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There are many parts of the world in which people do not take the
trouble to learn English. This means that we have to shoulder the
burden of communication by learning their language, if we want
them to understand when we tell them how to do things.
However, some of these foreign lingos are
almost wilfully difficult
to
learn. Of course there are courses (of course), but who has time
to
take a course? Nobody, of course.
MaxMedia, therefore, is proud to launch the first in a series of
electronic books aimed at helping you to learn foreign languages
as
painlessly as possible. The series is called "French par osmosis" (to
be followed by "German von osmosis", "Italian per osmosis" and
many
more).
It's very simple. Next time you buy an eBook for your Kindle,
simply
choose from our range of "French par Osmosis" editions. You want
to
read the latest Ed McBain? Fine. Or Pride and Sensibility? A
Passage to the Yemen? No
problem. They are all there.
Each is a perfectly normal, well-produced eBook in English, and
can
be read in the normal way if you are feeling lazy. However,
cliquez-
vous on the garlic icon, and then set the language slider to some
point between 1 and 11, and you're dans business.
At a setting of "1", a très petit subset of common, simple words in
the English text are replaced by their French equivalents. If you
wish, these can be subtly highlighted. The remainder of the text
remains dans English. Given the context, it's more than likely that
you will deduce the meaning of these mots Francais as you read
but,
if you avez problems, simply tap the word and it will be replaced
by
its English equivalent. Your reading experience sera therefore
only slightly impeded.
After deux or trois chapters, you will find, probablement, that you
hardly even notice the mots Francais, and you will read seamlessly
across them, sans having to tap the screen pour la traduction.
You can now turn the slider up from one to deux. Now, in
addition
to the initial set of mots, vouz trouvez a larger proportion of the
mots in Francais. As before, vouz pouvez tapoter the screen
whenever there's a mot avec which you are pas familiar but,
again,
the meaning of most of the mots Francais will be apparent from
context avec a little thought. Up to this level, les mots are
selected
such that restructuring of les sentences is not necessaire; for un
similar raison, idiomatic expressions are not altered, otherwise it
would be a complete dog's dejeuner. En effet, it is a form of
progressive Franglais electronique.
And so, nous continuons. A niveau neuf ou dix, la majorité des
mots will be en Francais, et vouz will find que vouz comprenez
sans
much difficulté. Aussi, the order des mots est changée where
necessaire, so you begin to learn un petit peu de grammaire, et a
few expressions idoimatique, while you are reading your livre
choisi . Sacre bleu!
You may also, si vouz voulez, select "modalité automatique". Avec
cette option, the level of difficulté is increased automatically as
you read, advancing to the next niveau as soon as you have read a
long passage sans having to ask pour la traduction.
Finalement, au niveau onzième, tout sera en français, et vous
serez
devenu un haut-parleur français sans même s'en rendre compte.
Gadulka!
Let's Parler Frainglais
http://www.amazon.c...ngton/dp/1861057822 [hippo, May 16 2011]
Franglais
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franglais [hippo, May 16 2011]
Language Immersion for Google Chrome
http://lifehacker.c...-you-browse-the-web [ytk, May 17 2012]
Ming-a-Ling...daft name...
https://addons.mozi.../addon/ming-a-ling/ ...now Men-ge-le that'd be more memorable [not_morrison_rm, May 18 2012]
Flewent
https://chrome.goog...gnahmdgminfepnokjhh Another Chrome app that translates bits of web pages to different tongues. [tatterdemalion, Aug 08 2012]
Le Mouton Anglo-francaise ...
