Non-native English speakers?!?

[WOLFGIR]

Originally posted by Yorick: Sun day Moon day Tue's day (Celtic God of War I believe) Woden's day (Norse King God Odin's day) Thor's day (Norse God of Thunder) Freya's day (Norse Goddess of Love and Beauty I believe) Saturn' day (King of the Titan's - Zeus' father) What gets me about the months of the year is they made perfect sense: OCTober (eight) SEPTember (seventh) NOVember (ninth) and DECember (tenth) until some idiot added July (Julius Caeser) and August (Augustus Caeser) IN THE MIDDLE OF THE YEAR!!!! Hello!

Yep.
We have similiar once..

Måndag
Tisdag
onsdag (odens dag)
Torsdag (Tors dag, the thundergod and killer of the Fenris wolf)
Fredag (could also be Freys dag, good of harvest and something like that..)
Lördag (saturday ((don´t know the meaning)
Söndag..

The Months are from greek/roman gods.

We have more like stol, ship/skepp and so on. Might get your mind rumbling about the tower of babylon eh? hehehe...



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WOLF WINS EVERY FIGHT BUT ONE, AND IN THAT ONE, HE DIES

Originally posted by Yorick: Sun day Moon day Tue's day (Celtic God of War I believe) Woden's day (Norse King God Odin's day) Thor's day (Norse God of Thunder) Freya's day (Norse Goddess of Love and Beauty I believe) Saturn' day (King of the Titan's - Zeus' father) What gets me about the months of the year is they made perfect sense: OCTober (eight) SEPTember (seventh) NOVember (ninth) and DECember (tenth) until some idiot added July (Julius Caeser) and August (Augustus Caeser) IN THE MIDDLE OF THE YEAR!!!! Hello!

Hi Yorick, just to add that what's worse is that Augustus added a day to his month, so August would be a long as July, and so made February even shorter!

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Holy Avenger of the OHF and part time Pinguindiebjäger

[Donut]

Originally posted by Throntar: Donut, Can you explain why that is? Is it just customary...or is there some sort of reason for not referring to surgeons as "Dr."? Seems to me that is a little bizarre as surgeons are simply specialized doctors. I'm curious... Thanks!

Before 1800 only physicians with a university degree (MD) were allowed to call themselves Dr., surgeons rarely had any formal qualifications and were called Mr. Surgery started in barber shops - that's why barbers sometimes have those red and white poles outside the shop (for blood and bandages) In 1800 surgeons got their own specialised qualification (MRCS) Member of the Roayal College of Surgeons. In the 19th century there was a huge expansion of voluntary hospitals in Britain and the status of the lowly surgeon soared.

They became proud to be distinguished from surgeons and became proud of the title 'Mr' seeing it as a badge of honour. To this day they can get very shirty if you call them Dr.

This convention applies in Britain and Ireland, and to a lesser extent in New Zealand and Australia.
[/b][/QUOTE]

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Save Chip - Don't let Sarah win!
Official Titterer of the Laughing Hyenas
Heading for Cardiff

[This message has been edited by Donut (edited 05-10-2001).]

[Throntar]

Thanks Donut! Good info. It is said that you learn something new every day. Well...I'm done with my learning for today. Had no idea!

It's very interesting to me to see how customs vary from country to country. Especially so between GB and the US as we were originally colonized by Brits. For instance, many barber shops in the US have those red/white poles outside of their shops, but I bet you that not many people understand the significance of them.

I think if you called a doctor "Mr." here, he/she would get shitty with you for not calling them "Dr.".

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Now where did I leave that doughnut?!

[Moridin]

Great stuff!

Originally posted by Yorick: It's interesting that the difference between MAN and woMAN (both containing the historically used name of the species) is a wo. Anyone know what the wo came from or means? Nothing to do with womb is it? WOMBMAN????? Same with MALE and feMALE.

To answer this question
In Old (or Olde ) English mann or monn was used for a human being. Wif for a female and waep or carl for a male. In combined forms, mann dropped the second n to form wifwan and waepman/carlman. The combined word wifman evolved into woman, while wif narrowed in meaning (from female) to wife. With the transfromation of wif to the narrower meaning, the waep- and carl- were dropped and man became a term for a male. This lead to the confusion between mann and man and eventually lead to man being used to for a human being and a male human being.

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It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear ignorant,
than open it and remove all doubt!

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Donut: yadda yadda yadda (it didn't bing up your post so I'm making do)

In Oz any specialist/surgeon I've been referred to goes under the title DR. I've had 5 operations under general ansthtc, so I've seen a few Doctors in my time


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I am the walrus!.... er, no hang on....

A fair dinkum laughing Hyena!

[Melusine]

Wow, great topic this has turned out to be!
Wolfie, I'm terribly impressed that you read the Seafarer (Hey Yorick, sounds familiar )!! You are very "snottor on mode" (wise of mind) I read it too, but then again, I'm a student of English...
BTW Yorick, I think Tuesday comes from Tyr, a Norse/Germanic war god.
Wolfie, yes, if you know Norse/Swedish you can understand a lot of Old English, can't you? Did you know that even a sentence such as "they ate their eggs" (I've said it before in a different thread) is entirely derived from Old Norse?


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Melusine, Archbabe of the OHF and the LH

Your voice is ambrosia

[Father Bronze]

Originally posted by Throntar: It's very interesting to me to see how customs vary from country to country. Especially so between GB and the US as we were originally colonized by Brits. For instance, many barber shops in the US have those red/white poles outside of their shops, but I bet you that not many people understand the significance of them.

I believe that in some states a Barber's license still gives the barber the authority to remove warts and such. As far as I understand, the barber of olden days used to perform quite a few minor surgical functions here in the US.

[Vaskez]

Originally posted by Sir_Tainly: o.k. I'm curious about how other languages treat a very old, emancipated profession Doctors? In English the title gives no indication of gender, in German I've only ever heard it used with males, do other languages have masc and fem words for doctor. If I remember rightly thius words is similar in a lot of European languages.

In Hungarian it is just Doktor for men and women. Women with the title "Doktor" retain their maiden names after marriage.



[This message has been edited by Vaskez (edited 05-10-2001).]

[Vaskez]

Originally posted by Yorick: Sun day Moon day Tue's day (Celtic God of War I believe) Woden's day (Norse King God Odin's day) Thor's day (Norse God of Thunder) Freya's day (Norse Goddess of Love and Beauty I believe) Saturn' day (King of the Titan's - Zeus' father) What gets me about the months of the year is they made perfect sense: OCTober (eight) SEPTember (seventh) NOVember (ninth) and DECember (tenth) until some idiot added July (Julius Caeser) and August (Augustus Caeser) IN THE MIDDLE OF THE YEAR!!!! Hello!

In Hungarian:

Monday = Hétfõ - which literally translated means "week-head", ie. start of the week. The word for week = "hét" which is also the word for 7, hehe. Logical.
Tuesday = Kedd - no idea where that comes from
Wednesday = Szerda -"
Thursday = Csütörtök - "
Friday = Péntek - "
Saturday = Szombat - "
Sunday = Vasárnap - "vasár" is an old word for "vásár" which means market. And "nap" means "day". So literally translated - "Market-day" as the village markets used to be held on Sundays.

As for counting to ten:
egy
kettõ
három
négy
õt
hat
hét
nyolc
kilenc
tíz

Happy now?