Thursday, August 10, 2006

Codes, ciphers and languages

Ciphers

Am reading this litle book (10cmx10cm) on codes and ciphers at the moment, just hoping it is a good short version of the other serious 'intro to cryptography' book I borrowed for life from my prof. And in paralle, am also reading another book, also borrowed, on the English language. Made me realize some langugae actually express some thought sbetter than others...learned for example that in English there is 'home' and 'house' but only one word in French, 'maison'. I am sure there are words in French as well that have no direct equivalent in English (I can't think of any at the moment because am tired and I don't want to switch my brain to French). Mostly though, there are some things that are shorter to say in a language or other, so my lazy brain just picks that up.

The worst thing though is trying to quote or repeat someone, usually a line in a movie or book, then realizing I cannot remeber in which language it was...Follows a series of bactracking in time and space to figure out when where and with whom the episode was, and by the time I get the correct quote in the correct language, nobody is interested anymore!

This is why I am much more comfortable writing that talking. I have more time to think about each word, and to use it with its full meaning. I'd be interested if you have an example of the 'house-home' subtelty in French or Spanish though...

And to finish on a suspense, tonight I'll upload some videos about my trip in Vienna...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, you're so right about quoting ! I gave up too because it always comes wrong out, because even if I remember the meaning of the sentence I want to say, I usually do not remember the language and the exact words !! For an example in French, hum, let me switch my brain (I'm at the airport, so it's not a bad thing anyway ;-) ) ... En allemand, si je me trompe pas, pour penser, il y a "nachdenken" et "überlegen" ... mais je sais pas la difference ... Globalement, en allemand, le language est énormement plus précis .. et le francais est plus précis que l'anglais, mais je trouve pas d'exemple !! grrr ... Bon j'embarque !! a+