http://www.montypyt...scripts/lecture.php Prior Art [8th of 7, Dec 08 2014]
[link]
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Holy merde! There are deux patisseries deja! Quelques
demi-bakers can read plus vite than je can edit. |
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Sacre Vache! Vous etes polyglot, juste comme moi! |
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Oui, c'est true. Je mange trop. |
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Encourages cultural diversity [-]. |
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Encourages foreigners to be even more lazy and shiftless than
they are currently [-]. |
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Fails to promote the rigid unity of outlook appropriate to an
Aggressive Hegemonising Swarm [-] |
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french [--------------------] |
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The idea would be much more acceptable if - as we had hoped
from the title- it was a proposal to enclose france and all its
inhabitants in a semi-permeable membrane and apply steadily
increasing extreme pressure until all the water is forced out. |
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This could work even plus efficace for audio livres, as you'd
be able entendre la prononciation of the mots, and would
be mieux prepared d'avoir une conversation in the langue
de your choix. |
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Takzhe, some languages may be trudno to read without
hearing someone govirit them first. And languages that aren't katuv from left to right
would drive you meshugah trying to kroa them. |
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La probléme avec une audio version, [ytk], would be that
c'est difficile to seamlessly subsitute les mots étrangers
dans a spoken passage. You would need avoir onze
complete texts, chaque read with an increasing proportion
des mots étrangers. Aussi, c'est difficile to ask a spoken
text to arreter and donnez vous the traduction, if you
don't comprenez a particular mot. |
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(J'ai juste noticed that le spell-checker ici dans la demi-
pattiserie can recognize si I am typing en francais, and
then queries mes mots anglaises. C'est smart!) |
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Let's see you do this with Chinese. |
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Why would Chinese want to learn French this way? |
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//Let's see you do this with Chinese// |
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No. 1 Riz special
No. 2 Canard a la Pekinoise
No. 3 Chow le mien
No. 4 Sucre et aigre porc |
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//Let's see you do this with Chinese.// |
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Yes, that would be 難,perhaps even 不可能. |
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In fact (and this may of interest to 8th) I believe one could
even learn Borgeoise in this way. |
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Binary is of course the universal language, consisting as it does
of just 0's and 1's, or alternatively Yes and No
or if you're
Monsieur le
President de la Republique, General Charles de Gaulle, just 'NON
!' |
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If it's such a 1derful language, 1 1ders why so few people
speak Borgoise. |
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Well, that's Popeye in the merde, then. |
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"There are many parts of the world in which people
do not take the trouble to learn English. This means
that we have to shoulder the burden of
communication by learning their language, if we
want them to understand when we tell them how to
do things." |
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Worthy of a croissant for the first paragraph alone! |
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"Fails to promote the rigid unity of outlook
appropriate to an Aggressive Hegemonising Swarm [-]
" |
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What language are you speaking 8th of 7 ? |
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C'est la langue de la Borgeoisie. |
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//A niveau neuf ou dix, la majorité des mots will be en
Francais// A quel niveau commence-t-il l'imparfait du
subjonctif? |
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Apart from a typo in the title (should be \\Apprenons
Franglais avec le Kindle\\) this idea is flawless [+] |
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Vous êtes très gentil, [posture de la souris]. |
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Si je were vous, je would évite l'imparfait du subjonctif
comme la plague. |
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"Ah ! je vois que vous bronchez sur cet imparfait du
subjonctif" (L'auteur est correct, mais vous vous avez
trompe de roman. C'etait _La Chute_ et non _La Peste_) |
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Niveau onzième, sacre bleu! My feeble French is learned by audio, so I cannot comment worthily. |
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I really like this idea, seriously, and had to stop halfway through just to laugh. |
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May I suggest that niveau 1/2 highlights les mots that are the same in English et le Français? |
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The Avion My Uncle Flew is a rather good children's book that adds in French as the story progresses, by the way. The idea of doing so electronically deserves a croissant, of course. [+] |
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//The Avion My Uncle Flew is a rather good children's book
that adds in French as the story progresses, by the way.// |
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Aha! Les grands esprits pensent alike. (Ou, perhaps, les fous
rarement differ.) Merci beaucoup! |
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Un petit d'un petit
S'étonne aux Halles
Un petit d'un petit
Ah! degrés te fallent
Indolent qui ne sort cesse
Indolent qui ne se mène
Qu'importe un petit d'un petit
Tout Gai de Reguennes |
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//les mots that are the same in English et le Français?
