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Javito1986

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Posts posted by Javito1986

  1. Posted · Edited by Javito1986

     

     

     

    Didn't mean to be corrective like an annoying teacher - hope you see it more like helping you further.

    As I said - German is tricky in the detail.

    "Der Genitiv ist dem Dativ sein Tod" is of course not correct German - he purposely used the dative formally wrong here, as a funny, catchy title.

    But I guess you knew that anyway. I guess that book is already for advanced German language training. Never read it myself though.

     

     

    Haha, yeah, nowadays there may be fewer Germans, even in the film industry, where you found quite a few Germans during and after WW2.

     


     

     

    Of course Olham, I appreciate the corrections. When I wrote that I had a feeling I was writing something wrong and figured you'd correct me anyway :biggrin:. Language learning is hard work, but every correction and mistake brings your brain closer to "getting it" because your brain understands "Ah that didn't work, ok, let's try it this way next time..." I went through this process when I was learning Spanish between 2007 and 2009.

     

    The nice thing for me is being finally able to read German literature. Although, again, it's hard for me to "create" my own language constructions perfectly (but I get my intention across), I can read quite well and am working on comprehending more dialects (standard German is easy for me to comprehend, other accents are harder). I went on Amazon.de a few months ago and purchased a copy of Kafka's Gesammelte Werke and a schoolbook for advanced students (B2 - C1 on the CEF, which is where I'm at), have been working on those in my leisure time.

     

    Half my ancestry came from Germany in the 19th century and some of them even served in German-speaking units in Grant's army in the Civil War here, but America's unfortunate anti-German hysteria in the WW1 era knocked it out of basically everyone. They used to teach German in schools in my home-state Wisconsin, but outlawed that 100 years ago. Now the USA has many citizens with German ancestry, but the only thing that distinguishes them are "funny" names like Eisenhower.

     

    Point is, I quite love the language and especially the literature. But there's no one to speak and practice with here!

     

     


     

     

     

    Blame it on Gutenberg! 

     

    Yes, if you read your Old English grammar book the syntax will look very Germanic, with nominative dative and accusative endings and such like.  However, English went through a process of simplification or even creolisation for a few hundred years as it was not spoken by the ruling classes who spoke Norman French.  So those endings dropped away and were replaced by simpler prepositions and simpler word order eg.  "I gave the book to the boy" the 'to' is a dative preposition.  Also the word order rules stops one saying 'To the book I gave the boy" which breaks the rules and is nonsense.  In Latin, you could put the words in any order as everything depended on the case of the nouns and verbs.  It is believed that German was in a process of simplification and the greater use of prepositions, but then along came Herr Gutenberg with his printing press and the grammar got set in concrete! 

     

     

     

    I've been reading about this a fair amount, but what you say about Gutenberg setting the language "in concrete" is new and very interesting information for me. I'll be researching this further as time goes on, it's a fascinating subject.

     

    I do wonder what was different about Anglo-Saxon England that their language and, therefore, culture were "assimilated" in such a way, whereas many other (but obviously not all) "conquered peoples" kept both, even after hundreds of years of occupation. That's a big quandary for me, but I haven't had time yet to really delve into it as much as I'd like. The right books on the subject can be hard to come by, though I'm sure they've been written!

  2. Posted · Edited by Javito1986

    Gee, L.A. ! Pls send a photo of your favourite diner, Javito (presumed you eat in a diner occasionally).

    Would be one of the first things I would try out in America, I guess.

     

    German must be very hard to learn, compared to English - die Grammatik ist besonders schwer -

    and to learn "der, die, das" is surely hard, when you only needed "the" so far.

    You can either say "Ich habe Deutsch gelernt im letzten Jahr", or "Ich habe Deutsch gelernt in dem letzten Jahr".

    "In dem" is often reduced to "im". Yeah, i know - it's hard and doesn't always seem to make sense...

     

    I wish you all the best of luck and good success for your writing carreer, Javito - one of my favourite

    thriller authors, Raymond Chandler, lived in L.A. and wrote great stories about the city.

     

    Thanks for the grammar corrections Olham! I do theoretically "know"  the dative case (I even read Der Dative ist dem Genitiv sein Tod a few months ago), but as you can see, it's hard to apply the fundaments of grammar on the fly without a lot of practice. And practice is what I lack — believe it or not, the German speaking community in Los Angeles is rather small!

     

     

     

    I took German in High School, and it wasn't all that bad. English is, after all, a Germanic language. I was struck by how many words were the same, or similar. True, the "der-die-das" took some getting used to.

    What kind of writing? Are you writing for the film industry?

     

     

    The relationship between English and German is indeed fascinating. I've lost many hours studying that rabbit hole, going as far to have purchased an Old English grammar book that I've yet to truly delve into (one language at a time).

     

     

    As far as my writing, I'm creating marketing copy for various clients and have been fortunate enough to make it work for me. The long-term viability is, of course, questionable (clients come and go, seasons have highs and lows, income changes one month to another), but I'm unmarried and I don't have children and I have minimal expenses. I've also been working on creative fiction for publication, but that's a slow process and there isn't much income to be made until publication actually happens — and most of the time even after :biggrin:. But that's what the day job is for, and I would do it even if there were never any money to be made. Recently I began submitting to various contests, residencies, and (soon) short story publications to try and make something happen there. I am, to my eternal misfortune, one of those cursed with a writing gremlin in the brain that stabs me if I don't do its bidding.

