I bet you didn't know you could read the Dutch language! Polyglots pages!

Flag of the Netherlands 

I didn't know I could read Dutch. Until I logged onto a Dutch newspaper article from a link in Wikipedia. I was asked to sign up to read more and recognized these words:

Dutch - English

account - account

automatisch - automatically

digitale - digital

e-mailadres - e-mail address

gratis - free

hier - here

inloggen - login

registreer - register

stopt - stopped

vergeten - forgotten

English - Dutch

account - account

automatically - automatisch

digital - digitale

email address - e-mailadres

forgotten - vergeten

free - gratis

here - hier

login -inloggen

register - registreer

stopped - stopt

Should I check some more words, one by one in Google translate? It would be quicker to grab several off a wikipedia page.

I went to the wikipedia page and found these similar sounding words:

Dutch - English

bakken - to bake

breken - to break

geven - to give 

klimmen - to climb

niet - not

u - you

wegen - to weigh

werken - works

zenden - to send

zitten - to sit

It's like easy German, or English with simplified spelling. This year I am learning Spanish. Next year I could learn Dutch. Not a very common language. But probably a reinforcement for my beginner's German. 

Also it will impress other people to say that I can speak English, French, German, Spanish and Dutch. If I count English as one of my languages, in two years time I could speak six languages, and genuinely call myself a polyglot. 

How about you? Isn't Dutch easy! https://www.facebook.com/Hyperglots/olyglot page

I just logged into Facebook to find the link to my favourite polyglot page, where people ask questions, so handy for me and for you, dear readers. I found another polyglot page, geared to learning languages. 

Why would you want to learn Dutch? Where can you use it? In the Netherlands of course. But why would you go there? To see Anne Frank's house, and the Jewish museum, Rembrandt's house, and the Rijsmuseum with more Rembrandts. Delft pottery, windmills. Tulips. The Wikivoyage page has updates on the Covid situation.

Useful Websites

https://translate.google.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language

https://www.knack.be/nieuws/belgie/twee-schepen-op-drift-in-windmolenparken/article-news-1836453.html?cookie_check=1645375421

https://www.facebook.com/polyglotclub.world/

https://www.facebook.com/Hyperglots/

How To Successfully Meet On Zoom, Or Other Platforms, Login With Or Without A Password And Hear

 I get sent messages on WhatsApp on my mobile phone which include a long sign in. I write the meeting into my diary. But on the day my sign up is delayed.
Here are my problems and solutions. I shall deal with day, time, registration, ID, password, whatsApp, sound and mute and headphone set, video on, chat group, participants.

RECORD THE DAY, number and day of week
1 I write it on the wrong day.
When sending out a message, list the day of the week and the date.
When receiving a message confirm the day of the week and the date.

Confirm any repeated regularity of meeting. Today I received the message sent to all members of a group: 'We meet the fourth Saturday afternoon, not the last: We will meet on Saturday 22nd of August, not on the 29th.'

The sender of the original message about the date sent a change of date notice.
I have also had meeting held on a Sunday, when people thought it would be a Saturday, but because of clashes with other events the date was changed to Sunday. Always state the day of the week so people don't misunderstand, or write it on the wrong day.

A chase-up message saying today or tomorrow is helpful but always add the date.
I have a month of messages saying it's today or tomorrow without the date added. Especially when the message is sent at midnight, or it is daytime in your country but already tomorrow or still yesterday in the recipient's country.

RECORD THE TIME
2 I have the meeting listed on the day but not the time.
Make sure you know whether 7 or 8 or 9 is a.m. or p.m. Some people prefer to use the 24 hour clock.

LOCAL TIME
I write local times around the world at the back of my diary and on a noticeboard for quick reference. All the time from dawn to midnight and through the night where I am now. Also at the point of a second home or office or people at another destination.

TIMER - SET AN ALARM
What if you don't look at your diary. You are still eating breakfast, still tired.
You don't usually have meeting on a weekend or in the evening or during your holiday.
To be sure of not missing a meeting, it helps to set an alarm in your phone.
Set your alarm half an hour earlier. it could take you an extra ten minutes to fill in a registration form and to set up zoom with the login and ID and password, then unmute, join with video and so on.

PASSWORD?
You need to write down the password. Beware of double numbers. Some people prefer to write numbers in pairs. You can also write in threes. Or fours. I write a semi circule like a cup to link three numbers if the whole set is written together because I have no space for spaces.
I have also tried writing a flattened U shape under the first three numbers, and the inverted curve over the next three numbers.

RECORD SENDER'S CONTACT DETAILS
If you try logging in and it does not work or you need a password, it helps to have the sender's details. No Password!

