Once again, here are some pictures of a walk I took with Topsy in the snow. Is this getting boring? I can’t help it, it’s how we live at the moment, Tops and I. I’ll try to show some of qualities of the white-on-white snow and mist that we encountered this morning.
Someone, I’m guessing they were sent by the local kommune (council), has driven a tractor across the fields, on its back it has an attachment that scores wide tracks in the snow for skiing.
They make the most of the undulations, and you see people getting up quite a speed. The narrow lines for your skis are doubled up, you can ski in either direction without bumping into anyone so long as you’re driving on the right. In the picture below you can see a person towing a baby in a sledge.
This man below is going uphill, which is why he looks tired. He looks a bit like a cutout.
And here is a cutout, the witch with a broomstick. I think I showed pictures of the witches last winter.
I’ve noticed I’m taking more pictures of people and buildings than I used to.
I used just to take trees and animals.
Here are some small dots that have fallen from a spruce tree on to the snow. I’m not sure what they do, perhaps one of you knows:
We’re stuck with so-called civilization. I hate it that cows and trees are being replaced by bungalows with enormous garages. But I can’t stop progress and I don’t think really I’d want to if I could. Look at the pictures of Martin Parr or Cartier-Bresson: people and their possessions, in all their oddness, are worth observing. The thing is, there aren’t that many people around here.
I could easily count all those I see in one day; that’s a feat that would be impossible in a city or even in a smallish town. I won’t ignore them completely, but I’ll continue photographing more twigs than people. Here are some twigs:
The other day I was looking at a book of photographs, taken about a hundred years ago by the great English gardener Gertrude Jekyll. They were sort of like these; roots and bushes,
and bits of trees
(she liked trees).
There was an occasional shot of a neighbour’s house. It was Surrey, not Norway, so they weren’t quite like this one – the tenant, a friend of mine, says this house has rats. I’ve never seen any. I wonder where they go in winter, do rats sometimes hibernate?
Topsy was getting bored, my picture taking had been eating into her time. Normally she keeps up a steady trot, only pausing to sniff the yellow patches left by her friends.
But by then we were almost home, there was just time for a shot of the clematis at the gate.
A Bad Guide 
Here’s wonderful Scandinavian summer entertainment to look forward to. If you’re a good boy Topsy might take you too.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381464/Bunny-rabbits-compete-jumping-course-Dressage-set-world-storm.html
H/T Marginal Revolution
Damn, derailed by rabbits. They are very impressive though, especially in the video.
Scandinavian? I didn’t meet a rabbit until I was five, when my father had a stay of a month or so at the University of Hanover. We spent the late autumn days in the parks while my father was working. There were rabbits everywhere, but not jumping like that. I remember we had to help them out of an empty fountain or garden pond by the Youth Hostel.
I once remarked that there would never be a pub called The Jolly Swede. Maybe I was wrong.
H/T Nourishing Obscurity.
Are the dots seeds?
I love walking in the woods in snow. I remember several years ago snowshoeing with Asa in Vermont. Moving slowly through sunny places: evergreen trees, bushes with brown leaves clinging, all the shades of brown and green against the white. Every little sound stood out in the quiet. We surprised a red squirrel, or rather he surprised us. We heard him before we saw him, sitting head-high in a tree (spruce? fir? I’m always embarrassed about not knowing what tree is what), eating the good parts of a cone and dropping all the uneaten bits on the snow.. We stood and watched while he finished.
I like your photos, Crown. When can you expect the snow to go? Late March?
Boring? No, not boring at all!
I love to join you in your walks with Topsy, is a wonderful place where you live.
There has been like 20 years since I saw snow for the last time. Oh, God, no…! Now that I think it right I realize It has been almost 30 years: 1984!
Dearie, your video is fantastic, we loved that rabbit (my daughter says it’s a “conejo ovejero”)!
Can anyone translate what is written at the beginning and the end?
A sheep rabbit, that’s exactly what I thought too. It says “Champis the herding rabbit” at the beginning, and, about the collie at the end, “This film is dedicated to Tay, for us a very special girl, who unfortunately is no longer with us” – unfortunately I can only get the translations as far as English. Snow is a bit like a jolly man who comes to dinner and doesn’t leave until three in the morning.
Thanks, dearie. But I can’t beat your videos. I hope the snow will mostly be gone by the end of March, but we’re up quite high (170 m.) and it stays here much later than it does around Oslo. Once we had snow in May; it killed my wistAria.
Ø, I think they’re something to do with seeds, possibly the casings, and aren’t the seeds inside the cones? There were no cones to be seen, so I bet a squirrel had been there. That must be it. Thanks. As far as I’m concerned “spruce” are what you see all over Norway and look like your basic Christmas tree. Fir are most twiddly, like pine.
