, we'll have only one gender, just like the English, as people keep mixing and mixing them. :)

How 'bout 'pions'? :) Is that "ugly too? LOL

Pedro Martínez: *nod* my gf had to write 'pawns' in dutch ...

1 pawn = 1 pion
2 pawns = 2 pionnen

'pionnen' looks ugly though so she thought .. and i wasnt sure either ... but 'pionen' looks even more ugly ;)
it turned out to be 'pionnen' .. which is logically as well when you think of the rules again :)

Pedro Martínez: in dutch we have only 2 words which can be used in front of words .. i cant find the proper english name ('lidwoord' in dutch) .. like 'the' in english and 'le,la,les' in french and 'die,der,das' in german .. we have 'de, het' in dutch

'de' is for female and male word and plural
'het' is for neutral words

lately i notice a lot of people using 'de' when they should use 'het'

also 'this' has 2 forms ('deze' and 'dit')
'that' as well ('die' and 'dat')

lately i hear a lot of people use the male/female/plural form for neutral words

i guess we are going to 1 form in the future

Hrqls: Right. That's how it works in all languages with multiple letters for the same sounds. Reza would probably be able to tell whole stories about all those 'Z's and 'S's in Farsi. :)
Fencer: The Czech "translation" is perfect, of course. As far as I can tell, however...:) Plus note that I said "almost".

Pedro Martínez: I do. See the BrainKing translation to Czech.

Pedro Martínez: yes, as well as the 'f' and 'v' and the 's' and 'z' in the middle of some words .. write them down and one version will look 'ugly' .. so you use the other one :)

Hrqls: I bet the Dutch 'g' and 'ch' can be quite tricky, huh? Same thing with the Czech 'i' vs. 'y' and 's' vs. 'z'. It seems to be almost impossible to find a Czech who would speak and especially write proper Czech. :)

Pedro Martínez: very true about native speakers ... if i am not sure about something in dutch i pronounce both possibilities and chose the one which 'feels right' :)

the same when i ponder over the spelling of a word .. i write down both spellings and chose the one which 'looks or feels right' :)