NO PASSWORD !
If you try to log in on zoom on your desktop and have no password, go back to the sender's message. You may find that when you click on the link you get an option, join meeting now or join meeting in progress.
This will bring up the meeting on your phone. I find it handy to have a mobile phone support device. Otherwise you appear half on and half off the screen.
You can then message or phone the organizer.
Alternatively, set up whatsapp on your desktop. It looks like a green circle or speech bubble with an old fashioned phone in white. If you already have it on your laptop or desktop.
When you click on join meeting on your desktop through whatsapp you are in.

NO SOUND?
On a mobile you may need to do one or both of these:
1 Turn up the sound (top button top right on my Samsung mobile). This sends a blue line from left
to write across the top of your screen as you hold down or repeatedly press the volume button.
If you forget the position of the sound, you could either put a label on the back of your phone, or draw a picture of the phone with arrows to the controls, and pin the drawing on your pinboard behind your screen

Another place to press on the mobile is on the option worded 'join with internet'.
Basically, you just try all the options until you get the sound, but mentally note or write down which one brings up the sound.

On a laptop, try the sound key top left of the keyboard. on my keyboard from top right the keys are ESC for escape, the muted loudspeaker, the minus for turn of sound, and the little loudspeaker and plus for add sound.
If that does not have any effect, where is the sound going? Have you plugged in a large black headset or a tiny white string which leads to an earpiece cum microphone?
Either unplug the headset or put it on to hear.
I hope this reminder helps.

HAPPY LISTENING. HAPPY MEETINGS!
About the author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
Contact Angela
Facebook, LinkedIn, or meetings of Toastmasters International Speakers' Clubs. Please come to online meetings of Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters International speakers' club.

Videoconferencing - what you need to know and teach

1 Choose Your System
Work out the sites which are free or costing and any time constraints.
What will you get from the premium versions?
If it is a free trial, do you have to give a credit card and risk making monthly purchases forever if you forget or can't succeed in cancelling?
Who can fund a premium account?
Who do you know in your business or social group who already has an account which they will share?

2 Set up your webconferencing system account.
Note any logins and passwords and save the information in two places. Try to make it memorable by finding a pattern, or keep repeating it.

3 Read the webconferencing help page.

4 Print the help page or screen capture.
Highlight the important points and actions.

5 Or store login codes and directions somewhere you can quickly copy it and forward it to your co-hosts audience members.

6 You also want to know:
How do you share or hand over hosting the videoconferencing site? (Usually just an icon you click, saying 'share hosting', or words to that effect, then select a name from participants.)

7 How do you admit people? Or

8 Signing in
The first questions your attendees will ask are:
How do I log in? What is the code?  What is the password?
Have this written up large on a board beside your laptop.

9 You can have a cork pinboard, a white wipeboard (small ones can be bought from Daeso). Failing all else, clip onto a clipboard.

10 Appoint A Technical Troubleshooter
If you don't, you will delay the proceedings every ten minutes for the first half hour whilst latecomers say they can't log in and ask for help.

11 Train people to change their name on their photo box (the oblong which looks like a microwave) and show their  face.

12 Tell everyone to mute during other people's speeches to cut down on background noises.

13 Remind peole to unmute. Show they how to do it on the large computer screen or a small mobile.

14 Follow up thanking people from attending. Send them links to videos you took of meetings.

Author
Author, Author! About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. (Not related to the actress.)
Author of twenty books including: Quick Quotations; Who Said What When.
See books and profiles on Lulu.com and Amazon, such as Wedding Speeches & Toasts. Also watch videos on YouTube.
See other posts on singers and statues and languages and destinations.

Online Toastmasters International Meetings
If you want to learn to speak the Queen's English, or Received Pronunciation. join me at my online toastmasters club,
Braddell Heights Advanced. Wednesdays, 7-9 Singapore time which is seven hours ahead of London, England.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=braddell%20heights%20advanced%20toastmasters
I am also a member of
Singapore Online.9-12 pm, Singapore time, Fridays. I am also a member of
Tampines Changkat Advanced.
Harrovians, London.
Tiarel.
Toastmasters International Find a Club
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=upSEBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=quick+quotations
lulu.com/shop/angela-lansbury/who-said-what-when/paperback/product-21713991ape

How to create and run an online meeting

Decide to hold meetings online. If possible find a few others who agree and will help you. If not, just set it up, so you are ready to answer questions, fend off objections, and then ask for help.

Decide which system you want to use, zoom or another. This may depend on the length of the meeting, whether you are willing to pay, how long you want the meeting to be.

