Disney-comics digest #521.

[H.W. Fluks]

Nice to read that that beeeg digest with a lot of non-Disney stuff
was still appreciated. Here's some more about Indexes and Holland...
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OLE (ah finally - a letter from RoC!):

Since you already have subscriptions to Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German and Dutch
Disney magazines, and plan to get the English one: you won't regret it when you
subscribe to the French Picsou Magazine!

I did not get a *recent* letter from you, about tree-structures or anything.

If you put the story codes in the right format, your Danish index would match
perfectly in the NEW version of the Database. Anders Engwall and I already
adjusted the Swedish database (as a.o. Fredrik asked for): if a Swedish title
of a story is available and known, it is included.

I constantly adjust the programs that accompany the Database ('DIZNIREP' was
one of them, once). It's a good idea to let the user choose a language. I'll
build it in if I can. A version that can be used by 'ornery folks' is expected
before the end of the next century. ("No machine can be so smart that the dumbest
person can work with it".)

BTW: the part 'DIZNI' of my program's names was inspired by the (former)
Yougoslavian Disney comic 'Diznilend'! They really spell(ed) it that way!
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MITCHELL:

> >like "Surr-tenly! Det's my geop". But would that be a clear Dutch
> >accent to an American reader?

> As an American, I read 'geop' as 'jee-awp'.  Maybe 'chob' or 'jop'?

I meant to express a 'g'-sound without the preceding 'd', like the French do
in 'jardin' ([zh] in stead of [dzh]). I realise now that 'ge' is not the right
transcription for that, but I can't find a better one.

Now that I think of it, some Dutch may pronounce the word as 'shop'.
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WILMER:
> By the way, I didn't know that Daan Jippes is
> from Friesland ("the Lapland of Holland").  Does he therefore speak
> Frisian as his native tongue?

Not necessarily. He may have moved at young age to a city in Holland (I
mean, the western part of the Netherlands). I don't know.
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DWIGHT:
> Most of those negative "Dutch" expressions date back some centuries to
> when England and Holland were trade rivals

Yeah... the Dutch had four sea-wars with England in the 17th and 18th century.

> Frisian may be "closest" to
> English in some technical grammatical sense, but from what I've seen of
> it on the printed page, it's still a lot closer to Dutch, and unreadable
> by a native English-speaker without special study.

Part of the unreadability can be because the spelling uses Dutch letters,
e.g. the 'j' to express the consonant 'y', or 'tsj' which sounds like
'ch'. (e.g. Tsjerke = Church)

BTW: does anyone remember the cartoon "Pluto in Dutch"? The locals almost
talk German there!
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WILMER (again):
> Specifically, is Grandma a member of the Pennsylvania Ducks?

Well, I once proposed that Cornelius Coot was Dutch, and accoring to 
Don's family tree, Grandma is a Coot. So if not Pennsylvania Dutch, Grandma
could be a Mennonite?

--Harry.