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TheWalkingContradiction
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« Reply #75 on: August 20, 2012, 07:13:45 PM » |
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Can Canadians take offense to anything?
Americans. Actually, the last time I was in Brussels I was mistaken for Canadian. I met a husband and wife who were clearly 80+. (The husband looked like he was being held together by Scotch tape.) They spoke no English, and they were surprised that I was able to speak to them in French. Although my accent is light, it is clearly North American. For this reason, they asked me what part of Canada I was from. When I said that I was an American from New York, they countered that that was impossible because (1) Americans don't speak other languages and (2) Americans are not polite. Since I spoke French and was very polite, I had to be Canadian.   |
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Ecurb Noselrub
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« Reply #76 on: August 20, 2012, 07:18:58 PM » |
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Can Canadians take offense to anything? They should take offense to curling. The entire world should take offense to curling. It's the stupidest sport in the world. (I suppose I should add a smiley here: ) |
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TheWalkingContradiction
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« Reply #77 on: August 20, 2012, 07:22:43 PM » |
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Can Canadians take offense to anything? They should take offense to curling. The entire world should take offense to curling. It's the stupidest sport in the world. Most definitely agreed!!!  Still, the 2010 Olympic curling team from Norway looked absolutely delicious in their team's goofy pants...  |
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« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 07:36:18 PM by TheWalkingContradiction »
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TheWalkingContradiction
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« Reply #78 on: August 20, 2012, 07:26:06 PM » |
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And to get back to Yiddish culture... Here are my photos of the (19th-century) Eldridge Street Synagogue in Lower Manhattan. I took my first Yiddish class there. It is a national monument today, entirely surrounded by Chinatown. When it was built, that neighborhood was the (Jewish part of the) Lower East Side.    |
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DeterminedJuliet
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« Reply #79 on: August 20, 2012, 07:35:04 PM » |
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Can Canadians take offense to anything? They should take offense to curling. The entire world should take offense to curling. It's the stupidest sport in the world. (I suppose I should add a smiley here: ) I feel no pride for curling, I think it is pretty stupid. I think most sports are stupid, though.  |
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"We’ve thought of life by analogy with a journey, with pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end, and the THING was to get to that end; success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But, we missed the point the whole way along; It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing, or dance, while the music was being played." - Alan Watts
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TheWalkingContradiction
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« Reply #80 on: August 20, 2012, 07:53:47 PM » |
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Here's what I mean by the synagogue's being entirely surrounded by Chinatown... The first two photos are mine. The last is from the Internet and shows the annual Eggrolls and Egg Creams Festival. Egg rolls are associated with American Chinese culture and egg creams are associated with American Yiddish culture. For those not in the Eastern United States... An egg cream is chocolate syrup, milk, and soda water. There are no eggs in it.    |
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« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 07:59:07 PM by TheWalkingContradiction »
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Sweetdeath
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« Reply #81 on: August 20, 2012, 07:57:00 PM » |
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I know that area. Cuz I was born and still live in NYC.
I go to Canal street a lot. Do you live there still or--?
