if you are saying that finnish and english are as different as can be based on a) their different language families, b) their different phonological inventories, and c) their difference in terms of grammatical categories available...
then how on earth can you possibly say that "the closest language to English is French" if they a) come from different language families [one is romanic, the other is germanic], b) have different phonological inventories, and c) have very different grammatical systems [for starters, french has articles and genders, whereas english doesn't].
and even though orthography is hardly worth considering when talking about similarities between languages, the above paragraph doesn't even mention how incredibly different the use of the latin alphabet is in french and in english! (have you ever noticed the diacritics on top of french letters?)
on what, might i ask, do you base such an assertion? if you are going to say "why, on my proficiency in spanish, of course!" let me contend that by saying that i, too, am a native speaker of spanish. and speaking not only as a spanish speaker, but as a linguist, i feel i must tell you that your comment is very misleading.
it's true that some idioms take longer to say in spanish than in english, but that's hardly the case for all of them. and even if it were, english is by no means the most economic of languages in the world. should we consider word economy as the determining aspect, english would fare a lot worse than, say, japanese.
if you are into ridiculous examples, take your very own comment: in english it took you 59 words to say that (as per OOo) whereas in spanish you can say the same thing in 57:
siendo un sudamericano que vive en los estados unidos, debo decir que doy gracias por que el inglés sea el principal idioma de programación. no sé sobre otros idiomas, pero en castellano tienes demasiadas palabras para decir lo mismo. el código en inglés probablemente ganaría un par de cientos de líneas si se escribiera en castellano jeje
things are a lot more balanced than what you might think.
From the point of view of the Piraha, all other human languages, whether spoken by city-dwellers or nomads, are pretty much the same.
IAAHTNLT (i am a highly trained ninja linguist too), but i honestly have no idea what you are trying to say there... that they are the same insofar as they are different from their own? i don't really know since i am not a piraha speaking ninja linguist, but i think it's just a little audacious to assume that they are unable to recognize the same differences anyone else might be able to recognize when listening to any other two languages different to her own.
one too many times i have heard the same point being made: that if i don't have the words to refer to something (in this case, thing i can't see) i can't think about it (a very orwellian idea, mind you). but i assure you that if you get a chinese and a japanese and make them talk to the piraha-speaking dudes, you are bound to find at least 5-6 that can pinpoint at least a few differences between the two.
which would actually mirror the experiences of every other European language: the "original" speakers tend to pick up the New World variations a lot better than the opposite, mainly due to the fact that they are a lot more "closed" in terms of used sounds.
what exactly do you mean by that?
are you talking about comprehension or about adopting the uses? because i'd have to say that on both terms you'd be wrong.
take spanish, for example. the spanish that got to america back during the final years of the 15th century was the result of a mix of the spoken languages of all the sailors and explorers who first decided to travel to the new world, and after that, of the combination of that form of spanish with the different native languages of the caribbean (mainly carib and arawakan). but the spaniards whose language became the basis for the american variant of spanish were precisely those who were more likely to get on a life-threatening voyage of discovery that could very well last for many months in the unlikely event of them not falling off the edge of the world. and in those days, the spaniards who had nothing to lose were mainly from the southern parts of the country (andalusia, mainly) and some of them from the basque country and other regions, but definitely not from the more socially relevant and powerfull regions.
therefore, the spanish that got to america, and that later evolved to become american spanish, has always been deeply related to andalusian, which was considered to be a lower class variant specially back in those days: that is why the latin american nations that were politically and socially powerful under spanish rule (mexico, peru, etc) have a much more careful pronunciation of spanish than those that lacked said political relevance (argentina, chile, central american countries, etc): because the presence of powerful spaniards, who used the more prestigious variant of spanish, helped the residents of those places to more correctly grasp the prestigious manners of speech of the continent.
this distinction, between american and european spanish, has lasted until this very date. and the fact that we have a real academia española de la lengua does very little to help: most of the time, latin american "academias" are struggling to convince the spanish RAE to "accept" a word or construction that is commonly used in america, something the RAE is very, very reluctant to do.
and as far as inter-comprehension is concerned, let me tell you a little anecdote: a couple of years ago a chilean movie called "taxi para tres" was released in that country and it became a huge box-office success. however, when they showed that movie in spain, they had to use subtitles because people couldn't understand what the actors were saying. this is the same thing that happened before with trainspotting in america, but it goes to show you that "original speakers *do not* tend to pick up the New World variations a lot better than the opposite". just a clarification.
