Interlinear books are bilingual translations where the original has a translation right below each word or expression. Try them out on Interlinear Books.
For multilingual verb conjugation, try CoolJugator - a tool that can currently conjugate in dozens of different languages. It also recognizes forms and provides examples for each verb.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to ask a few people what life is like in Szczecin (formerly Stettin), and other previously German cities. The question I asked was whether there are any stereotypes about people in these cities due to being previously German - that people from Szczecin are thought to be efficient or hardworking, the trains run on time, etc., whether there are any light-hearted stereotypes that come from their unique history.
So why Szczecin? The interest comes from a quote from l'Allemagne Moderne (my English translation of the book here) where Huret references a canal being planned to link Berlin to the sea by Stettin:
Tous les jours, des changements importants se font dans l'organisation des services publics; il n'est pas d'amélioration qu'on ne recherche et qu'on ne pousse à bout, — et vite ! Pour ne parler que des plus grands projets à l'étude, dans quelques années un canal, déjà voté par le Parlement, rejoindra Berlin à Stettin, et Berlin deviendra port de mer avant Paris. Deux ports sont en projet au nord et à l'est de la ville, avec de vastes entrepôts.
AVENIR DE BERLIN Quel avenir est réservé à la capitale ! La Sprée communique avec la Havel, qui communique avec l'Elbe. Berlin sera donc relié à la mer, de deux côtés, par Stettin et par Hambourg. Les facilités de vie attireront de plus en plus les populations.
So let's see what they wrote.
The being blocked by Hamburg is an interesting point. If you look at the city's location it is ideally placed to be a secondary port for Berlin:
but compared to the rest of Poland it's quite far removed from the largest cities. Szczecin is the grouping of pixels in the far northwest.
In short, it's not easy to compete when you're the port of Szczecin.
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Poland has now been approved by the ESA for membership, meaning there are now just documents to sign and an internal ratification process to go through before it becomes the ESA's 20th member state.
The current budget contributions by the 19 member states are:
I haven't seen how much Poland is set to contribute but roughly looking at the GDP of these countries it might end up at about 60 million or so.
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--- Space news is the obvious place to begin today, with SpaceX's Dragon capsule having successfully docked to (or rather, been captured by) the International Space Station. The mission so far has been flawless, aside from a delay of a few hours today when some sensors acted up. While a test mission, Dragon has also brought some useful cargo aboard as well so there is some immediate benefit to the ISS with this. Watching the webcast this morning was also quite entertaining, especially watching day turn to night and back to day again within a space of about 30 minutes each time.
And a video taken from the ISS. Imagine the thrill of seeing this fly below and then finally approach the next day:
For more on this...see pretty much any site or forum dedicated to space. Discussion abounds at the moment.
--- Space.com has a picture gallery here about the European Extremely Large Telescope. Because I often moan about how the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope will not be built this one seems small in comparison, but when you compare it to our existing telescopes it is truly massive. The two most impressive pictures are this one showing the size of the mirror:
And compared to the Very Large Telescope (actually four buildings) and the Giza pyramids:
--- An article here about the large amount of German tourists in Świnoujście, Poland, where "German has almost become a second language" at some hotels. Taking a look at the location this is no surprise:
--- A recent article here entitled Mandarin? No thanks. The gist of the argument is this:
Simply put, Mandarin is not the language of the future. There are multiple reasons for this, but the main one is its complexity. Mandarin is notoriously hard to learn as a second language, and many may only have a rudimentary grasp over it after years of arduous learning...The writing system for Mandarin is arcane, and it consists of thousands of symbols rather than a simple alphabet...Mandarin, unlike English, is also a tonal language, which may prove baffling for would-be-learners...Thus, relative to other languages, Mandarin is simply hard to master for the average English-speaker...English, in contrast, is mercifully easy for the foreign learner. This is one of the main reasons (along with a British knack for conquering) that it is the current global lingua franca.
So, where to begin? The main problem with this argument is that it is focused on the idea of Mandarin as learned by an English speaker. If Chinese is to expand, however, it will need to become popular or necessary in the closest countries to the PRC. That means countries like Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Thailand, etc. Japan, Korea and Vietnam are three obvious examples of countries that use Chinese characters (Japan), kind of do (Korea) or used to and still learn them in school (Vietnam). Tones: lots of languages use these, so no problem.
