On 03.02.2004 09:01, Jorg Heymans wrote:
>> The translation is quite simple as Dutch is a mixture of English and
>> German:
>
> hmmm some people would argue that english and german are really just
> spin-offs of Dutch (which itself is ofcourse a spin-off of Flemish - the
> mother of all languages)
I had this possible chauvinism in mind when writing the above, but I
wrote it and hoped nobody will feel offended.
>> Dutch | German | English
>> ik | ich | I
>> kan | kann | can
>> mijn | mein | my
>> pdf | pdf | pdf
>> niet | nicht | not
>> openen | öffnen | open
>>
>> kunt | kannst | can
>> u | du | you
>> mij | mir | me
>> hierbij | dabei | with it
>> helpen | helfen | help
>>
> Correct! ("Können Sie" instead of "kannst du" but that's really minor
> detail).
Is it similar to the English "you can" where there is no difference
between singular and plural? I thought about it and "kunt u" sounds more
like the German singular.
> French and spanish bear the same similarities. (so I heard)
Yes, and Italian of course. These languages are based on Latin.
> French
>
> je
> ne
> peux
> pas
> ouvrir
> mon
> pdf
>
> pourriez
> vous
> m'
> aider
But this is not as readable and understable for me as the Dutch.
>> Joerg
>
> Jorg (even our names are similar!)
> :))
I'm also often named Jorg or Jeorg on these mailing lists, which is of
course not quite correct. In theory it's Jörg, but I use the US-ASCII
version with replacing ö with oe for avoiding problems in not character
encoding aware browsers, mail readers, mail archives, etc., e.g.
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?a=102665966700001&r=1&w=2.
Joerg
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