Text 24916, 144 rader
Skriven 2006-02-06 12:36:36 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
  Kommentar till text 24909 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Texas Grapefruit GREAT!
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06 Feb 06 10:29, Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Roy Witt:


 >>>> That's usually what one does with a laptop; take it to a
 >>>> coffee shop..
 MvdV>>> Over here a "coffee shop" is a place where one can buy a joint.
 >> I see. Over here, there is Starbucks, a coffee joint with
 >> wireless internet access.
 MvdV> That's coming here too. Dutch rail offers WiFi at the train
 MvdV> stations. They are experimenting with WiFi in the trains
 MvdV> themselves. MacDonnalds and some others offer it too. But, it is
 MvdV> not free.

I gave my laptop to my son when we moved from San Diego. I didn't think
I'd need one here. So I don't have any experience in what's available
here, but there is a Jack-in-the-Box (similar to McDonald's) and I think
another one at the Starbucks, as they also provide cell phone service
there.

 MvdV>>> What I said was I "stumbled into an InterNet cafee". Meaning I
 MvdV>>> did not intentionally go there, so no reason to carry the laptop.
 >> I realize that now, thanks. There's a distinct difference in
 >> terminology between there and here.
 MvdV> Actually it was a re-used goods shop. Apparently was run as a
 MvdV> social project to keep youngsters with too much time on their hands
 MvdV> off the street. As am aside they had installed a dozen identical
 MvdV> old computers in a corner and linked them up to the Net. Probably a
 MvdV> donation from some firm dumping their stuff. That they were all
 MvdV> running some Linux implementation tells me it is someone's pet
 MvdV> project.

Probably so and much easier to do without worrying about all the viri' on
the internet.

 MvdV>>> FYI: One does not often see people carry laptops into an InterNet
 MvdV>>> Cafee here. Internat Cafees are mostly used by people who do not
 MvdV>>> have a computer of their own.
 >> Just the opposite here. That's where your wireless laptop can
 >> access the internet.
 MvdV> Most InterNet cafes now offer WiFi as well, but that is a more or
 MvdV> less recent development. They all started out to offer internet
 MvdV> access to people that did not have a computer of their own.

There were places like that in SD...I thought about doing something
similar when I found out there wasn't such a place 'way back when'...

 >> If you need a computer, even small town libraries have the
 >> internet hooked up now. The use of them is free, if you have a
 >> library card.

 MvdV> Same here, except that you do not need the library card, you just
 MvdV> pay for the time.

I would imagine that's possible here too, but the card gives you free
access to the internet. And the card is free.

 MvdV>>>>> Point was that I was once again in the dark because
 MvdV>>>>> apparently 26 letters is not enough for everyone...
 >>>> They are if you're using English.
 MvdV>>> Yeah, but the world is bigger than that...
 >> Not really. English spans the globe.

 MvdV> While it is true that you can get a long way with English, it
 MvdV> certainly is not the only language in the world.

Of course.

 MvdV> Try to get a job here if you /only/ speak English. Next to
 MvdV> impossible.

That's nearly impossible here too. It's a 55% hispanic community and for a
service or supervision job, you would need to be bi-lingual in Spanish as
well.

 >> Ask the other Bjorn how the Chinese sound on his hotel CCTV-9
 >> channel. It's all in English.

 MvdV> That channel is in English only. But it is not the only channel....

CCTV also has some programming in Chinese too. There is also CCTV/EF in
Spanish (The E in /EF for Espa¤ol) and French.

 MvdV> You don't get the *local* news in English. Not here, not in
 MvdV> Thailand.

You can get the local news here in English and Spanish, if you watch a
Hispanic channel.

 >>>> Are there umlauts in CW code using the Dutch language?
 MvdV>>> No. Apparently it was never important enough to define a special
 MvdV>>> extension. On the very rare occasions that it really mattered, it
 MvdV>>> was just spelled out like I did: "e-umlaut".
 >> Ah.

 MvdV> Actually one can do reasonably well without umlauts and accents in
 MvdV> Dutch. They aren't used very much anyway and one can usually just
 MvdV> omit them without harming comprehension. There are a few exeptions
 MvdV> such as één and een. ("one" resp, "a") In the time when moderators
 MvdV> went into a flat spinover "high ascii" we simply wrote e1n instead
 MvdV> of één when it mattered. The SMS gang has now adopted that custom.

Fortunately, that high ascii stuff isn't as scary as it once was.

 MvdV>>> I know of one unofficial Dutch morse character: four dashes. It
 MvdV>>> stands for "ch". As the impossible for the non native speaker to
 MvdV>>> pronounce "ch' in "Michiel". I have never actually see it used.
 MvdV>>> If you want to know how the consonant "ch" is pronounced freq
 MvdV>>> "zsgeitje" from my system. Or play:
 MvdV>>> http://www.vlist.org/downloads/zsgeitje.wav
 >> Way out of my league.

 MvdV> As I said, almost impossible to pronounce for a non native speaker.

Yes, and to get the pronounciation, the recording would have to be much
slower for a non native speaker to even comprehend it, unless it was
repeated over and over; which is what I did.

 MvdV>>> "Zeven schele geitjes met scheefgegroeide gewrichten gingen
 MvdV>>> gezellig samen googelen in Scheveningen."
 >> The speaker
 MvdV> That's me.
 >> pauses after geitjes, is there supposed to be a comma there?

 MvdV> Commas are often omitted in Dutch when there is no change of
 MvdV> meaning if they are left out. But yes, for clearity to the non
 MvdV> native speakers I should have left them in. Both of them:

 MvdV> "Zeven schele geitjes, met scheefgegroeide gewrichten, gingen
 MvdV> gezellig samen googelen in Scheveningen."

See, I missed the second pause because of the speed of the speaker.

 >> I can make out the ch sound in the last word, but it's hard to
 >> switch fast enough to read along with the speaker. I cut in around
 >> met.

 MvdV> Switch? Switch from what to what?

I had to switch from the Quickplayer window to the quote in the message.


Roy
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