Off-topic thread - talk about anything

[Nathan 9⁵]

My language setting here seems to have switched itself to Norwegian. I have Norwegian ancestry, but I'd rather not have to get my mother to translate for me. How do I switch it back to Engrish?

[nordwulf]

Norwegian? Perhaps you mean Nederlands (Dutch) because that's the only other language we have installed besides English. Scroll down on any page and use the language drop-down to switch to English. The other dropdown is for selecting a different theme.

[Nathan 9⁵]

Well it's amazing their similarity! I'll give it a try. Thanks!


Ah ha! It worked!

[nordwulf]

Well it's amazing their similarity!

Similar as being not able to understand either one? Dutch is very easy but Norwegian doesn't make any sense to me at all. But then again, Norwegian and Swedish seem very similar to me, even though I can make sense of some Swedish when reading.

[tunnanxwd]

Wife and family are "Norsk" and they seem to be able to understand Swedish and Norwegian. Something like Norwegian is sing-song Swedish or Swedish is "dead-pan" or grumbly Norwegian. I tried to learn from the "Berlitz" tapes and they all laughed at me. Train Station is .... Traain Stashun, now repeat after me Traaaaaaain Stashunnnnn. The funny one was when I tried lunch ..... yai-villl-yanna-smurbra which means I would like a sandwich (smurbra being smeared bread I guess), and they were howling ... so I gave up.

That and they get all "Viking" and stuff at lunch making a big deal about putting the meat and cheese on a lone piece of bread. To me that is simply a common "sammich" with a piece of bread missing and they look at me as odd. I know it gets to them since I am a real rebel using two slices of bread as if it was against Chapter 4, Paragraph 6 of Martin Luther's Synod or something.

[Dave T]

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal had an article about a proposed merger between EADS (Airbus) and BAe (British Aerospace). This may spell trouble for Dassault Rafale fighter jet, since EADS owns a large minority interest in Dassault. The Rafale competes for sales with the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by EADS and BAe. EADS' financial benefit from the Rafale is not that large but a combined EADS-BAe has much more financial benefit from the Typhoon than the Rafale. It is feared that a EADS-BAe will push for Typhoon sales, not Rafale sales.

The Wall Street Journal had an article about this problem for Dassault, which is largely family controlled by the Dassault family. There's a nice picture of what is supposed to be a Dassault Rafale flying by a castle. The problem is that is not a Dassault Rafale. It's a Saab Gripen!

[SaabKen]

I can see how some editorial lackey with no appreciation of things aeronautic (in particular combat aircraft) to have mistakenly found and place a wrong picture into the article, then none of the higher-ups knew the difference to make a correction. The untrained eye could have made that mistake, Rafale or Gripen or Typhoon ..... ?

[Dave T]

When the Eurofighter Typhoon was still in the planning stages, there was talk about a British-French-German-Spanish-Italian plane. However, the French said that development was too slow and they needed a plane sooner. They developed the Rafale alone. The trouble was that it took them so long to do it that the Typhoon flew earlier!

From the top, like in the photos, the single engined Gripen does look like the twin engined Rafale. The Eurofighter is a lot more boxy looking, particularly from the side. Looks, however, don't correlate with the effectiveness of a weapon. The Saab JA37 Viggen is better looking than the skinny Gripen, but the Gripen is far more advanced and replaced the Viggen.

[Shazam]

Picked up a free turbo from member TrollhattenSchatten a couple of weekends ago. Been too busy to post about it, and to thank him on the site. It's got some shaft play, so I'm going to look into rebuilding it while I've still have my smokey one in the car. Thanks Troll!

[nordwulf]