Fencer: nice!

maybe another idea would be to have the poster place the code in between a certain code which then would be parsed by the site when someone reads it and shown in the language they have selected to view the site

for example you post [lang]"diky"[/lang] and i would read "dank u wel"
(the site will see you write in czech as you have czech selected as your language, so it looks up your text in the czech list, and then translates it to dutch as thats the language i have selected

it might be tough though as the site wont find "diky" in the czech list as its missing some accents .. and therefore would still show it as "diky" to me as its unknown to the site :)

King Reza: to my (non native english ears) the sentence 'What do you think is the cure for cancer?' puts more emphasis the word 'you' (or at least it asks more directly what 'you' think while the other sentence asks more about the cure for cancer

but thats just a feeling :)

Reza: the sentences can mean both .. they are ambiguous

the same with the sentence :
i met my cousin and his friend, who married my sister

if course its more like to have the friend marry your sister .. but the sentence could still mean your cousin married your sister :)

in english you have learn and teach .. in dutch we only have 1 word leren .. i cant find an example right now .. but there are a lot of sentences (which happen in every day speak) in which its not clear if you are teaching someone or being taught :)

there is a funny thing with the vowels when we compare dutch with english

in english the A is pronounced as the dutch E
in english the E is pronounced as the dutch I
in english the I is pronounced as the dutch IJ

would the phonetics of those different vowels be the same ?

is there a diffence in phonetic script for the different languages ?

how would you write the following words ?

• we (english)
  
• oui (french, means 'yes')
  
• wie (german, means 'how')
  
• wie (dutch, means 'who')
  

BBW & Pedro: *nod* 'ik spreek alleen engels' is the correct translation

'ik spreek slechts het engels' would translate back into english as 'i only speak the dutch'
(you could say 'ik spreek alleen de engelse taal' which would translate to 'i only speak the dutch language' .. but thats worded too officially)

Rose: lol true :)

glad they dont use american english in programming languages like basic as well otherwise it would be
'if ... than ... end if'

(just kidding! ;))

Rose: true .. but it also makes it a lot tougher ;)

especially since we learn british english in high school but learn american english from television :)

i love consistence though (is that the term?) .. brings structure in everything you do .. especially important while programming :)

Rose: as well as 'analyse' and 'analyze'

at the university we were allowed to write our work either in american english or in british english ... but not in a mixture of both .. so if we started with 'analyze' we had to continue with 'color' as well ... the professors were quite strict on that

there is another reason to write

your welcome

the reason is : being lazy ;)
i hardly use ' on the internet .. i will always write 'dont' and 'your' etc because i am lazy :)
in official messages i will use better english though :)

last holiday i had troubles finding the english word for 'square' : an area surrounded by houses.
As very few squares are actually square (at least in the netherlands) it was very tough to think of the word, whenever my mind came close to the word 'square' it discarded it because it wasnt logical ;)

pauloaguia: *nod* thats the main profit that i have from having learned ancient latin and ancient greek .. some languages look like latin, but more importantly i learned how certain language groups are built and can expand on that when i hear a new language .. it certainly helps me when i am in a forgeign country :)

Pedro Martínez: yes, dutch had more cases in the past ... all cases are gone .. but we still find them in some words .. never nouns though

english has a few cases left as well, like 'they, them, their'

in dutch we have 'wiens, wier' and probably some more .. few people use those forms any more though

رضا: why would someone learn ancient latin ? why would someone learn ancient greek ?

the only real reason i can think of would be to study ancient texts in their original language

as i am not linguist, and never will be one, my skills are more in the mathematical field, i will never translate any ancient texts .... but i did have some benefits from learning to read ancient greek and ancient latin .. it made it easier for me to understand other foreign languages. i never learned any italian or spanish, but having had ancient latin i can roughly read spanish and italian news papers. i never found a language which made me think of ancient greek .. but maybe i might have some use for it when i visit greece? .. at least it helped me during my physics study because i know the names for the symbols used to the angles .. other students always used the wrong names .. lots of fun :)

other than that i have no real use for having had those languages in school .. but since i went to a 'gymnasium-only' school i had to have both language and have exam in at least one of them (i chose ancient greek as those texts were more interesting, and the language seems more fun, and because we just had the gerundivum (i think?) with ancient latin just before we had to chose which we would do exam in .. so i dropped latin as i didnt like that special case ;))

Pedro Martínez: yes, only 1 case .. but we had mores cases (i think similar to german, or maybe 1 less, german has 5 cases isnt it ? or is that ancient greek and ancient latin has 4 ? i am always confused :))

ancient greek didnt have articles i think .. its been 10 years since i had it though, and we were only taught to translate ancient greek readings to dutch

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)

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 :)

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

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 :))

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

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 ;))

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

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 :)

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' :)