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"Law 35- You got to go with what works." - Robin Lefler Wiggum:"You have that much faith in me, Homer?" Homer:"No! Faith is what you have in things that don't exist. Your awesomeness is real." “I was thinking that perhaps this thing called God does not exist. Because He cannot save any one of us. No matter how we pray, He doesn’t mend our wounds. No matter how we plead, He doesn’t strike down our enemies. There hasn’t been an instance where He has cured our sick. Powerless, we can only wait to be tossed onto the dirt of a foreign land. He doesn’t have a thread of spiritual existence. If only there were a shadow, a whisper. But I haven’t felt Him once.” — 稲荷家房之介 - Giglio  |
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Sweetdeath
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« Reply #82 on: August 20, 2012, 07:58:37 PM » |
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Can Canadians take offense to anything? They should take offense to curling. The entire world should take offense to curling. It's the stupidest sport in the world. (I suppose I should add a smiley here: ) I feel no pride for curling, I think it is pretty stupid. I think most sports are stupid, though. I think it's fun. XD I actually want to try it out. |
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"Law 35- You got to go with what works." - Robin Lefler Wiggum:"You have that much faith in me, Homer?" Homer:"No! Faith is what you have in things that don't exist. Your awesomeness is real." “I was thinking that perhaps this thing called God does not exist. Because He cannot save any one of us. No matter how we pray, He doesn’t mend our wounds. No matter how we plead, He doesn’t strike down our enemies. There hasn’t been an instance where He has cured our sick. Powerless, we can only wait to be tossed onto the dirt of a foreign land. He doesn’t have a thread of spiritual existence. If only there were a shadow, a whisper. But I haven’t felt Him once.” — 稲荷家房之介 - Giglio |
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DeterminedJuliet
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« Reply #83 on: August 20, 2012, 08:08:53 PM » |
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Can Canadians take offense to anything? They should take offense to curling. The entire world should take offense to curling. It's the stupidest sport in the world. (I suppose I should add a smiley here: ) I feel no pride for curling, I think it is pretty stupid. I think most sports are stupid, though. I think it's fun. XD I actually want to try it out. Haha, I played as one of those brushy-sweepy people once. It was fun. Super easy. You get to wear slippy shoes. |
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"We’ve thought of life by analogy with a journey, with pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end, and the THING was to get to that end; success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But, we missed the point the whole way along; It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing, or dance, while the music was being played." - Alan Watts
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TheWalkingContradiction
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« Reply #84 on: August 20, 2012, 08:13:02 PM » |
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I know that area. Cuz I was born and still live in NYC.
I go to Canal street a lot. Do you live there still or--?
I have lived in Brooklyn all 47 years of my life. However, my university is spread across Manhattan (and Brooklyn plus a few foreign countries...). For this reason, I teach near City Hall (which is near Chinatown) and also in Greenwich Village. I like to walk around Chinatown whenever I can, and my favorite restaurant is the big Thai establishment between Chinatown and the courts: Pongsri Thai at 106 Bayard Street. I also like some of the nearby Vietnamese restaurants. (My Thai students have expressed their approval of the near authenticy of the menu in Pongsri. Asian students who have been to Vietnam have said that the food in these Vietnamese restaurants is pretty close to food in Vietnam.) I cannot eat American Chinese food, though, because I have had the real thing in Chinatown--with bilingual colleagues in places where no English is spoken and I cannot read the menu. Most Chinese restaurants in the area are for Americans and serve greasy General Tso's chicken-type things that people in China have never heard of. History buffs: The part of Chinatown where these restaurants are and the adjacent part of Lower Manhattan where the courts are located used to be Five Points, the most notorious 19th-century slum in New York City. Jacob Riis took his ground breaking pictures for How The Other Half Lives there. The part of Chinatown were the synagogue is was part of a different slum. |
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« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 08:24:20 PM by TheWalkingContradiction »
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Sweetdeath
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« Reply #85 on: August 20, 2012, 08:42:26 PM » |
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Wow! I actually live near someone on HAF? Small world, as they say. I live in upper Manhattan-- Harlem area. |