Set up your meeting account. Make yourself and possibly somebody else an admin.

Send the attendees their link.
Tell them that they need to sign in.

On zoom, show them the buttons to click on for:
 mute and unmute
chat - to everyone or message one person such as yourself the admin or another
How to leave the meeting
How to be recorded
To record sound only
To record video

Zoom
If you use zoom, you fill in the link.
Sign up with your name.
https://zoom.us/postattendee?id=7

Free Conference Call
https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/

Your name or reference number is added on the end of the above link.
You can also use Whatsapp and Google.

More later. See next post.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury. Please save links to your favourite posts.

On the move with mobile and laptop - lost emails, typos, car keys, what's wrong? Help

What's going wrong? Here are some questions and answers.

1 PASSWORDS
Q
You can't log into your laptop with your password. Why?

A
Caps lock is on.
You have forgotten to use the capital letter.
You have forgotten the number at the end.

2 EMAILS
Q 
Your email login is not working
A
You have left off the number at the end.
You joined this organization years ago and it is still using your old email which you abandoned because it was overloaded with spam.

3 PASSWORDS
Q
The password is not recognized.
A
It is a new website and does not have your usual password.
You need to create a new password for this website.
Although you have looked at the website such as a clothing catalogue several times , whenever it sends you an update on sales and, you have not yet created a password.

4 JUMPING TO HOME PAGE
Q
You are typing merrily away on your phone and it keeps leaving the whatsapp group and going back to the home page.
A
When you put your thumb or finger on the space bar at the bottom of the screen, you are accidentally touching the home key just below it.

5 TYPOS
Q
Your text is full of typos. So are your emails composed on the mobile phone. Why?
A
If you look at the English QWERTY keyboard, you will see that you are accidentally touching adjacent letters. On the top line, your q becomes a w, w becomes e, r becomes to and t becomes y and so on. On the next line, asdfg, your a becomes s, your s becomes d, your d becomes f, and your f becomes g.

Remedies:
Use a bigger screen which has a bigger keyboard.
Buy a bigger phone.
Or use a tablet or an ipad (Apple's tablet).

Steve Jobs introducing the Ipad. Photo by Buchanan under Ipad article in Wikipedia.

Or go to settings in your phone, look for keyboard, and choose larger keyboard.

CHECK FOR TYPOS
Check every text message before sending it.
Install Grammarly.
Re-read your blog posts after publication. Sometimes Grammarly or spell checker only highlights suspect words after publication.

6 STRANGERS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES IGNORE YOUR REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION
Q 
You are giving them free publicity. Why are they ignoring you? 
A
Small Business
Check their website. They may be a tiny one-person business dealing with orders Monday to Friday and answering general queries only at the weekend.
Add a translation in their language using Google translate. Convert what is said in their language back into English to be sure there is no ambiguity.

Make your long email more succinct, less daunting.
Make your short email more more friendly and complimentary.
Ask a friend or family member or colleague to check important emails. Does your translation of can you, or tell me or can you tell me sound polite in French? French is more flowery and uses different colloquialisms. For example, maybe change pouvey-vous (can you) into Est-ce-que vous pouvez (is it possible for you ).

Holidays
Check national holidays in the country of the recipient. 

Bear in mind that the whole office may be closed during: 

Xmas, 

Ramadan, 
Easter, 

Passover, Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur (fasting day), and 

Chinese New Year, 

On the country's national day or holiday, the whole office may be closed. In addition, the person you are writing to may be travelling or on holiday.

During summer holidays, your email query might not be dealt with because the person is away and others are not allowed to contact them. Or the company, whether or business or educational establishment, cannot pass on your email and phone number to other staff members. The person you are writing to could also be away on a conference or training day. Staff may not be allowed to reveal that the person is away, because that would be a security risk for their home.

URGENT OR NOT?
Is your order or query urgent? If you need an item delivered fast, eg because you are going on holiday, tell the company. They cannot guess that you are the one customer in a hurry. They might be able to send by faster post (at your cost or theirs). They might get another office to deal with your query.
Equally, if you would still be happy to hear from them in a month's time, after the summer holidays or wine harvest, let them know.

LOST EMAIL
Q
Your important email has disappeared from your GMAIL inbox. 
A
Check the sent items. The email may be above the reply.
Copy yourself into the reply so the whole correspondence chain comes back into your inbox.
Search for recipient or destination company name.
Search by subject.

LOST BLOG POST
Q My blog has vanished. Help!
A Use control and Z to recover. One might not be enough. Do it three or four times.
Keep saving your post.

