Re: Marked and Unmarked

On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Robert Hailman wrote:

> Henrik Theiling wrote:
> >
> > Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> writes:
> > > > Yoon Ha Lee scripsit:
> > > >
> > > > > Er...BTW...what's a Sprachbund?  Sort of a linguistic isocline?
> >
> > Ah, BTW, how do you English speakers pronounce that?  In German it's
> > [SpRa:xbUnt], but I suspect it's shifted a bit in English?
> >
> > Maybe you say [spra:kband]? :-)
>
> Well, I'm studying German at school, so I pronounce it [SpRa:xbUnt] - or
> at least as close as my Canadian mouth get to that. [Spra:xbund] on a
> bad day.
Ditto.  <wry g>

> > > OTOH when I first saw the
> > > German term "Ratshaus" I thought it might mean "mousehole" until my
> > > boyfriend corrected me...<slinking away now>
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Well, not too far away, stem `rat' exists: `Rattenhaus' would be
> > `rat's house', but `Rathaus' is something different. :-)
>
> That's what I thought "Rathaus" meant, too. When I was younger, I had a
> computer game called "Darklands" (well, I still have it, but...) which
> is an adventure game set in mideval Germany. In all the major cities
> there was a "Rathaus", and until I figured out what it was I didn't want
> to go in, for fear of being attacked by giant rats. :-|
>
> Actualy, giant rats isn't *too* out of keeping with the game, but....
DARKLANDS!  My boyfriend still has and runs that game.  I don't know a
whole lot of medieval German history, but I *love* all the research that
seems to have gone into the milieu.  For the record, the few times I
tried it (it's sort of unstable on his system at least), I recall getting
attacked by giant rats, too....

(Oh.  He says the patch has fixed it.  New addiction?  Hmm....)

YHL

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