Re: (MS-)DOS PC on a microcontroller??

On Sat, 27 Oct 2007 03:08:57 +0200, Paul Rosen <proxx@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:26:29 -0000, Grant Edwards <grante@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

gedankenexperiment

I am astonished. Is this really an english word imported from the
german language

I've certainly heard it used many time by many different
english speakers (usually technical scientific types).

Although it has become an english Identity, because in German we have
to write the Nouns beginning with a capital Letter. To read it this
way is just as strange for me as for you, if I wrote english Nouns
with Capitals. ;-)

Well, Paul, you handle English as well as any. So if English isn't
your first language, I think lower-casing the first letter cannot be
too strange, though I'm sure it tickles a back part of your mind.

I grew familiar with the gedankenexperiment as a child. So it's
understood well enough by people who read such books as I did. A lot
of people in the US don't read a lot and certainly don't read a lot of
science, so they may be unfamiliar with the concept and/or term.

Having learned to read German in school (I won't admit to actually
being much good at producing German, but I can read German fairly
fluently), the term has two separate paths for understanding.

As far as capitalization goes, if you see it small-case then you know
it is probably from within an English usage context. The strangeness
can just trigger that recognition. I suspect that is exactly how it
works in your mind, already, since you are excellent with English.

There are a lot of so called "loan words" from German to English. Some
very commonly known ones are lager and apple strudel, for example. A
little less used are angst, gestalt, autobahn, doppelganger (replace
the umlaut-a with just a), reich and blitz (though most folks have
heard the term blitzkrieg and reich from watching WW II war movies, if
nothing else.)

Reichstag is a word that political folks also generally know in the
US, because that fire in Berlin's Session Chamber was a turning point
in German history towards establishing a Nazi Germany.

There are also a tremendous number of German-English cognates. But
you cannot escape knowing about those. Words like Milch (milk) or
Zirkus (circus.) Once tuned in to various changes (z's becoming a
soft-c in English as in that example I just gave, or where endings
like -ig, -lich, -isch and -ität change into -(l)y, -al, -ic, or -ful
in English -- or the reverse of this, coming from your perspective, I
suppose) you find your way a lot faster between them. But it may be
the case that it is easier for an English speaking person to "see"
these cognates than a German speaking person. I've not considered
that thought until just this moment and don't know what to think about
that.

Jon
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