All Greek to me

[vilakins]

Auugh! Someone just sent me some meeting minutes, part of which is Greek to me. Yep, somehow they put three sections into the Symbol font, and when I try to convert them into a normal font, I just get sqaures. So I'm sitting here typing a translation; lucky I know Greek letters. [rolls eyes] I did not need this.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

You can't demand they resubmit in Roman?

[kerravonsen]

yeah, if they stuffed it up, they should be the one to fix it.

[kerr-avon.livejournal.com]

You couldn't even do a global change on each symbol?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The second copy was just like the first. The person had no idea what they did. It's strange, because I changed some text to Symbol and back; they must have done something else. Double-clicking highlighted the whole block and words didn't wrap.

It only took me five minutes in the end to put it into Roman letters. In fact it was rather fun and I impressed a colleague who doesn't know Greek at all. Ah, the hidden benefits of passing notes in other alphabets in class...

It reminded me of when this icon turned up in linguaphiles.

Someone asked what it said. "I ship Achilles/Patroclus", I said, seeing it straight away, and people were puzzled because it was such bizarre Greek; they hadn't realised it was English in Greek letters.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It didn't take me long in the end. It was sort of fun actually, like code breaking.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The block of text was no longer text as we know it. I couldn't select even word, just the lot, and words went over lines. I have no idea what the person did, but I just translated the letters. Passing notes in other alphabets back in school was good practice!

Hee; I remember the time my Japanese teacher intercepted a Hebrew note and assumed it was really dorked hiragana.

[kerravonsen]

I remember the time my Japanese teacher intercepted a Hebrew note and assumed it was really dorked hiragana.

That reminds me how unimpressed I was by Daniel Jackson in the original Stargate movie, when he was wondering whether the symbols on the coverstone might be Cuneiform, and I was saying to myself "Don't be stupid! That doesn't look a bit like Cuneiform, you're supposed to be so brilliant, why don't you know that?"

But I guess I was assuming that any reasonably competent scholar of the ancient Near East should be able to tell at a glance the difference between Hieratic, Greek, Roman, Phoenician, Hebrew and Cuneiform letters...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

And so he should! :-(

My teacher knew we were fooling around and maybe thought we had deliberately mangled her language. Mind you, written Hebrew looks as different from printed as handwriting does in English, and some letters do resemble hiragana.

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Japanese and now Russian ? If you're not careful your head will explode !

*is seriously impressed*

So, which form of Chinese do you know ?

[jecono.livejournal.com]

Wow, you know so many things! Languages and computer stuff - I'm very impressed!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

None, but I speak German fluently and can get by in Italian, French, and Indonesian. The last one's not that impressive; Bahasa Indonesia is the easiest language I've ever come across.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I didn't fit the system here which channels you into science or languages at high school. I wanted to do both, but in the end chose science (after doing Latin, French, German--though I already spoke some--and Japanese) and did a physics degree at uni. I sometimes regret that; it should have been engineering.

Basically I'm a dilettante. :-)

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

I can count up to ten in German, and know about half a dozen other words. I've forgotten most of the french I learnt, though I can still follow some bits and pieces of written French.
My best non-native language is Spanish - though I'm hardly fluent in that these days.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I find I can read French and Italian quite well, but it's too fast for me when spoken.

Spanish is useful in the West!