Vocabulary is particularly interesting. I was listening to a Chinese Pod lesson a few days ago, and one of the words that came up was 发达 (fādá, develop). No problem there: it's the same as Japanese hattatsu (発達) and Korean baldal (발달). But then they made sure to explain the difference between some other terms that can mean develop, like 发展 (fāzhǎn) and 开发 (kāifā), etc. But since all of these have the exact same equivalents in Japanese and Korean, anyone with those two languages as a mother tongue will simply learn them as is, in the same way that an English speaker learns terms like electricidad for electricity. No need for any extra explanations as there is nothing to explain in the first place except that "this word X is the same as your word Y".
There are often differences, but even then this is sometimes little more than a small point to be aware of: words like 介绍 (Jièshào, introduce) are written backwards in Japanese and Korean but mean the same thing, or meaning may be somewhat different in the same way that actual or ignore in English carries a reminiscent but different meaning in other European languages (actual = current, ignore = not know).
None of this means that Mandarin is guaranteed a place as the world's international language, but considering where China's main interests lie at the moment (the region where it is located), there's little reason to divine its future based on the ease of learning it for those who live much farther away.
Here's a video by Ed Trimnell also responding to the editorial. So far I've listened to half of it and I agree with what I've heard so far.
Today's post from 90 Years Ago Today is full of detail. In fact, there is so much detail that I only typed about half of it but luckily the image is quite legible. An armistice between Poland and the Soviet Union was signed 90 years ago, and the details of it are quite interesting especially the porous nature of borders back then. In the 21st century it's not nearly as common that a war will result in a shifting of a border - didn't happen with Afghanistan, nor Iraq, nor Vietnam, and so on.
Un proba peti de scrive en LFN sur la sujeto economial (de esta article en franses), ma como on dise stock market (bourse) en LFN? Borsa? Me ia es surprendeda vidente ce la disionario no ave un parola tan simple. Edita: el pare ce la parola per stock market es asioneria.
La borsa* de New York ia fini la anio sur un perde a jovedi, an cuando la plu de investores ia clui se contas, sin un efeto grande per la rebondi neta mostrada en 2009: la Dow Jones ia perde 1.19% durante la dia, ma ia gania 18.82% tra la anio.
La Dow Jones Industrial Average ia abandona 120.46 puntos per fini a 10 428.05 puntos.
La gania en 2009 es la gania anial la plu forte de pos 2003.
Un otra sujeto: me ia vide oji ce la paje sur la protestas en Iran en la Wikipedia en polsce es un paje elejeda (un paje ce pote apare en la paje prima), e es tre detalios. En fato, la istoria de Polsca es un inspira per persones en Iran e me ave un libro traduida en parsi sur la luta en Polsca per democratia, con la titulo Polsca: la potia de unia (Poland: the power of solidarity o لهستان: قدرت همبستگی).
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A few hours ago BBC Persian's top story was a statement by Karroubi that he doesn't see Ahmadinejad's government as a legitimate one. This is definitely the correct approach, and Karroubi has been very forceful both during and after the election in making his opposition known. One thing to note about Karroubi is that technically he would be too old to run for election next time anyway (max is 75 yrs.) so future prospects don't really enter into the equation for him.
Niacblog has a bit here on why the Rafsanjani statement doesn't mean what many are taking it to mean (i.e. that it implied support for Khamenei as Supreme Leader).
There is an op-ed here on how Silicon Valley should step up and help Iranians to overcome the technological barriers that have been put up by their government. I see that it also references a point I've made for a while that it was a bit odd seeing Persian being ignored for so long while even languages like Estonian (don't get me wrong, I love Estonian and was even in Tallinn for a month but the language is spoken by barely over a million) had been included in Google's automatic translation service. The approach to adopt would be quite simple: 1) doing whatever can be done to provide proxy / anonymizer services, bandwidth, etc., and 2) expanding Persian language support wherever possible.
This article says that three oil officials with loose ties to Mousavi have been fired. The first comment there explains my thoughts on the issue quite well: "Purge away! You sow the seeds of your ultimate downfall".
TIME has an article today here on how the reform movement is showing resilience, and may have lost the first battle but is nowhere near going away.
Knowledge of French within the EU. Note that Switzerland isn't included here and French is one of its official languages, so the knowledge of French within Europe as a whole is actually a bit more extensive than it appears here.
