Klarinet Archive - Posting 000482.txt from 1999/12

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] Re: eefer
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 20:30:35 -0500

Richard Bush wrote:

>Rein,

>You will never know if you don't ask. Dee's answer was correct. If you
don't
>understand other terms or words, please just ask. People on this news group
are
>very friendly and will be happy to help you out. Your English is a lot
better
>than my German. Consider yourself fortunate to be working in more than one
>language. You have my admiration.

I got several reactions on my question about the meaning of the word
"Eefer", also on my private mail-adress. Thank you all, now I know it is an
E-flat clarinet it looks rather clear to me to be an abridgement - one of
the things people from the USA are very strong with: You don't call a
person, say, Dirk-Jan, you call him DJ. It took me some time to figure out
usual abbreviations on this list like IMHO, BTW (in Dutch an abbreviation
for VAT, in 1968 still named "purchase tax, I think?), and others.

As to Richard's writing: first a small correction: my name is Rien,
pronounced in English/American spelling somewhat like Rheene. But I wrote
about that before, so you may know I am not mad with you about this
misspelling.

Next, whenever I meet a citizen of the USA, who is able to speak a foreign
language at whatever level, I will make him my compliments. When I visited
Russia in 1971 whith a group af American, Dutch and French people, one of
the women of the group was a teacher of French from LA or San Francisco, I
forgot the exact whereabouts. For reasons of politeness - I was with her and
a boy from Paris in a kind of museum - I adressed her in French. She asked
me what I said, so I repeated it to her. She again didn't understand it, so
I asked her: "You said you are a teacher of the French language, didn't
you?" Her answer was very surprising: "Yes, I __*teach*__ it, but ... I do
not speak it"!!!!!

Polyglottism has been a characteristic feature of my fathers. My grandfather
was able to converse at a high level in 11 languages and learnt Dutch at the
age of 56, my father was able to speak Dutch, English, German, Italian and
Spanish at a high level, and French at a somewhat less high level, my oldest
brother is well-versed in Dutch, English and Spanish, and somewhat less in
French and German, and I myself know something (I am so vain to think so),
about Dutch, English, German and the Frisian language (a small language by
the number of native speakers, but an officially recognized language, more
differing from Dutch, than, for instance, German). I think I can cope at a
reasonably good level with French, Spanish and Italian, and once I was able
to speak Norwegian, Russian, Persian and Japanese, but as I did not use
these languages since a long time, I forgot most of these. Due to my
activities as a volunteer with refugees from Baiku, Azerbeidjan, my
knowledge of the Russian language gradually begins to come back again. So
there really is no need to praise me about my knowledge of foreign
languages. I only hope it is not too bad what I am producing, and it is
understood all right by those reading it on this list.

Greetings, have a nice Xmas, and be blessed by the Lord in the New Year (but
don't worry about a change in millennium: it depends on the calender you're
working with. Mohammed died in the year 621 according to the christian time
table, but in the year zero according to the islamitic one - and to them the
year has a different length than it has to us).

Rien (please take note of the spelling)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org