Trond, I guess rabbits aren’t native to Norway though people keep them as pets nowadays. I’ve seen enormous hares around here occasionally.
Oops, I first read the title as “Showbusiness”, which is a hilarious book by Shashi Tharoor.
I would like to read it.
Yes, our squirrel left a more compact pile of inedible bits but probably yours was higher in the tree and the wind was blowing.
Sig, the title refers to a song.
I’ll never learn these trees — well, not if I don’t try a lot harder.
I remember being taught as a child that some kinds of pine can be distinguished from others by the number of needles per little tuft or cluster. I believe the white pine always had an odd number. Like the odd- and even-toed ungulates.
If I remember correctly, balsam fir is the kind of Christmas tree that we have learned to think of as smelling the best. Our favorite tree ever not only smelled good but had an untrimmed sprawling excellence about it that left lots of room for hanging ornaments and invited comparisons with the cat.
Douglas firs are also sold as Christmas trees, but I now learn that they are not really firs at all. I think that they are pretty furry, but I don’t know if that’s the same as twiddly.
I also saw on WiPe that German has the word Föhre for fir, which to my mind emphasizes the furriness quite well. But then what about Tannenbaum?
Common names of plants and animals are a joy, but only when you are in a mood to tolerate fuddledness.
I find the answer is to wave a hand and say grandly “conifers”. Though even I can distinguish the Scots Pine, of which there are many in East Anglia, particularly on the Brecklands.
hahaha, I’m with dearie: conifers!
Thanks for the translation, AJP. She looks like a very brave rabbit, don’t you think?
empty, I can never understand why people like odd numbers. I know as Virgil says that the gods like them… but I don’t, I don’t know why. I always preferred things in pairs.
Yes, she’s a brave rabbit, but bossy.
One thing I’ve learnt, living in Norway, is that I prefer pine trees to spruce trees. I like smell of spruce, though. Cedar too. And I like the lemony flavour of the needles in spring. Common names of plants and animals are a lot easier to remember than the Latin names, I find. I didn’t know that Douglas fir wasn’t a fir. It’s very good at not breaking, architects and engineers always specify it in the US for wood framing.
[Douglas fir is] very good at not breaking, architects and engineers always specify it in the US for wood framing
Could a non-architect like myself express the same thing by saying that Douglas fir is very good at not splitting ? I find it odd to say that a kind of wood can “break”, as opposed to manmade lengths of wood: beams, two-by-fours and so on.
In a high wind trees can bend until they snap, but do they “break” ? Would someone reporting on tornado damage to a forest say “the winds were so strong that they broke the trees” ?
This is not an important point, I’m just a bit confused about the English expressions. On German TV you hear about trees being “blown over, “knocked down”, “pulled up by the roots” etc., and also branches “breaking off”, but not that the trunks “break”. I think, anyway.
“Break” was just my word, I wouldn’t use it on the job. There are several ways a structural member can fail (beams shear or bend, columns buckle) but, most important, it mustn’t fail abruptly (“catastrophic failure”) and all of a sudden your roof is on the floor of your living room – that’s what “break” sounds like to me – better to have it sagging for a while than to have it explode. “Splits” “shakes” and “checks” are bad features that have some technical meaning with bits of wood, I can’t remember exactly what, though.
Just reinforcing the ceiling joists (whatever those are exactly) wouldn’t help empty if the roof shingles broke under the weight of the snow, would it ? Or were pushed sideways, thus allowing the snow to enter.
I initially imagined that covering the roof with electric blankets might help, but of course that would just be more weight. A cool solution would be to mount one of those industrial lasers used to cut metal, and have it scan the roof from time to time to melt the snow. Of course you’d have to remember to shut it off on Christmas Eve to keep Santa Claus from being sliced up, as happens to somebody in the film Resident Evil.
Curiously last week I was somewhere with internet coverage and on Skype with my American daughter and she was off work owing to snow and while we were talking a young maple tree in her front garden broke off (I will verify precisely where on the trunk the break was) under the weight of the snow. She heard the craaack and had to go out to look. So I guess trees can break.
Yes, so there you are. Although I think Stu was questioning the English word “break” rather than the breaking process. There are lots of broken trees around here. One fell across the road and blocked it.
I love your idea with the electric blankets, Stu. How inventive you are. The hotel down the road has electric wires in the concrete outside the entrance so you don’t have to get snow on your shoes when you get out of your car – a frightful waste of energy, really. I don’t think you can do it with roofs, because the snow melts but the water that remains later freezes again into ice, and that causes leaks by expanding into the seams in your roofing and at the flashing.