That's the name of a conference held from March 4 to 5 in Poland, that I found in this article. It was held by the Embassy of France in Poland and the Institute of French in Varsovia, with support from some other organizations as well. Here are a few parts from the article:
La langue française est parlée dans 32 états dans le monde, et par plus de 200 millions de personnes. C’est une des langues officielles et langues de travail de l’Union européenne, à Bruxelles par exemple, où tout document est émis en anglais et en français. Mais on utitlise aussi le français dans d’autres institutions comme l’ONU, l’OTAN, à l’OMC, mais aussi au Comité international olympique, à la cour internationale de justice, ou encore à la Croix-rouge internationale. Soit, parler français est un atout.
The French language is spoken in 32 countries in the world, and by more than 200 million people. It's one of the working languages of the European Union, in Brussels for example, where all documents are put out in English and French. But French is also used in other institutions such as the United Nations, NATO, the World Trade Organization, as well as the International Olympic Committee, at the International Court of Justice, plus Red Cross International. That is, speaking French is an asset.
Mais quel intérêt pour un polonais qui souhaite à cet instant travailler en Pologne ? Et là on pointe du doigt la relation entre la formation et l’emploi. Car la France est le premier investisseur en Pologne, ce qui signifie un nombre d’entreprises françaises très important (environ 800), et donc des milliers d’emplois à pourvoir dans ces entreprises. Certes, tous les emplois dans des les entreprises françaises ne nécessitent pas la connaissance de la langue de Molière. Des cadres et managers polonais d’entreprises françaises sont venus souligner leur maîtrise à haut niveau de la langue française qui leur a permis d’atteindre des postes à hautes responsabilités. Sans cet apprentissage, ils n’auraient jamais eu accès à ces postes.
But what interest is there for a Polish person that now wants to work in Poland? There we see the relation between training and employment. Because France is the largest investor in Poland, which means a number of very important French companies (around 800), and therefore thousands of jobs to be filled in these companies. Of course, not all the jobs in these French companies require knowledge of the language of Molière; however, Polish executives and managers in French companies emphasize their mastery of the French language as what has enabled them to attain positions of high responsibility. Without learning it, they would never have been able to have access to these positions.
Soulignons également que dans le cadre des réformes entreprises par le ministère polonais de l'Education, une deuxième langue étrangère obligatoire sera introduite au collège dès la rentrée scolaire de septembre 2009. C’est donc le moment de solliciter en plus grand nombre les polonais à apprendre le français.
Also note that under the reforms undertaken by the Polish Ministry of Education, an obligatory second foreign language will be introduced in college from the beginning of the school year in September 2009. This is therefore the moment to solicit a larger number of Polish people to learn French.
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I read on Wikipedia yesterday that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have issued a joint statement condemning Russia's actions in Georgia in the war in South Ossetia. Knowing some Estonian I thought I'd check to see if I could find it in Estonian, and it was much easier than I thought - the first page of postimees.ee (Postimees = Postman). Here it is.
Considering their histories (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) it's no surprise that these nations aren't exactly willing to give Russia the benefit of the doubt.
Now you know how to officially condemn another country in Estonian.
English
Estonian
We, the leaders of the former captive nations from Eastern Europe and current members of the European Union and NATO– Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland – are extremely concerned about the actions of the Russian Federation against Georgia. We strongly condemn the actions by the Russian military forces against the sovereign and independent country of Georgia.
«Meie, endiste anastatud, kuid täna Euroopa Liitu ja NATOsse kuuluvate riikide - Eesti, Läti, Leedu ja Poola - juhid, oleme sügavalt mures Vene Föderatsiooni Gruusia-vastase tegevuse pärast, mõistame hukka Vene militaarjõudude tegevuse suveräänse ja iseseisva Gruusia vastu.»
Following the unilateral military actions of the Russian military forces, we will use all means available to us as Presidents to ensure that aggression against a small country in Europe will not be passed over in silence or with meaningless statements equating the victims with the victimizers.
