LL-L 'Resources' 2007.02.05 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 05 February 2007 - Volume 06

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L 'Idiomatica' 2007.02.05 (03) [E]

Karl wrote:
>You and Gabriele have within your arm's reach an English, a German, a Low
Saxon, an ABN Dutch, several  Flemish (Gents, Antwerps, >etc.), a
Maastrichts, an Afrikaans, a Platt, a Frisian, a Gronings, and a few other
dictionaries!  Oh yes, a Hawaiian one.  My amazement >at the vast knowledge
you and your collaborators place before me continues, and whatever can be
done to help more of that trickle down >to little ole me adds to the immense
pleasure I derive from my daily messages, even when portions are written in
languages or dialects >I've never seen before.

No no no, this all goes for Reinhard, not me! He's our top linguist, an
honour I would never claim for myself; I am actually a biologist turned
translator (the story of my life is a complicated one), and I just happen to
be fluent in a few languages apart from my own, which also allows me to read
and understand some others that I never learned - something many of you have
probably experienced as well.

I rarely ever use a dictionary at all, with only three exceptions. Two of
them I use in my work - the German Duden, ever since the spelling "reform"
which left us good spellers just as stranded as everybody else, and the
fantastic online dictionary http://dict.leo.org/, which I actually use more
like a thesaurus. The third is good old Chambers, of course, because it has
all those cool words nobody has ever heard of, and it helps me win every
single game of Scrabble. :-)

Well, and I do have a few other dictionaries and related works, just for the
fun of it, most of them English:
"They Have a Word For It"
"A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue"
"Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words"
"Conversational Tahitian" (this book is just a hoot!)
"Hannoversches Wörterbuch" (which is to be kept from Karl-Heinz at all
costs)
and a few others along those lines.

However, what I could really use is a decent, modern German/Dutch od
English/Dutch dictionary (plus a good ABN one), but I do not believe such a
thing is in existence. Why will nobody ever bother to compile one?

As to idioms - well, I lived in the United States for eight years, and even
before that time I spoke English with complete "native" fluency. So I don't
think much about the expressions I use, I will just say what comes
naturally. If you saw my written German more often, you would notice that I
simply prefer a very "dense" and colourful language (no, not that kind of
"dense", and not that kind of "colourful"). As I don't want to "dumb myself
down", i. e. not use the full potential of the English language as I know it
(see, I explained something!), and I don't want to seem condescending by
explaining figures of speech left and right (thus really exasperating our
native English speakers and others who are very familiar with the language),
I guess I will just go on as I always have - there's nothing wrong with
asking...

By the way, one great way of finding out what an idiom means is a Google
search, where you can see it used in different contexts.

Gabriele Kahn

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Resources

Gabriele:

> No no no, this all goes for Reinhard, not me! He's our top linguist, an
honour I would never claim for myself;

Nor would I.  I've never claimed it, nor do I remember being appointed to
that station by others.

Let's bury this red herring before the stink of it sends everyone packing!

Reinhard/Ron
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