OT - old stamps for new?

Not in my day. OK, I did two years of Latin but would just as soon have not.

Because a small number of people have stockpiles of stamps that will probably last them decades, during which time they continue to be susceptible to forged stamps ... didn't we have an example here of someone having a "to pay" sticker on a card from a family member?

Up to the 19th century perhaps

I enjoyed Latin, Greek? forget it. Still can make myself understood in French, just about

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, Tim Streater snipped-for-privacy@greenbee.net writes

I only managed 12 months. I rather think teaching Latin/Greek was more to do with the entry requirements of Oxford/Cambridge universities at the time than any hope of improving my English grammar.

Yes, that too.

I endured Latin up to O level. The school that I started when I was 10 divided each year into two streams. The supposedly cleverer form did Latin and German; the supposedly less-clever one did biology and Spanish. I remember my parents asking whether there was any way that I could do German and biology, but that was Not Possible because it would have screwed up their timetables.

When I changed to another school (when we moved house) there was no such demarcation: there was one form in each year that did Latin instead of biology, but there was no difference in that standard/level of teaching in all other subjects. They were very happy for me to do biology rather than Latin, apart from one little embuggerance: by the time I started (4th form) I'd have missed too much biology to be able to catch up with only two years before O levels. So I had to continue Latin.

What a waste of time Latin was - at least in the way that it was taught. Teaching it as a grammatical language (like French, German, Spanish) is the wrong thing to do. Instead Latin (if taught) should be purely as "derivation of some/many words in English", with grammar (gender, word endings etc) avoided as much as possible.

I found Latin considerably harder to learn that French or German, and I think a lot of it was the absence of auxiliary words such as prepositions and articles, and the free (random!) ordering of words. I had the greatest difficulty determining the subject, object, verb, adjectives in a sentence, whereas in French or German you have:

- more rigid subject (plus its adjectives), verb (plus its adverbs), object (plus its adjectives)

- pronouns to help you locate the verb (which will usually be adjacent)

- articles to help to locate the nouns

- adjectives which a placed next to the subject or object that they relate to

Until I started Latin, I didn't realise how much I depended on those little cues when parsing a sentence!

I remember my first Latin teacher getting himself wound up into an almost orgasmic fervour as he described the "chi-rhoic constructions" used in some poetry. Essentially it means that you deliberately put the adjective for the subject next to the object noun and vice versa, and put the verb and its adverb at opposite ends of the sentence (as he described it, anyway!). Because Latin was such a perfect code, the meaning was "easy" (for some value of "easy"!) to decypher, even though the word order had been mucked about with. When we had to translate into Latin, we were told (effectively) that any word order was acceptable, but that English/French/German "subject, verb, object" order was puerile and immature.

I'm glad I did Latin from the point of view of its origin of some English words, but that could have been condensed into a single year, and with the rest of the time, I could have done something more interesting and useful in later life.

I once met Colin Dexter, the creator of Inspector Morse, who had been a classics teacher in an earlier life. Over lunch and several pints in his local, The Dew Drop (which he insisted on paying for - a very generous man), I put those points to him as reasons why I'd found Latin so much harder to learn than modern languages, and he said that he'd never though of it like that but he could see my point, and said it was interesting that modern languages have evolved to have the "little words", instead of relying

I've always wondered why English has gone the extra stage and abolished genders, whereas French, German, Spanish, Italian (and no doubt many more) still have them, so you need to learn the gender of each noun that you learn, and then make adjectives, articles and word endings agree with it.

On 24/11/2022 22:02, Vir Campestris wrote: .

Nope. That came into use almost as soon it replaced the ten bob note in

However, what I was writing about was how I recall people speaking about stamps before and after decimalisation.

Even then, provided the meaning is clear, it is not really necessary. Newspapers helped standardise the written language, but if you look back at some of the early newspapers, even they varied in both spelling and grammar.

Young boys are cheap today, Cheaper than yesterday; Little boys are half a crown, Standing up or lying down.

(Sung to "La donna e mobile")

I wonder why gays don't sing it nowadays?

I only did 1.5 years of Latin. I would have liked to do more, but I went up to the Upper Science stream which had to compress everything as we skipped the fifth form for some reason.

More useful than French, which is only useful if you want to speak to French people (as opposed to Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian people). It's too bad that there isn't a lingua franca for us Brits. If you live in continental Europe, English is the obvious choice. (Most people only have the ability to learn one foreign language.) Canadians can learn French or English depending on which is their native tongue. I suppose Americans could learn Spanish except it is spoken by Hispanics who are their underclass. Could still be useful to tell their cleaners what to do.

I was on the science side but couldn't do biology as it was regarded as an arts subject. (Easy enough for girls to do I suppose. <g>) Oh and the thickos did it in the C and D streams (or alpha and beta as they were known).

I had to go to evening classes to learn biology.

You argument reminds me of Ernest K Ganns training in 'fate is the hunter' He was disciplined to fly exactly on the target altitude. Why?

"One day it may save your life; if you are in the habit of doing it" And it did, Twice.

Some things, like plane full of passengers and crew, are more important that sloppy lazy selfishness.

Which is why all air traffic is spoken in unambiguous english

Many Americans speak Spanish fluently. I am not sure its not officially recognised. Out West, Spanglish is common.

It happens wherever two nationalities or languages overlap.

Happened in this country, we speak German/Norse with French for posh words, but the word order is mainly Celtic.

It can also kill, as with the honey-pot effect of light aircraft converging on the same radio beacon at exactly the same altitude. In pre-GPS days, my aircraft had a RNav, which allowed me to plot GPS-like routes, using radio beacons as set points and avoid flying directly over the beacons.

In France, it can be in French at regional airports, although they will respond in English if first addressed in English. Also very French is calling the tower and being told by a message, recorded in French, that ATC is at lunch.

Even the English used by ATC evolves, usually as a result of an accident. Today, take-off only refers to an aircraft on the runway in the process of or about to take-off. Prior to entering the runway, the term departure is used. This is a result of the collision of two 747s, in poor visibility at Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife. The pilot of the KLM aircraft reported that he was 'at take-off' the Spanish air controller took this to mean he was at the holding point for the runway. The American pilot of the other 747, which was taxiing down the runway in the other direction also does not appear to have thought otherwise. However, the Dutch aircraft had actually begun its take-off run.

French is also useful in former French colonies, particularly in North African, as I have no knowledge of Arabic, beyond imshee, to tell beggars and urchins to go away.

For getting into university, one modern language at O level was a requirement, but Latin, which I also had at O level, would only have been needed had I wanted to study the classics, rather than engineering.

My late partner was a native German speaker. There were very few places in Europe where we couldn't find somebody who spoke either English, French or German. German was particularly likely in some tourist areas.

If you are flying without a flight plan and not under traffic control in crowded airspace, you probably dont deserve to live

Of course many air traffic controllers speak the local language to local pilots, Its caused a few accidents, too, when otrher aircraft havent inderstood the conversations

Indeed. Its developing into a standardised form, though, not wandering off in all directions.

You merely reinforce my point,that unambiguous clear shared standards are necessary for precise communication.

Consider I leave my wealth to my youngest sisters' children versus I leave my wealth to my youngest sister's children

Most private pilots fly that way. Getting certified to fly on instruments is expensive.

However, in day to day life, most people are not looking for precise communication.

I'm not sure how you can have two youngest sisters, but a lawyer would probably avoid the use of the apostrophe, to avoid any ambiguity.

No, lack of apostrophe would ensure ambiguity