The challenges of Greek, Hebrew, Russian and Cyrillic

 

 As far as I'm concerned the Romans did one good thing for us. They gave us the Latin alphabet. I have been struggling today with a message in Russian on Facebook. 

I went onto Wikipedia thinking it's time I put up the Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets where I can see them easily. For example, on a pin board or wall behind my computer screen.

Greek

Is Greek 'all Greek' to you? Until you have learned every letter of the alphabet you can only read a few simple words, which use about 5 common letters.   For example, I recognized Athens on a road sign and Exit in the aeroplane. 

My attempts at learning go back so far it is embarrassing to recognize and admit how long it has taken me - without finishing!  I started seeing the Greek alphabet in school, in mathematics. In my late teens as a student I first went to Greece. I took more holidays in Greece as an adult.

Much later, I was in Singapore and as Area Director of toastmasters International speakers' training clubs, I had to visit at least twice in six months a Toastmasters group called Toastmasters in Christ. I was astonished to find the well educated leader giving an analysis of bible texts, explaining the meaning of Hebrew words. at a Christian Toastmasters speakers training clubs. Oddly, Christians who train to be priests learn Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old Testament. 

From Greek To Hebrew

Why do I need Hebrew nowadays when I am not in nor visiting Israel? Looking at packaging of chocolates and wines in supermarkets. For myself, or when buying gifts. Also in prayer books at funerals.

When would I need Cyrillic? On holiday in Bulgaria.

It is almost all Russian. What about Russian?

Today I had a post on my Facebook page? What did it say?

I need to translate.

Useful Websites

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

About the Author

Angela Lansbury teacher of English (advanced and English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, French and other languages, aspiring polyglot.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Member of many toastmasters  speaker training clubs and speaking contest judge.

Angela Lansbury, the author of 20 books including Wedding Speeches & Toasts, and Quick Quotations, has lived in the USA, Spain and Singapore. 

She  has several blogs and writes daily on at least two of the following:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

How To Have An Online Birthday party

You can hold an online birthday party of people in your neighbourhood or around the world.

Invitation

Send out invitations. 

Dress Code

Set a dress code. It might be, wear sparkly clothes. Wear party clothes. Wear a hat. Wear a tie or bow tie. (Or the favourite colour of the birthday boy or girl. For example, red, pink, blue, black and white, earth colours, silver, gold.

Birthday Cake

Ask everybody to have a piece of cake with a candle. Send a cake to the birthday boy or girl.

I decided to act as if I were going to a real party. I dressed up and found a bottle still in its wrapping paper. I wore a party hat.

Party Picture

I edited my photo on the phone. The editing options included auto which intensifies colour. Further along to the right are several colour options I dont normally use as well as this rarely sed option which sends coloured circles. Mostly that would be entirely inappropriate. However, I tired it. The effect was good.

Angela wearing party hat and showing a wrapped bottle

Toast

Ask every one to fill a glass for a toast and a picture of the toast.

Prepare Speeches

Get everybody to say something they like about the birthday boy or girl. Record it. Type it out as text to display.

Make a montage of photos of the birthday boy or girl. It could be the past year at your club or office. Or previous year's birthdays. 

Take a group photo. Create a whatsapp group of those attending if you want the photo to remain private. Otherwise, send it to Facebook. . 

Arrange for everybody to have a zoom background of happy birthday.

Either ask everybody to choose their own photo and have a variety or happy birthday background. Or ask everybody to have the same photo, maybe upload it at the same time after the cake cutting and the singing of happy birthday..

Happy Birthday

You can arrange for happy birthday to be played for you to sing along in English. Then play versions in other languages, such as French, Spanish, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Cantonese, Malay, Tamil. Or any other language which will please the group.

Ask a suitable multi-lingual person or a good singer to lead the singing. Show the words karaoke style so everybody can sing along. If you have time, rehearse the singing.

Wishing you a happy birthday, wherever you are.

Useful Websites

https://www.canva.com/q/pro-zoom-virtual-background/

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

At Toastmasters International clubs in Singapore many clubs arrange for a birthday cake each month for all the members who have birthdays that month.