I don't see how willingly distancing yourself from things that happen without your consent and in which you utterly don't believe can be called "being an asshole". Granted: Alan Moore has VERY strong ideas and he tends to drive people away. But he is not famous for being a people person, nor for being charismatic: he is famous for being a good writer, and he is arguably one of the best.
However, Moore's attitude towards movie adaptations of his works did not come from nothing. One after another, every single movie adaptation of his works has been a complete mess (go see LXG, or From Hell, even V for Vendetta, which completely discarded most of the really important and deep aspects of the novel). And Watchmen is probably his single most complex work. I, frankly, gave up hope on this movie the time I first heard it was going to be made. And that was way before Zack Snyder. The only one I know that has had a reasonable approach to this project was Terry Gilliam, who said he would only consider doing the movie as a 12-part miniseries.
And on Frank Miller, get your facts right: after differences that arose during the filming of Robocop, he DID turn his back on movie adaptations. And it wasn't until RodrÃguez filmed a short story from Sin City without Miller's authorization and sent it to him that he became convinced that RodrÃguez might actually make Sin City into a movie.
The way things have turned out for Moore, I have nothing but respect for his decisions. And even though he can be considered an asshole for some things, I think that not wanting to cooperate with this crap hardly qualifies as so.
...it's definitely the lowest i could find. it wasn't all just me though. i tried the two that appear at the bottom of the output list (each of them having a bacon number greater than 8, it seemed like a safe bet). here it is:
Shortest path from Relock trigger to Credit Administration Program
Relock trigger
Relocker
Relock device
Fusible link
Fuse (electrical)
Fire
Human
Credit (finance)
Credit manager
Credit Administration Program
if i remember correctly, and i might as well be mistaken, there are a _lot_ of relatively old games that saved corpses for as long as you could care, the original wolfenstein being one of them (that was actually one of the reasons i started playing it:p). but the list as far as i remember is _long_...
wolfenstein 3d
rome: pathway to power
doom
crimsonland
the commandos series
the hitman series
deus ex
the total war series...
and these are only the ones i remember now, not counting all the other that are already mentioned in this thread.
so why is this "news"? or is my gaming memory in desperate need for a reboot?
Slashdot Mirror
i'm having a hard time reading this.
if you are saying that finnish and english are as different as can be based on a) their different language families, b) their different phonological inventories, and c) their difference in terms of grammatical categories available...
then how on earth can you possibly say that "the closest language to English is French" if they a) come from different language families [one is romanic, the other is germanic], b) have different phonological inventories, and c) have very different grammatical systems [for starters, french has articles and genders, whereas english doesn't].
and even though orthography is hardly worth considering when talking about similarities between languages, the above paragraph doesn't even mention how incredibly different the use of the latin alphabet is in french and in english! (have you ever noticed the diacritics on top of french letters?)
it's true that some idioms take longer to say in spanish than in english, but that's hardly the case for all of them. and even if it were, english is by no means the most economic of languages in the world. should we consider word economy as the determining aspect, english would fare a lot worse than, say, japanese.
if you are into ridiculous examples, take your very own comment: in english it took you 59 words to say that (as per OOo) whereas in spanish you can say the same thing in 57:
things are a lot more balanced than what you might think.
From the point of view of the Piraha, all other human languages, whether spoken by city-dwellers or nomads, are pretty much the same.
IAAHTNLT (i am a highly trained ninja linguist too), but i honestly have no idea what you are trying to say there... that they are the same insofar as they are different from their own? i don't really know since i am not a piraha speaking ninja linguist, but i think it's just a little audacious to assume that they are unable to recognize the same differences anyone else might be able to recognize when listening to any other two languages different to her own.
one too many times i have heard the same point being made: that if i don't have the words to refer to something (in this case, thing i can't see) i can't think about it (a very orwellian idea, mind you). but i assure you that if you get a chinese and a japanese and make them talk to the piraha-speaking dudes, you are bound to find at least 5-6 that can pinpoint at least a few differences between the two.
