Slashdot Mirror

Here are some German Language sites from a site I set up for a German class at my university. Most of the sites have other languages also. (Would link to it, but don't want to get slashdotted, so I just copied the code over.)

German Language Web Sites

leo.org German-English dictionary. Just enter a German or English word in the Search Term box. Note the 3 symbols following the word entered:Press the1stfor grammar information, the 2nd for definition and sample uses, the 3rd for spoken pronunciation.

german.about.com Everything you ever wanted to know about the German language. Includes grammar and vocabulary guides.

travlang.com Click on the German Flag for German words for travel, shopping, dining, directions, etc. Click on a word for pronunciation.

webgerman.com A collection of links on the German language as well as comics, music, and games in German.

freetranslantion.com Type or paste a word or phrase into the box for a free translation between languages by a computer. The computer translations are somewhat crude, but you can also pay for a human translation.

Hey, you probably know already that your last name means "The Virgin" in Dutch right?

Try this if you don't. :-)

unjustified advantage from the [fuck knows: undistinguishablility?] and reputation

The confusing phrase is 'onderscheidend vermogen'.

This online Dutch-English dictionary gives the meaning of
onderscheidend as 'distinctive' or 'characteristic', and the meaning of vermogen as 'property' or 'ability'.

I'm guessing that maybe it's something like 'distinctive trademark'?

That said, the closer you can come to complete immersion, the better off you'll be. I'd suggest (just for fun) setting your computer's localization to the language you want to learn. You'll quickly learn a few bits of vocabulary from the translated menus, etc. Of course, if your target language has a radically different alphabet, you'll probably want to Google up a guide to sounding it out. (Arabic and Thai still stop me dead here...)

Next, I'd go looking for some newspapers in your target language published online. You'll doubtless find plenty of cognates (words with similar sounds and meanings across two languages) to words you know, and you'll have an opportunity to start getting an idea of grammar.

You'll probably want to Google for a dictionary for your target language, too -- there are good ones available for every language I've ever tried.

Good luck -- this is a great project!

That Vader is Luke's father was obvious from the first movie to anyone who speaks Dutch.

OK, maybe translating train schedules and restaurant menus is good. But street signs, especially, are supposed to be unambiguous, their meaning readily apparent to anyone, whether literate in their native language or not.

And does this thing work on signs that some redneck has shot holes in with a 12-gauge?

Case in point: Americans have this perception of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Claudia Schiffer, and Nina Hagen as being dumb; this perception may or may not be accurate, but much of the perception is due to the fact that these people speak imperfect english, or speak it with an accent. The native speaker always has a psychological edge.

Esperanto has 16 grammatical rules, and no exceptions. It is highly regular, avoids noun genders, and all verbs are conjugated exactly the same way. It is very easy for Westerners to learn, and easier than any Western language for Easterners. There are, at last count, over 2 million Esperanto speakers, although this estimate is admittedly optimistic, as most "Esperanto speakers" have limited experience actually speaking the language. This means that about one in every 3000 people has some working knowledge of Esperanto.

Esperanto needs much wider acceptance before it can became a linga franca; English, at the moment, enjoys that status. However, as most Slashdotters would agree, just because something is the de-facto standard, doesn't mean either that it is the best choice, or that it should remain the standard, eg. Windo[(ws)(ze)].

Esperanto can be learned so rapidly, that if you have any interest at all, I recommend that you check it out. You can get a working knowledge good enough read the usenet groups or participate in the IRC rooms within a couple of weeks of regular study (an hour). There is even a free 10-lesson email course with tutors which provides all of the foundation you need to start communicating. The Esperanto community is, in a lot of ways, much like the Open Source community, and I'm constantly suprised that I don't see more cross-polination between the two groups. You will notice, however, that KDE comes with fairly extensive Esperanto language support.

Even TravelLang has an English/Esperanto translator, and some of their translation software uses Esperanto as the medium language, much as XML can be used as a many-to-many point of translation.

More information can be found at:

• Free Esperanto Course
• Esperanto Access
• Esperanto.com
• Esperanto.net
• Esperanto League for North America (ELNA)
• The FAQ for the Esperanto Beginner's mailing List

Danish English

leg = game

lege = play

Danish is notoriously complex though, so it is possible that there is the word "Lego" in the language.

Obviously, that isn't what we're talking about here -- one virus and another virus makes for ...more than one virus, not one big one. I think extending the latin word beyond the usage Caesar would have regognized is fair here -- it may be a dead language, but it has evolved over the past couple of thousand years. (Sorry, can't cite examples, but certain Latin words originated in the middle ages, and even today new words are being coined in the language, as per recent Vatican dictionaries and such.)

I'm going to stand by virii. You're right that it should be viri, but my half remembered high school Latin makes me want to translate that as "men" instead of "viruses", whereas the -ii spelling is unambiguous, and rolls off the tongue more easily than "viruses" besides.

(Footnote to historical footnote: don't German and other germanic languages still use the -en ending on plural nouns?