I haven’t seen the film Resident Evil. I don’t really understand where you find the time to read all these books, see films and also take the train to Frankfurt to work. You must require very little sleep.
The ceiling joists are parallel 2x8s or 2x10s, 16 inches or two feet apart, that carry the weight of the roof and the snow over to the walls and thence down to the ground. Between the joists and the shingles or other roofing would be a layer or two of plywood, so that if you walk on the roof your foot doesn’t go straight through the ceiling below. And hopefully, in between the joists there’s lots of insulation.
Warning: odd rambling comment ahead:
Santa wouldn’t be on that low flat roof anyway. it’s not where the chimney is.
I have the impression that the word “roof” is often used to mean the (wooden or more likely asphalt) shingles that cover the roof: the skin, as it were. If your shingles are deteriorating and it’s time to hire a roofer to come and replace them all, you may speak of the house getting a new roof. But when I speak of the roof collapsing under the weight of snow I don’t mean a skin-deep problem. Our flat roof isn’t shingled, anyway. It’s sort of rubberized. As I mentioned, last year there was a lot of snow around here.
We had a big oak tree lose big pieces about a year and a half ago, slightly breaking our house and some lilacs in the process. It wasn’t anything to do with snow. There was some wind involved, but it seems that mainly the tree was just more fragile than usual that year, maybe because of a dry summer (this what we were told by the arborist who came to trim some more big bits off and make the world safe again). I think of oak as so sturdy. Who knew?
WiPe says
“The wood of most firs is considered unsuitable for general timber use, and is often used as pulp or for the manufacture of plywood and rough timber. Because this genus has no insect or decay resistance qualities after logging, it is generally recommended for construction purposes as indoor use only (e.g. indoor drywall framing). This wood left outside cannot be expected to last more than 12 to 18 months, depending on the type of climate it is exposed to. ”
Yes, conifer. Or evergreen. I grew up thinking of these as two catch-all terms for the same group, but of course the rhododendron is an evergreen without cones. Without cones or needles. It has actual leaves. Well, not that needles aren’t a kind of leaf. In a way. Technically they must be leaves. And in German they surely are: in O Tannenbaum it says “Wie treu sind deine Blätter”. In English we don’t call leaves “blades”, except, oddly, blades of grass (except Whitman, who called them “leaves of grass”).
Conifer and evergreen. It’s a little like ungulate and ruminant, innit? Odd/even toes and all.
Julia, zero is my favorite number, and it’s definitely even.
I was wondering whether zero was even but was afraid to ask.
Rhododendrons are funny. I was looking at one yesterday on my walk with Topsy, and the leaves are indeed still green but they droop like a plant that’s died of the cold.
Well, not that needles aren’t a kind of leaf. In a way. Technically they must be leaves. And in German they surely are: in O Tannenbaum it says “Wie treu sind deine Blätter”.
Any plain person who called Baumnadeln “Blätter” would need to have his head examined. Nadeln may genetico-technically be Blätter, but nobody would call them that except for self-righteous experts – the kind who, when very late (not having noticed that it’s past midnight) you say that you intend to do something “tomorrow”, will come in with “but it’s already tomorrow”.
Thanks, Stu. Could it be that Ernst Anschütz was a self-righteous expert? Or maybe usage was different in his day.
Rhododendrons: A friend of ours was here today and expressed some pity for the poor rhododendrons, their leaves all curled up in the cold. I told her what I have told you all before: that they don’t seem to be harmed by the cold, and that their degree of defensive curling makes a reliable natural thermometer.
If you say there are two sets of numbers, even and odd, and evens are defined by remaining in the same set if you double them, whereas odds don’t, then zero must even. Howdya like that?
Zero is even? I like it, it’s all round… Although I tend to think it as an odd number… But don’t mind me, I can barely count up to 20.
Stu, I HATE when people says “but it ‘s tomorrow already”!
We just saw “The invention of Hugo Cabret” (or is it just “Hugo” in English?), Scorsesse’s last film, and I loved it. And the book on (in?) which is based is precious, it’s a perfect mix of drawings and text. Some of you might like it, I believe
Or maybe usage was different in his day.
Yes, that occurred to me. I had intended to add “nowadays” somewhere in the sentence that now begins with “Any plain person …”. In my rush to reach stylistic brilliance, I continually retune the syntax in my comments. Sometimes parts of the content fall out onto the highway.
empty, my intention was merely to inform you that nobody now (except possibly an “expert” or a child) would call pine needles “Blätter” – just as only experts or children would call them “leaves” in English. The Tannenbaum song is not a reliable source of idiomatic vocab in the 21st century.