Create drafts in notes and copy them when finished. You can later find the notes even if the blog disappears.
Make a second blog set to private. Copy drafts from there into your public post after you have checked spelling and grammar and added photos and checked statistics and spelling of proper names.

SECOND PRIVATE NAME APPEARS on public Emails
Q If Marilyn Monroe were alive today, she might not want Norma Jean appearing as her signature.
I found Angela The Author popping up on my email to banks and businesses which were using my full family name.
What can you do?

A
Create a second email just for business or your second name or for personal items.

FINALLY
Q Your techie help is away. What to do?
A Somebody else has your problem. Ask Google. Most queries, from how to operate a printer and a sewing machine, to edit a photo, can be solved on the internet. If you cannot follow the instructions, first list the technical words and lay terms. Then check for a video on YouTube. 
Q
Each time you have a problem and solve it, make a note. In a year's time you might have the same problem. It could be a great help to you or your colleagues to have the solution handy.

LOST AND HIDDEN KEYS
Q Where are the keys? Once we lost the back door key. The boiler repair man had it and brought it back a year later. Now I hide all keys or put large, colourful obvious key fobs on them when workmen and visitors are in the house so nobody takes my keys by mistake.

We lost the front door key. Instead of changing two locks, we added a third, just in case. A month later, friends found the missing key under their sofa.

A relative lost two car keys. Replacing them cost a three figure sum. All three family members in different countries were told it was their fault and they must hunt for the keys. We all hunted in vain.

A year later, g  he found their location listed on the end of an old shopping list.
Email yourself a note on where you have hidden something. For security, the location could be cryptic. At least if you know which room to check, you will be saving hunting time. And you know that the key is hidden in the house, not lost in the street. if you have two homes or two business offices, have a code for each one, or the name of a colleague or family member or pet who lives there as your hint.

Better still, something which nobody could find from searching your public or private Facebook account. For example, if you had two homes, one in New York, the other in Brazil, you could write the instructions for finding the spare keys to your New York apartment in Brazil in Portuguese, or use a Portuguese royal family name as a hint.

Finding Items
The less clutter the better. I spent three panic-stricken hours hunting for my missing train ticket to Wales. I threw out every old newspaper, old magazine, out of date newsletters, expired supermarket discounts, old receipts. The piles of paper were halved. But still no ticket. I had to go off without it, if necessary spend one hundred pounds - Google tells me this is about 132 US dollars in March 2019.

When I got to the station, I discovered that my ticket was an e-ticket. If I had sent myself an email reminder a week earlier, a search of emails would have revealed this.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

Do I open a tab or window when travelling and at home? The USA login?

Problems
What happens when you try to save a note of your link? I opened tabs and found I could not reach the URL (click on name) login for the website to reach it again later. I have always wondered why use tabs rather than a new window. I tend to open a new window.

Why Tabs?
Other people tell me to use a tab. Why? Because then you/I see a list of shortened names in a line across the top of my screen, instead of having to press F3 to bring up all the screens.

Why Open A New Window?
But now I find it is a nuisance not having the name of the website. If I open a new window, I can find it again by pressing F3, there is the URL at the top for me to copy. Why do I need to copy it? Because I am writing a blog on travel and want the website of the place to visit (a museum or attraction or hotel or waterfall) plus the website of the country's tourist board, on every blog post. I also go back through my history to find a recently opened website and go back to it.

I can use search in blogger and type in a country name, such as USA, England, China, and up will come all my posts on that subject. If I click on a recent post, I will find links to several related websites.

I can go to Amazon.com , or Amazon.co.uk

I can also get prices in US dollars, or Singapore dollars, or British pounds.

Why Copy Links?
Why does anybody need to copy a link? Firstly, it's quicker if it's long. Less chance of making a typo.

It is quicker to click on a link than do a search through a dozen items which pop up.
I know that if I type in a link from memory I might get it wrong. Some of the countries have a link which is visit such and such a country dot com. Others give me the co.uk address if I log in from there. Others give me the sg from Singapore.

What does it matter? If I am writing for an international audience the American or international version is more useful. 

If I want to go to France from the UK, I will get links and ads for the ferry from UK ports, and trains from Victoria station in London to a station in Paris. If I use the website aimed at Americans, I get flights from the USA to Paris. And so on.

If I log in from Russia, I probably get a page in Russian and have to find the tab for the English translation, unless I have visited the website before and it remembers me.

Now you know.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Read my other posts for more advice on travel, general overviews of countries, learning languages, and lots of plus seasonal ideas such as Xmas and Valentines. Have a browse of my posts, bookmark and share links to your favourite posts with your family, friends and colleagues.