Please join me online at Braddell Heights Advanced, first Wednesday evening (Singapore time) 6.30 pm networking and start at 7pm. On Learncool. Next meetings including Wed August 5th 2020. Our new President is Faith. (I am the Immediate Past President.) She hopes to send a piece of birthday cake to members. Come along to an online meeting which is free. I joined at the first meeting I attended. I am now a member of five clubs.

 

Last Meal At the Harrow At Little Bedwyn Restaurant Which is closing

The Harrow sent us an email that they were closing and we booked straight away. We have been there several times. It is very expensive so, for us, saved for a special occasion.

 Usually an anniversary or birthday. We have two birthdays in one month, and a birthday and wedding anniversary in adjacent months.

Lost the Michelin star.

We had the six course tasting menu.

Starter
Bread with hummus.

Liquified beetroot in tiny shot glass, with ginger adding bite at the bottom of the glass. Irish blue cheese on top.

Cod, or was it snapper, a big flakey fish, in mushroom sauce.

Raw venison.

Mock egg with mango centre and beaten meringue style white outside in an egg cup with salted biscuit.

Dessert of fruits including kumquat and a red fruit, raspberry or strawberry, a variety of colours like a bunch of flowers.

Coffee in cups with flat handle.

Two chocolates although only one of us ordered coffee.

We had hoped the chef would take over the business. But it seems he wants to fulfil his dream of gardening. Wait and see if another restaurant takes over the property, which has a restaurant, an underground wine cellar, a clientele.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
Author of
Quick Quotations.
How To Get Out of the mess you're in.
Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

Wales Wishlist: chocolate, honey, wine and wool

Welsh Flag

Wonderful Wales, Welsh cakes and Welsh wines, harp music and Welsh male voice choirs. Romans and ruined castles.

If you want to escape, there's the Escape room, or the ferry across from Fishguard to Ireland in three hours.

BOOKS
Aardvark Books and Cafe, and for children, The BookBurrow.

CANDLES
Pembrokeshire Candle Centre

CASTLES
Castle Coch
Caerphilly Castle

CHOCOLATE
Wickedly Welsh Chocolate Factory

ESCAPE
60 minutes for your group to solve the puzzles in a room packed with puzzles and escape from the room.
Mansion of Mystery, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire SA62 4AS.

HONEY
New Quay Honey Farm
Honey ice cream. Audio-visual. See honey bees safely behind glass.

ROMANS
Roman Museum, Caerleon
Roman Amphitheatre, Caerleon

SLATE
National slate museum.

TAPESTRY TELLING HISTORY OF THE LAST INVASION
Fishguard

VINEYARD
Restaurant and wine tasting of up to 20 wines for adults.
online shop. Vineyard and woodland walks. Family attractions too , including animal corner.
Cwm Deri Vineyard

WOOLEN MILL
Melin Tregwynt
National Wood Museum

Useful Websites
aardvark-books.com
cwm-deri.co.uk
mansionofmystery.com
melintregwynt.co.uk
museum.wales/wool
pembrokeshirecandles.co.uk
thehoneyfarm.co.uk
wickedlywelsh.co.uk

About The Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, lives in London, England, and Singapore. She teaches and trains giving speeches, creative writings, learning to speak and write good English and other languages.

Angela Lansbury, author and speaker.
Author of
Quick Quotations.
How To Get Out of the mess you're in.
Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

How to understand a menu in Romania

Problem
What is the vocabulary? How do I ask for something? How do I understand the answer?

Answer
Vocabulary is easy. translate with google and find words on Duolingo.

English - Romanian
breakfast - mic d e j u n
butter - u n t (notice the u and t in both words)
cake - t o r t a
cakes - torturi
cheese - branza
chocolate - c i o c o l a t a
cocoa - c a c a o - notice in English .O.OA but in Romanian .A.AO
coffee - c a f e a
dessert - deserturi
eggs - oua (there should be an accent like a bowl on the a. Although I have added the Romanian alphabet or keyboard to my Macbook preferences, I don't have the letters.
fruit(s) - f r u c t, /f r u c t e
juices - s u c u r i
knives - c u t i t e
pie - p l a c i n t a
sandwiches - sandviciuri
sugar - z a h a r (bowl shape accept on second a)
teas - c e a i u r i
water - a p a
wines -vinuri
yogurts - iaurturi