I don’t think it’s old usage or expertice. I think it’s poetic licence, using the same word to emhasise the treu-ness as compared to that of regular leaves. Or it might have been written by a speaker of a (city?) dialect without the relevant terminology. We recently learned in dk.kultur.sprog that the word (gran)bar, “(mass word for) spruce twigs”, was imported into Danish from Norwegian by the 18th century priest/botanicist H. F. Pram.
I think it’s poetic licence, using the same word to emhasise the treu-ness as compared to that of regular leaves.
Good point. Regular leaves are treulose Tomaten.
dearie – you’d probably rather have Ø’s opinion but he only comes here during his break, so you’re stuck with me – your definition is very sneeky, very clever. You would have made a good lawyer. I got hung up in thinking that the odds became evens when they were doubled, but you dodged that.
A funny coincidence: I just follow stuartnz’s link in the other thread (he has a wonderful page of interesting links), and the first that caught my attention was a Rhetoric Dictionary, or a “Silva Rhetoricae” said in ancient manners.
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm
Well, a paragraph of the prologue there reads:
Don’t be scared of the intimidating detail suggested by the odd Greek and Latin terms. After all, you can enjoy the simple beauty of a birch tree without knowing it is Betula alba and make use of the shade of a weeping willow without knowing it is in fact Salix babylonica. The same is possible with rhetoric.
=)
Trond, are granbar the needles, the twigs or both? (I think it’s both.)
Blad is Norwegian for leaf, and Dagbladet is an Oslo newspaper. It’s got the same meanings as in German & English.
Thanks for the recommendation, Julia. We will see Hugo when it comes here, I think. I’m sure you can count past 20 if you try. Your daughters will help you.
I must put Stuartnz’s page back in my blogroll. I used to have it, I don’t know why I took it out. Slimming, probably.
Bar means twigs, at least for me. When I, as often happens, I get a soruce needle stuck in my sock, I don’t think I say Au, granbar i sokken! but Au, barnål i sokken!.
While bartrær means “conifers”, for some reason bar seems to be restricted to spruce. But note barlind “yew”, lit. “needle-twig lime”.
Thanks. When I ask my family about this they claim not to know, and then they change the subject.
Julia, how low can you count?
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
even, odd, even, odd, even, odd, even, odd, even, odd
The next one should be even, right?
—
dearieme, you are being unnecessarily sneaky. The point is that 0 is 2 times something.
It’s true, as you say, that 2 times anything even is always even; and it’s true, as you say, that 2 times anything odd is even; but let’s notice two things about that pair of statements:
(1) it would be simpler and more to the point to replace them by the one statement that 2 times anything is even.
(2) this rule doesn’t always help you to decide whether a number is even or odd. How would you decide whether 3 is even or odd? 2 times 3 is 6. OK, so 6 is even. But is 3 even or odd?
The real point is: a number is even if (and only if) it is 2 times something. I mean 2 times a whole number. 0 is 2 times 0, but 3 is not 2 times anything (unless we’re allowing fractions, which we’re not).
Zero is even? I like it, it’s all round… Although I tend to think it as an odd number…
In baseball, if a team scores more than one run in an inning they are sometimes said to have “put up a crooked number”. This refers to the fact that the digits 2, 3, 4, and so on are not straight like the digit 1,more sort of bent. Of course the digit 0 is neither straight nor bent. I don’t know whether the people who coined that phrase were thinking of 0 as a number that, like 1, is not crooked, or whether they were not thinking of it as a number at all.
It’s odd it took empty so long to get even with dearie. All that lecturing is a distraction.
…And a home run to Stu, there. And a crooked number to Ø for working during his tea break. I think it’s slightly sneeky that 0 is two times itself, whereas all the other even numbers are two times a smaller number.
Ø, all I was doing was playing about by inventing a definition of even and odd that was different from the one we used in primary school, but still worked and resolved the zero question.
There are other numbers besides 0 with the property that when you multiply them with 2 you get the same number. These are “infinite cardinals”. The total number of all even numbers is itself an infinite number, denoted ℵ0 (the 0 is supposed to be a subscript, but I can’t get subscripting to work here so I’ll just leave it off). ℵ is also equal to the total number of all odd numbers, and also to the total number of integers. 2*ℵ = ℵ + ℵ = ℵ.
all the other even numbers are two times a smaller number.
Well, no, -2 is two times -1.
inventing a definition of even and odd
But your “definition” is not a definition. It doesn’t contain enough information to completely determine which numbers are even and which numbers are odd. What if I thought that the even numbers are all of the usual even numbers and also 3? And that the odd numbers are all of the usual odd numbers except 3? That would satisfy your requirements: 2 times one of my “even” numbers or two times one of my “odd” numbers is always one of my “even” numbers.
