Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 62730, member: 57463&quot;]<b>Illiterate in Seven Languages</b></p><p><br /></p><p>It always seems funny to me when someone asks about a coin that says RZECZPOSPOLITA POLSKA and they do not know where it is from. </p><p><br /></p><p>I have had college classes in Japanese and community classes in Italian and Arabic.&nbsp; I had a ton of German in school.&nbsp; I just had a series of business interviews for which I learned to say a few pleasantries in modern Greek. I grew up with Hungarian.&nbsp; So, languages are pretty easy for me and that included Basic, Fortran, and Cobol.&nbsp; I spent a year setting type with TeX, the urvater of HTML.</p><p><br /></p><p>I can hack my way through Greek and Latin with the aid of a lexicon and grammar.&nbsp; I usually rely on Loeb Classic Library editions.&nbsp; However, it has helped a few times to be able to re-translate from scratch.&nbsp; A few years back, a member of our local coin club was also the minister of a local Baptist church.&nbsp; He and I sat down with 250 ancient prutot (&quot;widow&#039;s mites&quot;) and he showed me what David Hendin was seeing as we attributed them against the standard reference.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In numismatics, the coins, banknotes, etc., are pretty much stylized and restricted in their symbols, words and wordings.&nbsp; So, if you find Japanese or Chinese coins interesting, really, you might need about 100 characters, maximum, and you do not need them all at once.&nbsp; Medals range a bit farther but again the iconography will be a clue to farming, industry, motherhood, or whatever.&nbsp; With most languages, it is not the big words, but the little ones that are tricky.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for <u>using</u> foreign languages, apart from reading inscriptions, I have not much problem with <u>numismatic</u> books in German, French, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese.&nbsp; Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, etc., take a bit of time.&nbsp; Russian is too difficult.&nbsp; I can read coin inscriptions.&nbsp; I cannot read <u>about</u> coins. And that is true, unfortunately, for the entire Slavic family.&nbsp; Hungarian and Finnish also are closed books to me.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I really do not know any languages well enough to do serious business in them, except English.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in