Romanian - English
cu - with
c u t i t e - knives
d e s e r t - dessert
iaurturi - yogurts
m e n i u r i - menus
m i e r e - honey (like miel, French for honey)
pahare - glasses
p l a c i n t a - pie
r o s i e - red / tomatoes
s a n d v i c i u r i - sandwiches
torta - cake
torturi - cakes
usturoi - garlic
v i n u r i  - wines

Do you want a newspaper while you are waiting?
z i a r e - newspapers

If you learn in Duolingo it reminds shows you the accents and if you mis one out it reminds you. The letters with accents are supplied under the box in which you type.

noi - we

N o i  a v e m means we have. However, the Romanian negative, n u  a v e m we don't have, sounds similar.

Tips
http://romaniatourism.com
https://www.duolingo.com/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer,a author and speaker. See my other posts about
Romanian and other languages. Save useful posts and share links to your favourites.

What to bring back from Singapore, or take to Singapore

Bring Back From Singapore

Perforated Kitchen Paper Roll
In Singapore you can buy kitchen roll which has perforations making a strip half the size of the one you buy in the UK and elsewhere. Your half size sheet is handy for a quick small wipe without using a whole piece.

You can also tear off three strips, or rather one and a half size for a larger piece, for a heavier job, or to line a cutlery drawer, under-sink cupboard, bathroom cupboard or underwear drawer.

Plastic Bag
Supermarkets in the UK now charge 5p for small plastic bags, but small plastic bags are free in supermarkets in Singapore.

Sweep Hand Clocks

Rice Cookers - all sizes

Tiger Balm from Singapore to London - but you can buy it in London.

Durian cakes. (Durian is a fruit which tastes like a cross between banana and chestnut. On its own it has a strong pong, like Camembert. But mixed in with ice cream or cakes the flavour is delicious. Taking drain onto the Singapore trains is forbidden. You will see the signs with durian crossed out.

You can find durian in restaurants in London but it's rare and possibly seasonal.)

I used to take clothes from the UK to Singapore because I could not find anything in my size. The tricks are:
Buy two sizes larger than the label says,
stick to wrap around clothes,
 look for garments with seams you can unpick
go for velcro fastening in shoes and clothes
find clothes catering Indians or from Mustafas's department store in Little India or shops run by people with Indian or Western names.

****

Take To Singapore

Wines and Spirits
Rare or expensive wines and spirits and items on offer at Duty Free.

Chocolates
Speciality chocolates on offer.

Thick cut marmalade.


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, 

Cellar Gascon Wine Bar and Restaurant

Cellar Gasgon is part of a group of three restaurants.

This one is corridor style with seating along the windows and a bar on the other long side. Toilets are downstairs.

I am not a fan of bar stools, but I preferred them to the window banquettes which sloped forward, were too short for my legs, and they looked shiny and I kept sliding off. Long legged male diners either perched on the edge or used their long legs to brace and anchor themselves. 

Tables were so close together I was in danger of sweeping the four to six glasses per setting onto the floor as I passed. It happened when I tried to go in, then when I tried to get out to the toilet. When I came back I did not want to stress myself and everybody else again.   I transferred to the bar stool type chair.

We parked our coats, bags and rucksacks on the narrow window ledge behind.  A few seats of the same design as the bar stools but low enough for you to put your feet on the ground are at the far end and by the entrance door. I must remember to request one of these tables, although I think these tables are for four.

The set menu was four courses and four glasses of wine for about £40 per person. Many central London restaurants offer set lunches of two or three courses with a glass of wine for about £20. But £40 for dinner, four courses, including wine, is good value. This is especially good value for a speciality gourmet restaurant in central London.

Small pieces of brown bread were elegantly served on small squares of slate. The butter was served in the centre of another straight sided piece of slate. A change from curves, though I prefer cured crockery, I suppose square and oblong is easier to stack on a straight sided shelf.

I've looked into buying slate for home. I've check in supermarkets such as Waitrose. It's not cheap. 

The slate pieces are dark, so you can't see if they are clean, but also rough if you want to run your fingers over to check. The small ones look mean, but the large ones are heavy to carry. Slate is fine, amusing as a change and a treat - in a restaurant.