  3. Posted

    Ahaha. What's up guys. Yea I'm living in Los Angeles right now. Working as a writer, actually making a comfortable living doing it which is a blessing considering how most people who "work as a writer" have to struggle. I'm not here permanently or anything, fully intending to move home to WI and be Louvert's neighbor again, but for the time being here I am. I haven't flown much WOFF in a while. I'd sure like to, but I don't have to tell you guys how busy things get once you're out and trying to do something with yourself in the "real world," especially when you're 29 and juuuuust starting your "prime working years." 

     

    My PC Moya burned down in March. She literally burned, it was interesting. I did preserve backups of everything, including WOFF, but I haven't tried to reinstall it since then in order to make sure I truly do have all the requisite files to run it. Might have to repurchase some things, which wouldn't bother me considering I <3 OBD. 

     

    Other than that, I've done a lot of work as a "ghost" writer in the last year, but I'm finally getting close to publishing some stuff under my own name. Shocking I know. More on that when it's appropriate! I'll be sure to visit more often even if I don't have much directly WOFF related topics to discuss. I saw Sopwith and Lou were here recently. If and when you guys see this thread, hello boys! 

     

    Oh and Olham, ich habe Deutsch gelernt in das letzte Jahr. Der Grammatik (die?) fehlt mir noch, aber jeden Tag studiere ich ein bisschen mehr

  8. Posted

    Hello! I've been grounded from WOFF these past few months owing to technical issues, but I anticipate receiving some equipment this afternoon that will put an end to that and allow me to fly once more. Providing my joysticks and TrackIR still work correctly, I'd like to get back into the air this week.

    Thing is, I've only EVER flown for either the British or Americans. Since I first played OFF in 2009!

    This year I've been teaching myself to speak German as a third language (Native English speaker, fluent Spanish). So I'd like to fly for Olham's team for a change. Thinking about starting a career in summer 1918 flying DR VIIs. Now, I know that's going to be chaos, but I don't mind diving right into the deep end.

    Anyhoo, I have a whole slew of knowledge about flying Allies. What color our flak is, how to best pop balloons, which German squadrons are easy pickings and which I need to run the hell away from, etc. But about all I know about flying for Germany is that I'll be spending 90% of my time on my side of the line, which sounds FANTASTIC to be honest because I hate offensive patrols with a passion.

    So... tips and tricks I should know of from forum vets?

  16. Posted

    My most recent pilot career had been going great. I had 2 confirmed kills, another claim pending and it was only my first week with the squadron. These guys I shot down were two Triplanes and one Pfalz. I'd also been fighting Albatros planes to great success, though hadn't brought one down. The pilots were from mediocre to poor squadrons and it showed. I could sneak right up on some of them without their ever looking behind them and knock them out of the sky.

    But I'm dead now. Because I thought I was a little badass that could outfly and outfight anyone in WOFF. So when my squadron ran into red painted Triplanes, I didn't think twice about engaging them the same way I did the other guys.

    Nah. This triplane flew circles around me, cut inside my turn and filled me full of holes. I was out of the fight before you could blink. Then he strafed and killed me after I made a forced landing, as if shooting my engine out and making me land in No Man's Land wasn't insult enough.

    I SHOULD HAVE considered the situation more before jumping right in. Should've looked at that scary paint job and treated it like a big neon "DANGER" sign. Should have realized that while a well flown Sopwith Camel can outfly a Dr. I flown by someone straight out of the Kaiser's flying school, it isn't going to work out against an expertly flown Dr. I. So I became breakfast and victory #Whatever for that jerk.

    Let that be a lesson: Think first!

  18. Posted

    Thanks Dej! Didn't see that link there. I found the pilot primers for various aircraft and downloaded them to my iPad. I read through the Sopwith Camel primer, it's still quite valid and I assume that's true for the others as well. It could perhaps use a little updating to mention the new rotary engine mechanics in WOFF but that's about it.

     

    However, I'm afraid I'm still missing the old 3P pilot profile pdfs. The links seem to have been removed from those forum posts.

  19. Posted

    Since Lothar's presumably too busy with his new job to make us a version of OFFbase for WOFF, I wonder if anyone has a copy of Bletchey's 3P pdf? The old write ups for the various aircraft that used to be in the Survival in the Air section would also be lovely. I'd like to get back to doing a proper squadron campaign with some role playing.

  21. Posted

    This is probably because you never participated in organised multiplayer campaigns that can span over several months. You should try, it is really interesting as there is a logistics part behind where bombing factories/fuel dumps/ammo dumps have a direct impact on how many aircraft/fuel/ammo will be available for future missions. Also recon aircraft play a big part as you need to recon targets (and bring screenshots back to your airfield) before you can attack them in next mission, so two-seater pilots are also very important - I have flown 4 hours recon aircraft where the game was to stay stealthy using clouds and avoid combat. The general weekly strategic and tactical planning of each mission (I am side commander for Central forces in one of these campaigns) is also very interesting IMHO.

     

     

    You're right, I haven't done that, and that does sound like a great time. What sim are you talking about where that goes on?

  25. Posted

    So it's not just me? I got lost the other day somewheres around northern France, couldn't find St. Omer for the life of me. Went down to an aerodrome to "ask for directions" (check the in-game map), and right before landing... SON OF A !#*!%, WHO PUT A FENCE HERE?! Wheels clipped the damn thing pretty hard, and after that I couldn't get my engine to start anymore, so I had to spend the day with those chaps. Truly, war is hell.

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