//
I've got a book with the following printed on its spine: |
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"Medical" does double duty as both a French and an English
word, you see. So the "level" in the Osmotic Kindle would
be, in a mathematical sense ill-defined. Not a problem,
really, just an observation. |
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([tatterdemalion] That's from _Mots D'Heures: Gousses,
Rames_ isn't it?) |
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You lost me when you turned the slider from one to deux. The theory is better than the reality. |
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Peut-être vous avez need de nos édition Americain-a-French
au lieu, [ldischler]? |
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(Incidentalement, le Traduction Google me donne "fallent"
pour la traduction de "fallent".) |
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I employ the American method of speaking slowly but loudly, and with enough repetitions that even the most recalcitrant Parisian will eventually surrender and admit that he is actually quite fluent in English. |
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Zut! J'ai une autre idée fantastique! On peut implementer
this idea dans une browser! Puis, tous les pages du web peut
etre displayed avec un utiliseur-selected percentage du mots
French! |
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(Oui, je sais q'il y'a Google Translate, mais c'est ne pas the
same thing.) |
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(+) J'ai ri. M'écriai-je. J'ai acheté le t-shirt. |
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[+] Un *tres* bon idee. Cert. Pour plus de langues aussi, pas de Francais seulement. |
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As someone who has real difficulty learning
languages, I think this could really work. Definite
bun. |
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//Un petit d'un petit
S'étonne aux Halles
//
sp. "sa donne un ouialle" |
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I think this Idea suffers from the fact that not every language has the same sentence structure as English. In French (and other Latin-descended languages) it is normal for adjectives to follow the words being modified by them, while in English it is normal for adjectives to precede the words being modified by them. |
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So, whle direct replacement of words is partly workable, more needs to be done, as part of the teaching process, than just that. |
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This Idea might also benefit if the human race decided to create an All-Culture Character Set, able to accommodate all the sounds used in all human languages. Then the very first step would be translating the English text to that symbology, before trying to use that symbology to teach a very different language like Chinese. |
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[Vernon] // Aussi, the order des mots est changée where
necessaire, so you begin to learn un petit peu de
grammaire//. Lisez et comprendrez. |
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Il va être très difficile, l'enseignement de la langue
française pour les Américains. Ils n'ont pas encore
maîtrisé l'Anglais, comme vous pouvez le voir, m'sieur
[Maxwell Buchanan]. |
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//Pas de how// That's a suburb of Coeur d'Alene, isn't it? |
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Yes, I believe it's near Pas de Comment. |
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A similar clojure could be subclassed to { people.teach how to
code } ; |
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Pas doubt, [pas seulement but aussi]. |
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Pas de How or Savoir-faire? |
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[MaxwellBuchanan], sorry, I don't know any significant amount of French. Much of your original post is gobbledygook to me. So, quoting it doesn't clarify anything. |
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I might mention that not everyone wants to learn other languages. My personal rationale involves the choice between learning the same old stuff six different ways, or learning all-new stuff. This point became clear to me after I found myself learning my sixth computer-programming language.... |
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[bigsleep]//Will there be an option to mettre en
marche links to des clîps Monty Python ?// En aucun
cas. Would put people in mind of the Hungarian
phrasebook. |
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//Much of your original post is gobbledygook to me//My
apologies. However, I bet you can make sense of the first
six paragraphs. In fact, you're a perfect test subject. |
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What I was saying was that "Also, the order of the words is
changed where necessary, so you begin to learn a little bit
of grammar." |
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//not everyone wants to learn other languages// And
quite right too. I personally believe that these oddball
foreigners ought to just agree that they haven't come up
with anything better than the Queen's English (which,
incidentally, we allow them to use at no charge
whatsoever, despite the immense development costs over
a period of several hundred years), and just stop their
linguistic affectations. However, it's a case of montagnes
et Mohammed. This idea is not compulsory (and, even if
you buy one of these eBooks, you can just leave the slider
at zero and read it in proper English as god intended). |
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My insignificant knowledge of French reveals that you didn't really "get" what my first post was talking about. I said, "whle direct replacement of words is partly workable, more needs to be done, as part of the teaching process, than just that." |
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So, for example, if some text in English includes the phrase "green house", and your automatic translation (here I used Google Translate) converts it to "maison verte", then how is the reader supposed to know which word means "green" and which word means "house", when you didn't warn the reader in advance that the order of words would be changed? |
