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Re: Arabo-Romance (was Re: Arabic transliteration)

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 20, 2002, 17:30
Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> Well, 'azucar' is one of those nouns that can be indifferently masculine or > feminine in Spanish. 'El azucar blanco'/'la azucar blanca' are both equally > possible.
But in consecutive sentences???!? Anyhow, I find just about as many hits for "el azucar blanco" as "el azucar blanca", with "la azucar blanca" rarer. However, "la azucar blanco" seems to be unknown, thank Mung.
> Suspiciously Dutch (or Frisian?) name (actually, I know a few Dijkstra at the > laboratory ;) ). Who was this person?
One of the great computer scientists of the 20th century. He is probably best known for "Dijkstra's algorithm", a method of finding the shortest path between every pair of points in a graph with arbitrary costs attached to each edge of the graph. The name is Frisian but E.D. seemingly was thoroughly Dutchified. I have two other .sig quotes from him, see below.
> By the way, if I did only what only I can do, I would have rather empty > days :))) .
The original context was advice to a student in search of a thesis. -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com "The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague." --Edsger Dijkstra -- De plichten van een docent zijn divers, John Cowan die van het gehoor ook. jcowan@reutershealth.com --Edsger Dijkstra http://www.ccil.org/~cowan