Dutch-o-rama, advertising in the Netherlands

[sudsmaster]

Louis,

Ah, I see. So both German and Dutch are difficult ;-).

I didn't mean that in English we rely on simple words. Rather, that our grammar rules are so loose that we must rely on the sequence of words in a sentence to determine if a word is a noun, verb, object, or subject. I think (not really sure) in German and probably Dutch that there are modifiers for words to indicate if they are subject or object, so the order in which words are spoken may not be as important as in English. For example, in English we say, "I am taking her to the park". We cannot say "I her am taking the park to" as is perhaps possible (again perhaps, I'm in way over my head here) in some other more structured languages where the listener knows which words are subjects, objects or verbs from how the words are modified.

The idea being that German is a more precise language - which makes it more difficult to learn, but perhaps makes it easier to be clear about what one is trying to communicate.

Does that make any sense?

Maybe I just need to study German. I've learned a little French, Spanish and even Mandarin, but for some reason, even though my degree is in a science, I avoided German.

 

[foraloysius]

Actually same with Dutch. "Ik neem haar mee naar het park" is the only right order. People who learn Dutch and are used to a different order sometimes say: "Ik haar meenemen naar het park", which sound pretty awkward to us.

Dutch is a difficult language to learn because of our sounds, like the throat g and unusual combinations of letters like schr, sch and ui. Also our unusual use of verbs like when there is a spot on the table we say: Er zit een vlek op de tafel which literally translates to: There sits a spot on the table. Further a book lies on the table and a vase stands on the table.

There are also two prepositions for the word the. De for male and female words, Het for neutral words. Using those right is even hard for some Dutch. Ofcourse in German it's even more difficult.

There is a lot more to say about this, but I will just finish with the translation of Why learning Dutch isn't easy: "Waarom Nederlands leren niet gemakkelijk is". ;-)

 

[foraloysius]

Time for part two:

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?73860_

 

[sudsmaster]

Louis,

Have you ever read Mark Twain's essay on the German language? It's classic.

I did some digging, and found this version:

https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html

Also:



And:

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/101/hausaufgaben_info/twainschrecken.pdf

The last claims that Twain could actually write and speak excellent German, despite his humorous take on its ... idiosyncrasies...

This led me to an investigation of the phenomena of inflection and declension, which I confess I never really knew about before (other than using them naturally as I speak). I confess I was never much of a fan of learning the science of English grammar - it all seemed superfluous to me, since I knew how to speak reasonably well as a child. But I think when learning a foreign language like German or even Latin, it may be advantageous, if not downright necessary, to understand the various grammatical concepts that set these languages apart.

I also learned that Mandarin doesn't mess with inflection/declension, which made it relatively easy to learn, except of course for the required pitch changes which are hard for my Western ear to detect, let alone duplicate.

When I was vacationing in Guatemala in the 70's, I ran across a couple of young women from Germany (we would call them, "Euros", LOL). I struck up a conversation with them, they taught me a couple of German words, and declared that I appeared to be capable of speaking German since I could duplicate the guttural sounds typical of it. I was so pleased with their judgement that I decided I had already accomplished so much with the language there was no need to learn any more of it ;-)

I have since changed my mind.

A good treatise on inflection:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection

 

[askolover]

Deutsch wasn't too difficult for me.  You should try learning Korean!

<span id="result_box" class="short_text" lang="ko"><span>한국어를 배우십시오.</span></span>

 

[foraloysius]

Same for a Korean trying to learn Dutch! LOL

Mark Twain is funny, but not always right. For instance there is a difference between Sie and sie. He missed that one. In German it's important to use caps where it's mandatory, otherwise the whole meaning of a sentence can change.

Dutch is mainly an analytical language, although there are some exceptions.

Enough about language for now, back to Dutch ads.

 

[sudsmaster]

Natuurlijk bied ik mijn excuses aan voor het wijzigen van het onderwerp van het gesprek.

 

[foraloysius]

LOL! Excuses geaccepteerd!

 

[sudsmaster]

Je bent heel genadig.

 

[keymatic]

Thread 61 & 69:

Hi James & Stefan,

The washing machine you are referring to could be a machine from the late 50's produced by Parkinson - this machine had no actual agitator or pulsator - it moved the water by a strong pump and the special designed tub whirled the clothes around.

I have only heard of 1 or 2 other machines that use jet water action to move the clothes instead of using agitation.

Cheers
Keith

 

[sudsmaster]

Interesting.

Although I wonder if the gentleness achieved by the water jet cleaning action is a bit negated by the relative harshness of the wringer dryer.

And also perhaps the machine might not perform optimally with the higher sudsing soaps and detergents of the day. It's sort of an HE action machine way ahead of its time.

 

[sudsmaster]

I have some old San Francisco newspapers from the 1960's. I'll see if they have some washer ads (I recall that they do) and see if I can scan and upload them here.

I do recall one newspaper has a special feature on... LBJ's latest set of... boots... interesting that they thought those were newsworthy.