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That is, you ASSUMED that the reader would recognize that words have been transposed, and I didn't make that assumption when I wrote my original post here. |
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If either the grammar and vocabulary step up
independently, or there is a logical procedure
where you get vocabulary first, and then move on
to grammar, [Vernon]'s point should be solvable. |
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Just knowing the vocabulary should be enough to
let you read the language anyway (and barring
pronunciation issues understand it spoken, slowly
and clearly at least). Moving on to the grammar
would be necessary to write and speak it clearly,
but anything would be a help. |
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[Vernon] you're right, assuming that (a) you skip the first few
levels, where you'll see things like "the green maison" and
"his maison in the country"; and (b) you also fail to tap the
phrase "maison vert" to view the translation as "green
house". |
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Of course, if anyone in the story has a greenhouse and works
at the Whitehouse while listening to Jailhouse Rock, we're
back in the shit-house again. |
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//Anything would be a help// Exactly. The idea, it
seems, is to create, by relexification, a pidgin which
solves the practical problems of interacting with
Frenchman, while thumbing its nose at the French
language, and, indeed, the very idea of any language
other than English. |
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I think I missed the part about tapping the text, but that still doesn't tell you which word means "green" and which word means "house". A lower control-setting is probably the best way to introduce the new words, but I suspect that a mere 11 settings is FAR too few. |
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Also, I suspect whole books need to be read at lower settings, before increasing the setting level. That's to allow words to be correctly identified from their use in multiple contexts. For example, if just the word "green" was changed, in a book, would the reader even know that the replacement word was a color, from just one encountering of it? Probably not! But encountering it in multiple contexts should make it clear. Yet that means not advancing the setting-level of the translator until well after the reader has had a chance to encounter a changed word in multiple contexts.... |
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In the end, then, I tend to think that while the language-learning process may be simplified by this Idea, I also think the new language will take as long to learn as it usually does. |
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//I suspect that a mere 11 settings is FAR too few// Just
for you, we'll let the slider go up to 12. And yes, you're
right. On the other hand, I didn't specify that you could
only choose integers... |
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//whole books need to be read at lower settings, before
increasing the setting level// |
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You can choose your settings all the time. You can start
out on level 4, then you can decide you need to go back to
level 1.3, then you can go up to 2.3. You can stay on level
2.3 for as long as you want. You can read ten books on
level 2.3 if you like, before trying to read a new book at
level 3. Then, if you get a book which covers a very
different topic (like fly-fishing in India) and you don't
recognise a lot of the French words, you can start reading
that book at level 1 until you've picked up the new
vocabulary. |
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Likewise, if you find that the editors of one book have
"scaled" the settings a bit differently (so that, for
instance, level 3 in "Gone With the Titanic" is as hard as
level 4 in "Zen and the ARTRR"*, you can adjust
accordingly. |
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What I'm sort of getting at here is that you can choose
what level you read at, always. You can even just read
everything in English if you're on holiday and just want a
good story. |
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The only thing is that each story would have to be chosen to be translated manually in order to avoid all the ins'n'outs of the to/from languages. However this need be no or little more difficult than translating a novel into another language already is. |
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Well worth it though, and congratulations Max, this is the first idea I've seen that would make me even consider purchasing one of those things. Consider me poleaxed. |
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// each story would have to be chosen to be translated
manually// |
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Absolutely. A simple "search and replace" might work for a
few nouns, but manual editing would be essential beyond
a basic level. Also, the translator would have to use
judgement to decide which level of translation
corresponded to which numerical level. This is one reason
why it's necessary to be able to continuously choose the
level you read at, to allow for slight differences in the
"scaling" of the difficulty between different translators. |
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If Mr. Kindle is reading this then (a) I just love your cakes
and (b) feel free to contact moi. |
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That was the lousiest request for free cakes I've ever seen. |
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[Max], on the basis of the travails this idea is
enduring in certain parts of the "free world", might I
suggest devising one to first teach English? |
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I was always told, by my Great Aunt Maxwelline, "Quand on
n'a rien de gentil à dire, il faut ne rien dire." |
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//You lost me when you turned the slider from one
to deux. // |
