Languages

[Kriton Kyrimis]

HARRY:

> I've considered learning the basics of Italian just to read the
> untranslated topolino-stories.

Or, you could just give it a try, and see if it works. Although I don't
speak Italian, I find that I can read Italian comics, understanding most
of what is being said, and I'm actually learning a bit of Italian as a
side-effect! If you already speak a couple of indoeuropean languages,
chances are that the vocabulary of yet another language of the same
family will be largely familiar!

It's a slow process, but I get to read some stories that I never would
have read otherwise, and it beats having to go through formally learning
a foreign language, which I hate! The hardest part is trying to locate
Italian stories in the INDUCKS. The other day, I was trying to find the
original title of a story by Gatto, which in Greece was titled something
like "the magic recorder". After trying various translations of the Greek
title, I ended up going through the entire list of Gatto's stories, ending
up with "il piffero ladroincantadore", a phrase which I can attempt to
translate as "the thief-enchanting flute", but with which I would never
have come up myself, even if I had been given this translation!

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
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"Kings and Emperors aren't supposed to have common sense.  It's too common."
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