ok... maybe not 5-6, but definitely 1-4...
which would actually mirror the experiences of every other European language: the "original" speakers tend to pick up the New World variations a lot better than the opposite, mainly due to the fact that they are a lot more "closed" in terms of used sounds.
what exactly do you mean by that?
are you talking about comprehension or about adopting the uses? because i'd have to say that on both terms you'd be wrong.
take spanish, for example. the spanish that got to america back during the final years of the 15th century was the result of a mix of the spoken languages of all the sailors and explorers who first decided to travel to the new world, and after that, of the combination of that form of spanish with the different native languages of the caribbean (mainly carib and arawakan). but the spaniards whose language became the basis for the american variant of spanish were precisely those who were more likely to get on a life-threatening voyage of discovery that could very well last for many months in the unlikely event of them not falling off the edge of the world. and in those days, the spaniards who had nothing to lose were mainly from the southern parts of the country (andalusia, mainly) and some of them from the basque country and other regions, but definitely not from the more socially relevant and powerfull regions.
therefore, the spanish that got to america, and that later evolved to become american spanish, has always been deeply related to andalusian, which was considered to be a lower class variant specially back in those days: that is why the latin american nations that were politically and socially powerful under spanish rule (mexico, peru, etc) have a much more careful pronunciation of spanish than those that lacked said political relevance (argentina, chile, central american countries, etc): because the presence of powerful spaniards, who used the more prestigious variant of spanish, helped the residents of those places to more correctly grasp the prestigious manners of speech of the continent.
this distinction, between american and european spanish, has lasted until this very date. and the fact that we have a real academia española de la lengua does very little to help: most of the time, latin american "academias" are struggling to convince the spanish RAE to "accept" a word or construction that is commonly used in america, something the RAE is very, very reluctant to do.
and as far as inter-comprehension is concerned, let me tell you a little anecdote: a couple of years ago a chilean movie called "taxi para tres" was released in that country and it became a huge box-office success. however, when they showed that movie in spain, they had to use subtitles because people couldn't understand what the actors were saying. this is the same thing that happened before with trainspotting in america, but it goes to show you that "original speakers *do not* tend to pick up the New World variations a lot better than the opposite". just a clarification.
However, Moore's attitude towards movie adaptations of his works did not come from nothing. One after another, every single movie adaptation of his works has been a complete mess (go see LXG, or From Hell, even V for Vendetta, which completely discarded most of the really important and deep aspects of the novel). And Watchmen is probably his single most complex work. I, frankly, gave up hope on this movie the time I first heard it was going to be made. And that was way before Zack Snyder. The only one I know that has had a reasonable approach to this project was Terry Gilliam, who said he would only consider doing the movie as a 12-part miniseries.
And on Frank Miller, get your facts right: after differences that arose during the filming of Robocop, he DID turn his back on movie adaptations. And it wasn't until RodrÃguez filmed a short story from Sin City without Miller's authorization and sent it to him that he became convinced that RodrÃguez might actually make Sin City into a movie.
The way things have turned out for Moore, I have nothing but respect for his decisions. And even though he can be considered an asshole for some things, I think that not wanting to cooperate with this crap hardly qualifies as so.
Relock trigger
Relocker
Relock device
Fusible link
Fuse (electrical)
Fire
Human
Credit (finance)
Credit manager
Credit Administration Program
9 clicks needed
any other ideas?
unfortunate typo there...
my original post was supposed to be largest, not lowest...
Shortest path from Relock trigger to Credit Administration Program
Relock trigger
Relocker
Relock device
Fusible link
Fuse (electrical)
Fire
Human
Credit (finance)
Credit manager
Credit Administration Program
9 clicks needed
has anyone had better luck?
if i remember correctly, and i might as well be mistaken, there are a _lot_ of relatively old games that saved corpses for as long as you could care, the original wolfenstein being one of them (that was actually one of the reasons i started playing it :p). but the list as far as i remember is _long_...
wolfenstein 3d
rome: pathway to power
doom
crimsonland
the commandos series
the hitman series
deus ex
the total war series ...
and these are only the ones i remember now, not counting all the other that are already mentioned in this thread.
so why is this "news"? or is my gaming memory in desperate need for a reboot?