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you just proved yourself wrong friend... |
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Only the autoboner could bone this. |
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Everyone sounds comme Delboy. J'adore it, Rodders! [+] |
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Avez-vous ne signifie pas, "Quand vous n'avez rien de
gentil à dire, il est préférable de ne rien dire"? |
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Bravo! This is a great idea... |
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By the way, I believe this is practiced in Indian speech: quite strange to hear perfect English spoken in the middle of what sounds like total gibberish. |
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Learning foreign languages is counter-productive. There are roughly 400m people with English as their first language, but about 2 billion learning English as a second language. Thus, when someone with English as their first language travels abroad it is both courteous and helpful for them to talk loudly and slowly as an example of correct English for those learning English as a second language. |
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What [Ling] said...this is also baked on Spanish radio and TV stations in the US. It appears there is no other word for *internet* and many other English terms that do not translate. |
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Actually, this is something like using Miles Kington's "Let's Parler Franglais" books (voir les liens) to teach yourself French. |
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Not so much that there is no word, just that the word is identical. With the exception of France, where they have deliberately come up with French back formations, words that developed after languages were more or less codified are frequently borrowed wholesale. Since much of the technical progress for the last 60 years was in English (not all by native speakers, but the premier journals mostly are), the words were formed of English roots. |
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This is the same reason why medical and legal terms are frequently Latin, it was the language of international communication at the time those disciplines were codified. |
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Not only for that reason. In technical vocabulary,
it's useful to have words without "baggage" -- words
with only a single definition, and no connotations.
Loan words from a dead language are useful for that.
I guess I should add that the above is only my
opinion, although it seems self evident. |
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I think it would be far more fun to use this method
to deliberately teach broken Frenglish to the world,
just to piss off the stuffy French and their pathetic
insistence upon maintaining the purity of their
hooting, pretentious lingo. |
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//Actually, this is something like using Miles Kington's "Let's Parler Franglais" books (voir les liens) to teach yourself French// Complete with the glorious motto of the Navire Francaise "A l'eau, c'est l'heure". |
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//I should add that the above is only my opinion,
although it seems self evident.// |
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I have copy-et-pasted that phrase into my list of
Useful Phrases for Difficult Arguments. Merci. |
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//the glorious motto of the Navire Francaise "A l'eau,
c'est l'heure".// |
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And not forgetting the dying words of Napoleon to
Josephine: "Qui s'amie heures dit." |
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Nor indeed the rousing and patriotic words of
General de Gaulle when
faced with the challenge of protecting Paris against
the high-minded Germans: " Oui,
ville fait t'aime. On dit 'bêcheurs'! " |
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I'm worried a little about grammar, but you did it
very well in your post, so it could certainly be run
over. |
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I think so too. Grammar is one of them things at
which I am good at running over. |
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This could be a good way to infiltrate and corrupt the French with poor grammar, leading invaribly to their downfall. (waiting for the obvious tautology there to be pointed out...) |
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//Its like a yellow rag to a bull'.// |
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I thought it was "like a red rag" ? |
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"Like a yellow rag to a red rag." would make no
sense whatsoever. |
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You seem to have excluded the possibility that I
might fall into both of those catbaskets. |
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//idiomatic expressions are not altered, otherwise it would be a complete dog's dejeuner// |
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Yes they are - I have never heard the idiomatic expression 'a dog's lunch', I would have thought it sould be 'a dog's dîner' (not diner, unless the diner has become the dîner). |
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Now, you see, the need for me to expand my
linguistic horizons has been brought to the phore.
Which is exactly why I proposed this idea. |
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Incroyablement, this has since been plus or moins
cuit au four (voyez link). |
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Well, allez a pied d'escalier! |
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Uh, what about languages with differing grammars or tense structures, or where sentences are structured differently? How would the transition be handled there without going through a transitional phase of utterly illegible nonsense? |
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//I've got a book with the following printed on its spine: |
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Dictionary // Ca marche seulement parce-que "dictionnaire" est masculine.