«Kasutame kõiki meie käsutuses olevaid vahendeid, et Vene militaarjõudude ühepoolset agressiooni selle Euroopa väikeriigi vastu ei vaikitaks maha ning et sellele ei reageeritaks üksnes sisutühjade avaldustega, mis võrdsustavad ohvrid tagakiusajatega,»
To this end we intend to urge our governments to take the following positions in discussions and to raise these concerns in the European Union and the North Atlantic Council:
«Seepärast palume tungivalt oma valitsustel võtta arutlusele ning tõstatada nii Euroopa Liidus kui Põhja-Atlandi Nõukogus järgmised küsimused:
- Can the current Russian authorities be called adequate strategic partners of the EU;
1) Kas praeguseid Venemaa ametivõime saab üldse nimetada Euroopa Liidu adekvaatseteks strateegilisteks partneriteks?
- Can the family of European democratic countries pursue a mutually beneficial dialogue with a country that uses heavy military armour against an independent country;
2) Kas Euroopa demokraatlike riikide pere saab jätkata kahepoolselt kasulikku dialoogi riigiga, mis kasutab teise iseseisva riigi vastu raskerelvi?
- It is pointless to continue a “visa facilitation” program with a country that does not meet even the minimal requirements set by the EU and which uses visa facilitation to issue Russian Federation passports to foreigners and then abuses this EU given privilege to claim intervention rights such as "we are protecting Russian citizens" in South Ossetia.
3) Pole mõtet jätkata viisalihtsustuse programmi riigiga, mis ei täida Euroopa Liidu seatud tingimusi isegi minimaalsel tasemel ning mis kasutab viisalihtsustust Vene Föderatsiooni passide väljastamiseks välismaalastele, seejärel aga kuritarvitab seda Euroopa Liidu antud privileegi, et nõuda endale õigust interventsiooniks, öeldes, et «me kaitseme Vene kodanikke» Lõuna-Osseetias.
- The actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia should influence the talks with the Russian Federation, including negotiations on the new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement.
4) Vene Föderatsiooni tegevus Gruusias peab mõjutama läbirääkimisi Vene Föderatsiooniga, muuhulgas ka kõnelusi partnerlus- ja koostööleppe üle.
We underline the obvious bankruptcy of Russian “peacekeeping operations” in its immediate neighbourhood. The Russian Federation has overstepped a red-line in keeping the peace and stability in the conflict zone and in protecting Russian citizens outside its own borders.
Rõhutame, et Vene «rahuvalve operatsioonide» mandaat riigi vahetus naabruses on ilmselgelt ammendunud. Vene Föderatsioon on astunud üle nn punase joone konfliktipiirkonnas rahu ja stabiilsuse tagamisel ning Venemaa kodanike kaitsmisel väljaspool Venemaa piire.
The EU and NATO must take the initiative and stand-up against the spread of imperialist and revisionist policy in the East of Europe. New international peacekeeping forces should be created as the current setting proved to be ineffective.
Euroopa Liit ja NATO peavad võtma initsiatiivi ning seisma vastu imperialistliku ja revisionistliku poliitika levitamisele Ida-Euroopas. Kuna praegune olukord on osutunud ebaefektiivseks, tuleks luua uued rahvusvahelised rahutagamisjõud.
We regret that not granting of the NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia was seen as a green light for agression in the region.
On kahetsusväärne, et Gruusiale NATO liikmesusprogrammi (Membership Action Plan, MAP) mitteandmist on tõlgendatud kui rohelise tule andmist agressioonidele selles piirkonnas.
We believe that the EU and NATO as the key organizations for European and Transatlantic stability and security should play a leading and crucial role in securing freedom, security and prosperity of countries not only in the EU but also in the neighboring European area.
Usume, et Euroopa Liit ja NATO peaksid Euroopa ja Atlandiülese stabiilsuse ja turvalisuse võtmeorganisatsioonidena mängima juhtivat rolli vabaduse, turvalisuse ja heaolu kindlustamisel mitte üksnes Euroopa Liidu liikmesriikides, vaid ka naabrusriikides.
It a litmus-test for the credibility of the EU and NATO to solve the conflict in its immediate neighborhood and to prove for all EU and NATO members, aspirant countries and democratic partners that it is worth being members and partners of these organizations.
Selle konflikti lahendamine on Euroopa Liidu ja NATO usaldusväärsuse lakmustestiks, tõestamaks kõigile Euroopa Liidu ja NATO liikmetele, liikmesust taotlevatele riikidele ning demokraatlikele partneritele, et need organisatsioonid väärivad liikmeks ja partneriks olemist.
This Declaration is open for the accession by the leaders of other democratic countries.
See avaldus on avatud liitumiseks kõigile demokraatlike riikide juhtidele.»