Courtesy of Georg Cantor.
empty, I think dearie is a hairsbreadth away from the notion of an ideal.
This probably comes up every time numbers are discussed, but Even and Odd are both traditional Norwegian male names.
Is there a Norwegian movie called The Even Couple ? The Odd Couple doesn’t even make sense, since a couple is two and thus even.
Possibly Adam and Eve is a traditional misunderstanding of Oddam and Even. Is Norway a paradise ?
A pair of dice is even.
I’m glad I can think of 0 as an even number, Ø. It’s a nice number, full of possibilities. And very round, like 8, my favourite.
Your explanation was appealing even for someone like me. And that’s all I can get from the discussion above. As I said I’m sort of a number illiterate.
I was thinking that perhaps a reason why I prefer even numbers instead of odd ones, is that in Spanish we say “pares” (even) and “impares” (odd), as you can see odd number doesn’t have a completely proper name, I mean: their name is just the even name (pares) with a negative prefix IM-/ IN-.
That’s it, I tend to think odd numbers as negatives. You don’t?
Stu: But in English the word “pair” has not always referred to twosomes; I think that occasional use for more than two is attested from way back. Maybe you can confirm or deny my impression that if Trond were to go to Germany and say “Au! Was ist los in meinen Strümpfen? Vielleicht gibt es ein paar Baumnadeln da drinnen.” More likely you will ruthlessly edit this for grammatical errors and/or unidiomaticity, which is fine–please do–but what I was going to ask was whether the Germans would think he meant two, or at least two, spruce needles. Maybe if he specifically meant two he would have to say “ein Paar” instead of “ein paar”.
Julia: Yes, 0 is full of possibilities precisely because it is empty.
Trond: I’m so glad to learn that the words Even and Odd are names in Norway, just as I was glad to learn that the name Tom (very relevant to myself) is a word (a word very relevant to the present discussion) in Norway.
Back to work!
“There are other numbers besides 0 with the property that when you multiply them with 2 you get the same number. These are “infinite cardinals”.” Indeed: I did pay attention at school, you know. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the expression “play”?
You use negative numbers when it gets very cold. Today it’s -7 degrees. Sometimes it’s -8 degrees — that’s an even negative number.
their name is just the even name (pares) with a negative prefix IM-/ IN-
That gets really confusing in English. Flammable means combustible, but so does inflammable. The word for incombustible is non-flammable. It’s dangerous as well as confusing.
I was thinking today that peel and unpeel both mean the same thing. Alma said unpeel isn’t a real word, but it’s in the OED and goes back at least to the 1500s.
We never learnt about ‘infinite cardinals’, but I didn’t go to a Catholic school.
>A. J. P. Crown
But cardinals are ordained so they are ordinals, aren’t they?
Ova and Eden.
Also, it says here that the first Arab to play the oud was named Eben.
dearie: Indeed: I did pay attention at school, you know. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the expression “play”?
That must have been a very classy school if they taught Cantoring there too ! By “play” I assume you mean horsing around, i.e. cantering.
empty: Maybe if he specifically meant two he would have to say “ein Paar” instead of “ein paar”.
I bow to your progress in German. That has been by goal all along (or do I mean goad ?) – to encourage you, Crown and everybody else to dust off their German.
There’s only one teeny tiny thing slightly off in your sentence: ““Au! Was ist los in meinen Strümpfen? Vielleicht gibt es ein paar Baumnadeln da drinnen.” In Germany you have to say “Aua !”.With its two syllables, it’s seems unnecessarily more elaborate than the English “ow”. When something suddenly hurts, you’d think one syllable of exclamation would suffice, right ? Germans are made of tougher stuff.
Jesús: But cardinals are ordained so they are ordinals, aren’t they?
I guess that’s right – some of them are, anyway. The WiPe tells me there are ordinary cardinals, but also extraordinary ones: “secret” cardinals (in pectore).
empty: There are some great sentences at your oud link:
The most popular musicians in the history of Oud are Shack Amusedly, Abraham Almighty and Zaryab
Technical features of oud are that, the sound box has the shape of a pear, short and sloppy elbow.
I guess I’ll have to add “oud” to “distinguishing features” when I next renew my passport.
Pectorals?
I checked out Shack Amusedly and Abraham Almighty – they don’t exist, if google is any judge.
>Grumbly Stu
Yes, even there’s (was, better) a cardinal in pectore who never was known: JPII died before so the secret is in his tomb.