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"Law 35- You got to go with what works." - Robin Lefler Wiggum:"You have that much faith in me, Homer?" Homer:"No! Faith is what you have in things that don't exist. Your awesomeness is real." “I was thinking that perhaps this thing called God does not exist. Because He cannot save any one of us. No matter how we pray, He doesn’t mend our wounds. No matter how we plead, He doesn’t strike down our enemies. There hasn’t been an instance where He has cured our sick. Powerless, we can only wait to be tossed onto the dirt of a foreign land. He doesn’t have a thread of spiritual existence. If only there were a shadow, a whisper. But I haven’t felt Him once.” — 稲荷家房之介 - Giglio |
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TheWalkingContradiction
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« Reply #86 on: August 20, 2012, 10:02:35 PM » |
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Wow! I actually live near someone on HAF? Small world, as they say. I live in upper Manhattan-- Harlem area. I live in the southwesternmost part of Brooklyn near the Verrazano Bridge and the last stop on the R train (95th Street). Unfortunately, this is hardly the gay-friendly part of Brooklyn (which would be Park Slope and the surrounding area). My neighborhood is known as one of the most politically conservative areas of the city--and also has one of the greatest concentrations of churches per city block. Oh well, it is what I can afford; Park Slope is too expensive on my salary. That's why I feel so liberated every time I am in Greenwich Village. In addition, I have just joined the LGBT faculty council--as in today (Monday)--at my university, so I will have a hand in setting policy. While the bulk of the students and faculty are heterosexual, we have a very, very large number of LGBT students and faculty. The student organization alone has a suite of offices in the student union building. Anyway... It is seven miles from my apartment to the southern tip of Manhattan. Manhattan is 13 miles long, so let's say that your Harlem neighborhood is 8 to 11 miles from the southern tip. That puts us 15 to 18 miles apart. A small world indeed! But New York is like San Francisco, London, Sydney, Tel Aviv, and other major cities with a disproportionate number of LGBT people, so it is not surprising that two LGBT people on a message board would find themselves in the same city. By the way, Yiddish has the same idiom: a kleyne velt! ("[a] small world"). or a velt mit veltlekh! ("a world with small worlds!") |
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« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 10:21:27 PM by TheWalkingContradiction »
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xSilverPhinx
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« Reply #87 on: August 20, 2012, 11:13:51 PM » |
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a kleyne velt! ("[a] small world").
or
a velt mit veltlekh! ("a world with small worlds!") I'm surprised just how close to German Yiddish seems.  I had always thought it was more similar to Hebrew or Arabic languages. |
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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."- Seneca the Younger
iGnostic - "It begins with a small i, like everything else cool these days. Needs to have a big G though. iGnostic. See? The coolometer rising... Falling... Just like that. Going to sub-zero, that is. - Asmodean
- forged by The Magic Pudding
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance… it is the illusion of knowledge. - Stephen Hawking
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TheWalkingContradiction
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« Reply #88 on: August 20, 2012, 11:46:53 PM » |
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a kleyne velt! ("[a] small world").
or
a velt mit veltlekh! ("a world with small worlds!") I'm surprised just how close to German Yiddish seems. I had always thought it was more similar to Hebrew or Arabic languages. Around 60% of Yiddish comes from German, but if you are talking about very simple/basic sentences it is more like 90% from German. The other 40% is half from Hebrew and Aramaic and half from Russian, Polish, and other languages. Here is something I scanned from one of my textbooks. This sample sentence has words taken from Hebrew, an older form of German, Latin, medieval German, and old Slavic. "raboysay, mir veln bentshn," zogt der zeyde. ("Gentlemen, we shall say the blessing," says the grandfather.) The book's translation is "...Grandfather says"; however; I prefer to make this a rare example of the same word order in both Yiddish and English. That way, you can follow the scan via my transliteration even if you cannot read the Hebrew letters. bentshn means three words in English: "say the blessing."   |
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« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 11:53:41 PM by TheWalkingContradiction »
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xSilverPhinx
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« Reply #89 on: August 21, 2012, 12:00:22 AM » |
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What a mash-up.
Yes, I noticed those two sentences in particular (kleine welt), anything a bit more complex is beyond me.
I'm assuming that 'rabbi' has the same origin as 'gentlemen'...
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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."- Seneca the Younger
iGnostic - "It begins with a small i, like everything else cool these days. Needs to have a big G though. iGnostic. See? The coolometer rising... Falling... Just like that. Going to sub-zero, that is. - Asmodean
- forged by The Magic Pudding
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance… it is the illusion of knowledge. - Stephen Hawking
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