| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 616.1 | | EAGLE1::EGGERS | Tom, VAX & MIPS architecture | Wed Jan 25 1989 07:06 | 5 |
| > Also, in English, I seem to remember Janet, John, a dog (Spot) and
> a ball in various combinations.
Hmmm. It sounds like you went to a much more progressive school than I
did.
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| 616.2 | .... same books for over 20 years .... | IJSAPL::ELSENAAR | Fractal of the universe | Wed Jan 25 1989 09:16 | 32 |
|
Hah. The *very* first sentence I learned *officially* was:
"Bobby Proud likes to go fishing. He sits on the stump of a beech-tree, and
holds his fishing-rod in his hand."
The book we used, started each chapter with a short story, and went on to
explain some of the sentences, and its idiom. Our teacher forced us to learn the
first five stories by heart. We thought it was stupid, but it helped a great
deal when we were trying to generate english sentences.
Of course, I had learned already some other sentences off-line ... :-)
My first *french* sentence was "Papa fume une pipe"; "Daddy smokes a pipe".
Extremely useful to know...
I have learned the basics of Italian at school, just before we went to Rome. The
practical things I picked up from a tourists' dictionary. Really great sentences
in there, like: "Can you tell me where I can find the nearest church to go to
confession"..... I forgot the italian words, but it sounded great.
Oh. I almost forgot. The first *American* sentences I learned were:
- "You gotta *move*, sir"
(Officer to me when I just started to *think* of parking my car at the wrong
place in Boston)
- "This is *New York*, man"
(Taxi-driver, bringing us to Penn station with a broad grin on his face, using
all lanes, since we had told him we had to catch a train)
:-)
Arie
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| 616.3 | Qu'est que tu dis? | CLARID::TURNBULL | Another Computerised Junk Note! | Wed Jan 25 1989 10:47 | 11 |
| As far as I know:
English people learn "la plume de ma tante" -- doubtless a very useful phrase
for everyday conversation. For example, you are standing by the Arc de
Triumphe thouroughly lost, so you turn to the nearest person and say in broken
French, "Excuse me, lost I am, tell you can me where find I my aunt's pen?"
French people learn "my tailor is rich", which will also get them a long way
while on holiday.
Greg.
|
| 616.4 | Dick & Jane books | PSTJTT::TABER | KA1SVY -- the new lid on the block. | Wed Jan 25 1989 15:04 | 13 |
| re: .0
Surely you mean the storys of Dick and Jane and their dog Spot, and
their cat Puff, and the bouncing blue ball and so on. They are the
traditional introduction to that wonderfull world where adding an "s" to
"say" turns it into "sez" and "business" is pronounced "bizniss."
In my parochical school, we learned that if you said, "Oh see Spot, Dick
and Jane" real fast, it became wonderfully lewd and was our first
introduction to double-entedre. We thought that we were putting
something over on the nuns, but looking back I'm sure they had heard it
all long before.
>>>==>PStJTT
|
| 616.5 | | IJSAPL::ELSENAAR | Fractal of the universe | Wed Jan 25 1989 15:21 | 16 |
|
I just remembered another story. There is a series of dutch books written by
someone who is capable of hiding a joke in every sentence. In one of the books,
there is a situation where a dutchman meets a french lady. He only knows two
french sentences by heart, but he doesn't know the meaning. One of the sentences
is: "on ne peut pas faire l'amour avec tout le monde". I won't describe to you
what happened in the book, but for me, the result was that I used to use that
sentence for years when something did not go according to plan, as a replacement
for "You can't have them all....".
Once I used it again, and someone who spoke french heard it. He turned around,
looked at me gravely, and said: ".... en un fois".
Don't ask me to translate it (blush!)
Arie
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