On the other hand, I add the word “non” as synonym for “impar” to complete the explanation of Julia, also a “negative” word.
Try “Shack Up Amusedly” and “Bruce Almighty”..
>A. J. P. Crown
It’s better to be a bishop “in partibus infidelium*” than a cardinal “in pectore”.
* Nowadays they are called “holder bishops” (I think).
Yes, ‘Bruce’ seems to have oud music.
Jesús: making puns in English! You’re very talented.
>A. J. P. Crown
Oh, thanks! I’ll become red like a cardinal.
Do you know the pope bless some lambs on the Feast of Saint Agnes*? Then, their wool is used to make some “pallium” for the new archbishops. You can see it in Youtube.
*As you know, “agnes” means lamb in Latin.
The Eve of St Agnes is a very famous poem in English, by John Keats. For some reason it caused many hideous paintings to be made later by the English art group the Pre-Raphaelites.
>A. J. P. Crown
Ah! Her lambs are cited.
Stu, I was sweating it. The dative plural is second nature, but I almost blew the plural of Nadel, and worst of all I couldn’t decide whether a German would say “Was ist in meinen Strümpfen los?” or “Was ist los in meinen Strümpfen ?”
I could claim that Trond was speaking his native tongue when he said “Au!”
I have noticed that children over here often append a second syllable to their more vehement ejaculations. “Ow” can in fact sound something like “Ow-ah!”, and likewise “No!” can be “No-ah!” Maybe Germans are not so much tough as childish?
I wouldn’t waste screen real estate on my little list of links, gracious host. It’s just a tool to enable me to understand at least a little of conversations like this one, or rather, to enable me to feign understanding a little more convincingly. Also, for Julia, “Hugo” was a very nice experience, I thought the 3D enhanced the story without distracting from it, and the performances were excellent.
Norwegian ‘au!’ sounds like no other. Unfortunately I can’t describe it, maybe Trond can.
The French say “choo-ah” instead of “ah-choo”.
Gremans would ask was in meinen Strümpfen los ist, but they might add a few commasin unexpected places.
I like your Indian sign, Stuart.
It’s difficult to search for information about this H. F. Pram, because of all the damn baby carriages.
The interjection au has changed according to regular phonological development of the diphtong, meaning that it rhymes with sau. I pronounce it æw, i.e. roughly English a wall minus >all. In broader Eastern Norwegian it’s æv:. My grandmother, who lived most of her life in central Oslo but grew up just over the hill from the Crowns, had øv:.
“That must have been a very classy school if they taught Cantoring there too !” Or just a very good maths teacher with a small class of interested pupils. I’s remarkable what could be done in British schools before the Forces of Progress decided to bugger ’em up. Philistine bastards.
whether a German would say “Was ist in meinen Strümpfen los ?” or “Was ist los in meinen Strümpfen ?”
You can say both. Here’s the meta on it: los sein is merely sein followed by an adjective, no different in principle from glücklich sein etc. There is no composite verb *lossein, in contrast to, say, einführen etc. Come to think of it, I don’t believe there are any composite verbs with sein.
Gauzy details: “Was ist los in meinen Strümpfen ?” is the missionary position or “standard pattern” N+”ist“+predicate. In contrast, “Was ist in meinen Strümpfen los ?” lends itself to querulous production – you can say it with a gradually rising intonation up to “Strümpfen“, on which you come down fairly hard, then close off with “los“. Very like “What in the world is THAT supposed-to-mean ?”.
Thank you, Stuartnz, that’s exactly what I think about the “Hugo’s” 3D, but I wasn’t sure how to express it in English.
Jesús, I forgot about “nones” for odd. There’s a game “pares y nones”, but I don’t remember how it was.
Anyone watch “Dr. Who” (the british tv show)? In 2006 appeared a specie called Ood (for me the sound of their name is like oud, the instrument, but I’m not very reliable on this either)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ood
>Julia
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pares_o_nones
(I asked your help in “Fuzzy-Wuzzy” about a Spanish question but probably you didn’t read it. Could you see that? Thanks.)
Thank you, Jesús!
No, I missed that thread, I’ll go there now
For whatever it’s worth pares is the gen. pl. of par = equal, in Latin, and nones is the fifth of the Roman month.
My little Latin tool says for nones:
7th of month, March, May, July, Oct., 5th elsewhen
Apart from a delicious shiver of appreciation at the word “elsewhen”, I find myself more confused than before by that explanation.
This says:
Remains the question of what the “ides” of a month is. I know only that something momentous happened on the Ides of March.
It’s the fifth for most months except the ones you mention. I could never remember which they were, although I think there’s a nmonic (or however you spell it).
mnemonic
The kalens is the first, the nones is the fifth and the ides is the fifteenth. Roughly. But I’m sure there’s a more thorough explanation out there.
