Language & Grammar discussion

Here, I also take questions.

What is the capital of Luxembourg?

(And don't forget to ford your stream of consciousness now and again, too!)

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg's capital is Luxembourg. If there's a pun in your question, I didn't get it, I guess I ate too heavy on my lunch break.

But as this is a language forum, here's a fun fact: until 1984, people in Luxembourg spoke German next to French. Then, they decided that their German dialect was a language of its own and called it Lëtzebuergesch (Luxembourgish). Maybe, Britain and the US will go the same way one day.


(I promise I will.)

Ah, yes. Yesterday I was feeling Luxembourgish myself. Something I ate, I think, repeating on me.

Right now I've got to get out of Dodge and run before the sun gets too high.

Ciao for niao, as they say in the Grand Duchy....

But didn't Oscar Wilde say that Britain and the US had everything in common except their language?

You're very reparty-on, dudes, Gabs. I've seen you do it. Here. To me. Usually something like, "Shut up, NE, will you?"

Grebs you have hooked-up with a bunch of smart mouths. Don Quixote says "in order to be intelligent you have to have wit and humor".

I know, but you grow along with your opponents, as someone once famously said.

Tom Thumb ran unopposed, apparently.

Well, it ran against a horse and lost the race, but afterwards, the company still decided to go with steam instead of horses. A little like in the 2000 election.

Speaking of modernisation, I have been using my first ebook reader for a week now, and I must say that I'm very happy with it.
I have to travel quite a bit, and being able to carry an entire library with me will surely make me feel like home (minus the racket). Although the thing was rather expensive, so far I haven't spent a cent on my currently over 300 ebooks, as all the classics are available for free. Homer, Twain, Dickens, Goethe - here I come!

It's too hot his brain was fried from the heat.

Oh, no. Not the "when I was a child" stories. When my father was a child, he walked five miles to school, through six-foot snowdrifts, uphill -- both ways! And now, I've discovered in recent years, I, TOO, went to school in that manner when I was a child. What are the odds?

But really, we're raining on Greb's thread. Unless he meant it when he said it's "up for grebs."

That's fine, I would even offer you coffee and cake if this chat room weren't so damn digital.

And speaking of digital, I take from your posts you don't care about ebook readers...

I was given a free Kindle from amazon -- a dubious "freebie" in that it requires money to use it, money that must be spent at (surprise!) amazon.

Anyway, I have read two books on it in the two years I've owned it. It's OK. I hate the feel of it in my hands, that's for sure. And I used the highlighter, notes function a little, too -- only I've never gone back to see what I highlighted.

Often I need real books because I buy and read YA fare, which then goes into my classroom library. I read YA to stay up on the latest stuff that teens like so I can talk it up and get the kids interested. It's part of my job, but it's not a difficult part because a lot of YA is decent these days.

I've purchased a few teacher books on the Kindle, but often I want THOSE in book form, too, so I can photocopy stuff, especially forms in the appendices.

That leaves books for me alone, read for enjoyment. As these are a minority of my purchases, and as the Kindle prices are often only a dollar or two less than the hardcover discount on amazon, I don't bother.

How's that for the short and especially long of it?

Oh. And e-readers seep a little of that same radiation cell phones do, by the way. So there's a health warning to it as well. But that's always the case with "progress" -- it's convenient for people in a hurry and, ultimately, the medical field.

Afaik, Kindle files are never yours, they licence you to read the ebooks you "purchase", but they do not really give you the files. Once, there were copyright claims on a book of which amazon had sold an ebook version - and they just retracted it form the readers' devices. There might now be a possibility to save your ebooks at a place where they can no longer get them, but I find this just eery.
This was the main reason for me not to purchase a kindle, I don't want anybody to be able to sneak into my library.

Yes, I've read about the 1984 debacle, where amazon snuck in the dead of metaphorical night to everyone's Kindles and took back e-files of anyone who had downloaded the book. The irony was delicious.

Anyway, what you say makes using my Kindle even less likely. Still, amazingly, people rationalize such matters and blithely continue to "buy" Kindle versions of books, just as they rationalize ways in which government and businesses invade their privacy more and more without justification (and the Internet makes it that much easier, let us say).

What does "Afaik" stand for? By the way?

As
Far
As
I
Know,

there's no way anybody can sneak into my ebook data base, it's not kindle and a mac has great software to protect you from things like that.
So the book was really 1984? That is hilarious.

I love my Kindle.....that's all!