Un whole autre boite de verres. |
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Now probably isn't the point to mention the Firefox add on ming-a-ling which replaces a certain number of words.... |
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// French back formations, |
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Sounds painful, you should see a doctor. |
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Vraiment, cette idée est bollocks du chien [+] |
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//cette idée est bollocks du chien // sp. "bolleaux" |
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This is damned clever. It's how people often learn
new languages in practice anyway. My
grandparents would speak to my mom in about
half Ukranian half English. So as a kid I'd hear stuff
like "Bladovich bladovich to the bakery to get
some bladovich." Sure sentence structures may be
different, but once you get the words down you
can communicate. If somebody says "Toilet,
where is?" you don't say "What the hell are you
talking about?" |
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The downside is it prolongs the agony of the world
speaking different languages, something that
makes absolutely no sense. I think any language
besides English should be targeted for
extermination like polio but that's just me. |
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Bun but only for the "English by Osmosis" version.
Or "Anglais by Osmose" I guess. |
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May I just say, that I would pay a rather healthy surcharge above the listed price, per volume, for this service. Choose something that can be read over and over without tiring, like To kill a Mockingbird, HHGTTG, or Catch 22. |
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This really should be a thing, and certainly has no place residing here in the HALFbakery, rather it should be pushed, kicking and screaming, out into the FULLbakery, somewhere. More than any other 1/2B idea I can readily recall at this time, this ticks both the achievable and worthwhile/profitable boxes that to me says it should be made a reality. |
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I'd think that an integer version could be a) much more easily achieved, and b) much more practical to "certify" to whatever standard you're applying to each translational stage. Ie, if you declare 5 variable stages of translation, and produce reasonable guidelines for each stage, it would be then as simple as getting a suitably skilled linguist to translate the volume 5 times. Certify, publish, .... Profit. |
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I also think that you'd just as simply decide which languages are compatible with english, and only offer the service for those. I'd start with languages that are natively written with the english alphabet and are gramatically similar, although that's by no means the limit. |
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Well, there are quite a lot of out-of-copyright
popular books that one could start with. If anyone
wants to bake this as an onlineable thing, just cut
me in for 4% of the first £10m. |
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Well, nous could commencer with a bit of Agiterlance:
Être or ne pas être, telle est la question... |
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//prior art// fair enough. I'll settle for 4% of your
4%. |
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//a short workshop on it at an OU conference// |
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That is, to borrow a phrase from our American
cousins, cool! Tell more. |
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Ah, May - two months and a lifetime ago. Memory is
such a fickle, ah, wossname. |
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Je connais ce posting ziemlich bien. Het is een klassiekje Halbbakkereiidée. Alhoewel ich all the same seulement s'koshi Franzöisch ili Mangeldeutsch learnt durch ukuFunda this maniére. Und ngi khohliwe lonke namhlanje, en miskien habe ich ein bischen confused etait and in fact often bewildered durch das application of the technique ("pazhaosta?") gewürden (qué?) waren. |
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In spite of that, I can say that it almost works, je pense. It's just that one must be realistic about how many languages it's possible to go beyond, "Semimasen? aygawgha wakarimas ka?" in. (Können Sie englisch? / Est-que ce que c'est qui ca comprenez l'anglais / Kan u Engels praat? / Habla Inglés? / ukhulum' isiNgisi, wena?) |
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Voilá un demi-pain. Le quatorzieme c'est von mich! |
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I thank you from the derrière of my coeur. |
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While I think the basic idea is really cool, my guess is it will
never fly. It has been 3-1/2 years since Max's original post
and neither this site nor a lite Google search have turned up
any progress. (Except, perhaps, Toby's thesis.) More to the
point, the book "The Avion My Uncle Flew" is now almost as
old as I am and there hasn't been a sequel or copy-cat. |
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The only hope I have is that someone in Google sandbox has
read this and is trying it out. |
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[skoomphemph]; sp. sumimasen. |
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