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Agonum said:
That’s a fitting name!

It sounds very Swedish. So much so, I had to look it up. Her father was born in Poland to a Jewish family, her mother in New York to Irish-American parents. But the name doesn’t sound Polish nor Irish to me?

Aha! Was it a stage name, perchance?
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Usually with Hollywood it is but not this time. Her Dad was Jewish and his name (this is from Wiki) was Bluestein but he gave himself the stage name of Blondell.

Joan Blondell is my top fave Hollywood blonde! :)

Agonum said:
In Swedish: pärlemorartad.

English never seizes to amaze me with its sheer wealth of words! Stephen Fry once said that Great Britain’s tradition of writing dictionaries is responsible for this. I don’t know how accurate that is, but I think it makes sense.
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I don't understand Stephen Fry's point. Wot's he on about? The sheer number of other languages incorporated into English, the diversity of it, that seems much more likely to me. I would go and look for comments on this by David Crystal but am too tired and need to flee quite soon.

What have we got? French, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, German, Dutch, Yiddish. Those are the main ones I can remember, there might be more. I think the Norse invaders are in the story, also, but history is not my strong point, lol. The colonial aspect of British history has to be in there, surely? I mean, English is an Indo-European language but we have so many words that we have lifted directly from Hindi so the empire thing must have something to do with it, I would think, plus those early invasions by the Vikings, Angles, Saxons not to mention the Romans and the French.

Celtic I'm not sure about. It might be in there but I don't know of any actual words that we have from Celtic languages. But I don't really know. Aeons ago, I used to have a mini library on all of this - a few David Crystal books plus others - but I never really looked into it properly and it fizzled out. The books went to the charity shop, lol.

The English dictionary activity is interesting, sure, and Samuel Johnson was a cool dude but I don't see dictionaries as the reason English is so diverse and rich. Samuel Johnson published his dictionary in the 1750's (I think). The diversity in English was already up and running long before that. I'm no Johnsonian but didn't he write his dictionary bc he was interested in the pronunciation of English? god, I can't remember any of this. A bunch of booksellers asked him to write it bc the existing dictionaries of the time were crap, in their estimation, but I'm sure Johnson's thing was pronunciation more than illustrating the diversity of the language.

I give up! My brain is hurting. But, anyway, I disagree with Mr Fry.
 
I can’t seem to find that particular quote… But the above is related, at least.
 
Agonum said:
I can’t seem to find that particular quote… But the above is related, at least.
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OK, I managed 34 seconds and had to bail. British comedians at their smug, irritating best. Sorry, Agonum, these people are not my people. They all annoy me intensely. And they definitely do not entertain me. They might have had something interesting to say but I couldn't stick around long enough. :eek:

Samuel Johnson def wasn't the first but he seems to have done a better job than his predecessors. He has a fanbase and everything, lol.

Here is my peace offering, a little joke I found yesterday:

Q - How many (classical music) conductors does it take to change a light bulb?
A - No-one knows because no-one ever looks at them.
 
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night, 1934

<ok, I'm done with this malarkey, lol>

It-Happened-One-Night-006.jpg
 
hope said:
Ouch! I didn't know about such things at all back then)))))) I remember my first programming lessons in 1995. We wrote very simple programs in Basics. [...]
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It's more the visual appearance that got me. The horrible green text on the black background. :eek:

That image at approx 20s / 21s looks just a little bit like a database record (albeit a very short one) and reminded me of when I was managing a database back in '87. Ugh! The interface back then was beyond gross, just like the one here. The IT bods were OK with it, us normal people didn't like it at all. All hail Apple for putting the user front and centre, as the Americans say.
 
zinniabooklover said:
It's more the visual appearance that got me. The horrible green text on the black background. :eek:

That image at approx 20s / 21s looks just a little bit like a database record (albeit a very short one) and reminded me of when I was managing a database back in '87. Ugh!
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Database 😱 sounds complicated and intimidating!
zinniabooklover said:
The interface back then was beyond gross, just like the one here. The IT bods were OK with it, us normal people didn't like it at all. All hail Apple for putting the user front and centre, as the Americans say.
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👍
 
zinniabooklover said:
Ooh, are you going to tell us?
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In August of last year we talked about the Super Blue Moon and the moon in general, here in this thread. Learning about this phenomenon, I was looking forward to seeing it, but then came my back surgery on August 30th.

During that first night at the hospital - when August 30th turned into August 31st - I woke up shortly before midnight, and immediately remembered the moon! So I raised my head to look out of the window that had its curtains drawn. But there was a small gap, and the very bright and clear Super Blue Moon was peeking precisely through that "crack"!

I was stunned and very happy, but not supposed to move, let alone get up. Still managed grabbing my phone and capture the magic. I will never forget this. 💙

Superbluemoon10 - Kopie-30_08_23-2357 (2) (529x800).jpg Superbluemoon - Kopie-31_08_23-0002.jpg
 
bluemoon7 said:
In August of last year we talked about the Super Blue Moon and the moon in general, here in this thread. Learning about this phenomenon, I was looking forward to seeing it, but then came my back surgery on August 30th.

During that first night at the hospital - when August 30th turned into August 31st - I woke up shortly before midnight, and immediately remembered the moon! So I raised my head to look out of the window that had its curtains drawn. But there was a small gap, and the very bright and clear Super Blue Moon was peeking precisely through that "crack"!

I was stunned and very happy, but not supposed to move, let alone get up. Still managed grabbing my phone and capture the magic. I will never forget this. 💙

View attachment 3410 View attachment 3409
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Oh, I do remember now! I remember the whole thing. Beautiful story. And the timing makes it so perfect. In the aftermath of major surgery, that you nevertheless had the unexpected opportunity to see the super Blue Moon is just so lovely. The gap in the curtains being just big enough for you to see the moon and photograph it. The fact of the sky being clear of clouds so you could see the moon. The whole thing is just magical. :)

And it looks great as your profile pic!
 
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zinniabooklover said:
Oh, I do remember now! I remember the whole thing. Beautiful story. And the timing makes it so perfect. In the aftermath of major surgery, that you nevertheless had the unexpected opportunity to see the super Blue Moon is just so lovely. The gap in the curtains being just big enough for you to see the moon and photograph it. The fact of the sky being clear of clouds so you could see the moon. The whole thing is just magical. :)

And it looks great as your profile pic!
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I just noticed, we have a full moon today as well. No clouds here!

Seems the moon is watching over us and this thread :love:
 
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