Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Rants on the Romanian language

"Ceau" - the most idiotic greeting formula. It is used only in Timisoara. I think that it is a romanization of the Italian "Ciao" but misspelled. I hate when I receive mails started with "Ceau Nilu" or I am greeted with "Ceau".

"Decat" - is an adverb that requires a negative verb for correct semantics. For positive the correct adverb is "doar". EG: "Nu am decat 5 lei" - is correct but "Am decat 5 lei" is scratching both my ears and the Romanian grammar. In the positive case the expression should be "Am doar 5 lei". But the "meltenesque" population is using the wrong form... I am doomed to hear them.

The extreme usage of Accusative in the detriment of the Genitive-Dative forms: "I-am lat lu' fata" instead of "I-am dat fetei"...
As my reader Bogdan Alexandru remarked I have put a wrong example on my post. In fact the idea was the usage of the "la" Accusative preposition for expressing the Dative "I-am dat la fata" instead of "I-am dat fetei". The problem is that the substantive "fata" has an Nominative/Accusative form because of the preposition. In my example there is also a problem of accord for the gender - it was an ear scratching expression heard yesterday.

I am not a linguist but I like speaking and hearing a correct language. But what I hear around is just a "gipsy"-anization of the language based on the precarious education in the Romanian institutes. Language is in my opinion a sacred asset for a nation and should be guarded with all the possible energies.

The Lent Paradox

85% of Romanian population claims to be orthodox.
During the lent I have to eat in an Halal Lebanese restaurant in order to find some appropriate food.
I wonder how many of the 85% are respecting the lent? In fact is quite hard to do it as all the restaurants offer the same meat based menus which are even cheaper than the lent cuisine.
An why the Romanian Orthodox Church does not create small fast foods with food for lent - as the monks have delicious recipes and in this way they can raise funds for charity and construction of the Cathedral.

Just my rants...

Monday, April 11, 2011

ROFL!!!

Via Alexei I stumbled upon this very funny clip:

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

IEEE

For some years now I have been an IEEE member.
I have joined this organization for several reasons - the main one being access to latest "trustworthy"  information and research.
This year I decided to give up IEEE. Last year I was roughly paying about  42 USD for one year membership (no printed material) but this year the offer was advertised at 50 USD. When I tried to renew my membership I discovered that the charge was in fact 63 USD (50 Electronic subscription + 13 local chapter). In fact 50% more than last year... For what? Spectrum digital edition and access to a web site? A local chapter that is almost inexistent in my country?
IEEE is a great organization and they have been influential in all aspects of engineering in the last 50 years - but they are growing more expensive year after year... That's a pitty.