So far, the Roman calendar (or calendars maybe there were several ?) doesn’t appear to be suitable for doing business, making and keeping appointments that are important, and other practical matters. Rather, it seems to be a bureaucratic device to confuse the populace: “What !? You were told to appear on the nones of May at the latest to file your complaint against our decision. But you turn up on the seventh, so you’re too late.”
Like those great deformed bureaucrats in Hitchhiker’s Guid.
I suppose such a calendar is used by a society that lays store by festivities, celebrations, astronomical events. These prevent you from regarding all days as indistinguishable except by name: Jan 16, August 12 and so on. Today in Western countries.the solemn-festivity system is merely tacked on to the indistinguishable-days system.
Yes, I hadn’t thought of it like that before, but I’m sure you’re right. I never liked the Romans. And they continued writing dates like that into the middle ages, and they were even worse than the Romans, horribly cruel and very bureaucratic.
I want a decimal system. I’ve never liked the “week 37” thing, it’s too anonymous.
You’re all very right.
But I’d prefer to abolish time. That would be definitely better.
¡He dicho!
Yes, I hadn’t thought of it like that before
The idea comes from one of those Advanced Thinking books that I read, while you are out enjoying life with the the goats and Topsy. I’m not short of sleep, just short of normal creatureliness.
In Spanish, obviously from Latin “nonus”, “nono” = “noveno” (ninth), but “non” is a negative word; it’s used for “non [par]” (litt. not even). Besides “even”, we also use “par” meaning “igual” (equal); your “peer* review” for papers is our “revision por pares”.
* From Latin as well.
As for Roman calendar, the confusion with ordinal “nones” could be in the fact that “idus” is thirteenth or fifteenth depending of months.
“in the ancient Roman calendar, the seventh day of March, May, July,..”: hold on. Surely the ancient Roman calendar didn’t have July or August, for obvious reasons?
Ah, just as I suspected when I wrote “the Roman calendar (or calendars, maybe there were several ?) “. July Andrews hadn’t even been born.
For the same reasons August has 31 days like July: “He’s no better than me”, the emperor probably said. Maybe Auguste also says that speaking of whiteface.
Sorry, I can’t respond. I’m watching Sherlock Holmes on telly.
Your response could be elementary, my dear Crown.
Episode 2 is pretty poor. Episodes 1 & 3 darned good. That applies to both series 1 and series 2.
“I never liked the Romans. And they continued writing dates like that into the middle ages, and they were even worse than the Romans”
Sorry, horribly confused now. Who was worse than who?
You’re right. I was writing in a hurry. The Normans were horribly cruel as well as horribly bureaucratic. The Romans were not much better.
Episode 2 is pretty poor. Episodes 1 & 3 darned good.
I think this was episode 3 in the first series. I’ve liked them all. For anyone who likes Scandinavian detectives there’s a really good series coming to the BBC. It’s a joint Danish & Swedish production; it’s called The Bridge, and the action takes place in Copenhagen and in Malmö in Sweden. The bridge in the title is the newish bridge between Sweden and Denmark over the Øresund strait, the strait that connects the Baltic Sea with the Atlantic. Anyway, we’ve reached part 7 of 10, in Norway. I can’t understand a word of it because half the characters are talking Swedish and half Danish. Luckily we get Norwegian subtitles. God knows how the Swedes & Danes keep track of what’s going on. Despite that, or partly I suppose because of it, because half the fun is in the differences between Sweden & Denmark, it’s terrific. Julia, you should write a detective story that takes place in Buenos Aires and Uruguay, and then you could sell it to tv and to us up here in the north.
The Normans were horribly cruel as well as horribly bureaucratic. The Romans were not much better.
Times Crossword Puzzle for Children: (2 down) Empire builders among the Normans.
Haha. Very clever. There’s a cryptic crossword blog at the Guardian. Let’s see if I can find it…Yes, here.
I read that somebody has begun working on a British-French version of it starting in the Eurotunnel, and I guess the boat between Goodwinds and Sighthill would be just as good.
Of course, an important backstory in Broen is the fundamental change to a new community that people on both sides are experiencing, or have been experiencing for the last few years. This aspect is hard to translate, even if the plot itself could be moved to any international border in the world. Maybe if or when the the Silver Bridge has been built, but, even then, the merger of two important cities into one market for goods, property, labour and love would be missing.
I tried to watch the much touted Danish drama series, Borgen, on ARTE, but it turned out it had been dubbed into French, so I gave up in disgust.
What’s the Silver Bridge?
We don’t do dubbing in Norway, I’m happy to say.
El Puente de la Plata. But my dictionary says Plata also means money in American Spanish, so perhaps it would have been better to dub it “the Money Bridge”. It would be tremendously expensive, so it’s more feasible with a Eurotunnel-style tunnel from Buenos Aires to Colonía. I learn from Google Earth that it’s simply to dive downl from the Central Station in Buenos Aíres, turn left under the Canadian totem-pole, and reemerge in the old railway station in the Colonía harbour. 50,5 km, not even twice the Eurotunnel.
But you know there’s not such tunnel, don’t you Trond? Nor bridge either there.
(I can’t tell if you were joking or telling something you believe is true)
There’s a Spanish saying (but it might be latin) that says: “Al enemigo que huye, puente de plata”
No, I know it isn’t a bridge or a tunnel across the Río de la Plata now, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be one there any time in the future.
“Not even twice” was a gross understatement. It’s exactly the length of the Channel Tunnel. I forgot exactly how much longer than the width of the crossing it is, due to the steep coasts and the nature of the rock. I guess a Túnel de la Plata could be built as an immersed tube, sunk into the bottom sediments.
Here’s a new hobby for you, Crown.
It could be… but I see two major problems
1) our terrible corrupt bureaucracy
2) the lime river bed (a tunnel might damage the very fragile delta ecosystem)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_de_la_Plata
And there’s a third problem: it’s very nice to cross it sailing =)
https://picasaweb.google.com/110759830521994053578/DiegoViajeAMontevideo02?authkey=Gv1sRgCIDguquP35iG8gE
Goodness, dearie, how exciting. I’ll put it to my daughter; she’s the one who enjoys falling off rearing beasts.
Julia, don’t you want to write a detective story about sailing over to Uruguay and getting confused by the funny accent and rural lifestyle? I’m thinking of writing something along those lines about north Londoners crossing over Tower Bridge and finding a better life south of the river Thames.
I’m thinking of living there, the Uruguayans are fantastic…
My wife and I were served at a local café the other day by a charming young Uruguayan, who was surprised when I answered “do you know where it is?” with “across the river from Argentina”, and also told her that I love the sound of its capital’s name. The fact that such extremely basic geographical awareness surprised her left me feeling a little sad and embarrassed for what it said about NZer’s apparent ignorance, but it was nice to see her smile.
I don’t think I’ve ever met an Uruguayan. I’ll have to come to New Zealand.
It cannot be an absolute truth, but I feel that all Uruguayan are very nice and polite. In fact almost the opposite of the paradigmatic “porteño” (‘people from Buenos Aires’).
It’s a very nice country, Crown, instead of going to N.Z. you should come to the Río de la Plata as this music from Norway:
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1449026-un-noruego-que-desafia-los-canones
There’s quite a bit of interaction between Uruguay & NZ, sheep farming being something the two countries have in common. Stereotypically polite people, not so much, I’d say. I’m throwing my vote in with Julia, Crown.
=)
Thank you, S.
Wouldn’t it be great to arrange a bad guided’s meeting at the coast of the Río de la Plata?
Today on the car radio I heard a piece of reggæ music. It was being sung fluently in Norwegian. It was very good. My first instinct was “Damn. This is a Norwegian version, not authentic”, but then I thought “I wish I could take this elsewhere, say to England, and play it. Everyone there would find it quite exotic “.
Not polite?
I vote for a badly-guided trip to the Río de la Plata next Norwegian winter. We need the heat at this time of year. I don’t know what we’ll do with the goats.
They can graze on the roofs of our bungalows. I’m assuming there are no zoning restrictions on thatched bungalows fronting on the Rio de la Plata.
“all Uruguayan are very nice and polite”: you don’t follow English football then, Julia?
Whatevra could you be talking about, dearieme?
Oh, no dearie, I don’t. But now you mention I remember hearing something nasty the other days (Argentina is a very “futbolero” country, and in the media they talk a lot of European football)… there was an Uruguayan player calling names to other, that’s it? I remember I was surprised by the nationality of this player…
Crown, about the goat (and dogs) issue: as long as it is impossible to bring them too, you should think that you have one year from now on to find a new friend around there, begin to train him/her, get the girls accustomed to him/her and then let him/her in charge of your house while you travel…
You don’t follow English football then, Julia?
She’s a passionate supporter of Tranmere Rovers, for some reason. Calling herself “Freddie Truman” she also has a cricketing blog about Yorkshire.
Mr Whatevra was rather lucky not to get bitten, Stuart. I can only suppose that when Mr Suarez moved to Germany he misunderstood the instruction to “bitte” everyone.