The starter was squid. I'm allergic to shellfish. I am OK with eel. We debated whether squid was a risk. I decided against it. There was no alternative menu, no choice. I ate around the squid.

The second course was the high point of the four dishes. Foie gras. Like many people, I have been influenced by the campaign against it. I think I've had it before and not been impressed that it was worth either the extra expense or the possible suffering of the animal, or bird. However, I do like chicken liver and this was grilled on the outside, like a soft chicken liver, with the most delightful extra flavours in the sauce. 

The sauce was so nice that I broke off bits of brown bread to scrape the last tasty morsels off the plate. British diners don't wipe their plates with bread. But the French do. Gascon is an area of France. (The Gascons or Basques are also in Spain. Not in the capital city. More rural, practical.) I sneaked a peek. Nobody was watching me disapprovingly. In fact, everybody else was doing the same.

The main course was lamb casserole with beans and barley. Lamb a bit gristly and fatty, but all in all very good.

Here's dessert, pineapple with ice cream and a few specks of crumble. 

After four glasses of wine and delicious food I had forgotten my initial problems with the seats and seating close to others. Tables so near others enable you to chat more easily to couples either side. Would we go back? Definitely.

www.cellargascon.com

More pictures and story tomorrow.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Castle rebuilt and opened - New winery visit in Rioja, Spain

When I visited Rioja, Spain, I spent a week visiting wineries, starting with Lopez de Heredia, then La Rioja Alta and several others. We were unable to visit one of the wineries because it was being renovated. The good news is, now it's open again, after a grand rebuilding programme, restoring the castle, stone by stone.

Hurry!
Because the castle has been closed for over a year - is it more like three? - the tours are now booked up for the next three months. So, if you would like to visit the Rioja region of Northern Spain, either you must rush now to make a booking, or wait a long while until the backlog clears.

I met Pablo Gonzalez-Calvo of the Export Department who was visiting his buyers. The biggest surprise was that the grand r e s e r v a wines are not from the years specified by the region's wine governing body and imposed on the vineyard. The vineyard owners decide for themselves which is the best year for their crop, which year they will hold back or reserve the best wine to be aged in barrel and bottle, matured, mixed with other wines to get the perfect balance of flavour, aroma, and of course sold at a higher price because it is better wine, from the best year, and keeping it stored costs money and delay on profit from the investment. Pablo proudly says, "We decide!"

(Yes, I had to separate the letters of r e s e r v a because the English spell checker wants to turn the word to reserve. The r e s e r v a wines are of curse, reserved. Spanish is a lovely, easy, user-friendly language to learn. Just add or remove the a or o on a word and you can translate.)

What do you learn on a vineyard tour. On your first, second or third tour in your life, if you don't already know, you will learn that criantha is the basic or table wine and r e s e r v a is reserved and a grand reserved is even grander or more special. Each time you take a tour, one more fact goes into your brain and your understanding or wine making and wine labels increases, making buying a wine or choosing it in a restaurant has a greater chance of giving you what you enjoy and value for money. You can also spot a bargain, and, whether you like it or not, you will appreciate tasting or even just seeing something special or unusual.

At a tasting, you discover what you enjoy more. Either it is worthwhile, depending on your budget, to have the better wines whenever you can, or on special occasions, or when one is given away for free at a tasting. Alternatively you may decide some or all of the more expensive wines are not worth the money, so no need to hanker after them. You can then be confident that the cheaper wines are better value and quite good enough for you.

Eton Vintners
 I was invited to a tasting of his wines at a shop called Eton Vintners which is just around the corner from Windsor castle which we passed on the way home. (Windsor and Eton are adjacent. The bridge over the river Thames connects them. Windsor, famous for the castle where flags show if the royal family is resident, and Eton famous for the school.) If you are in England and plan to visit the area of Windsor, get on the Eton Vintners mailing list and go to one of the tastings. They have a discount scheme for regular buyers.

He had brought along several bottles for us to taste and told us all about each wine. We had some bread and cheese and a rather gristly salami to go with it. I and my teeth and tongue all preferred the bread and cheese.

The Marques de Murrieta Website
The website can be read in English, or Spanish. It has sections on the history, visits and buying wine.
I loved their description of the founder. I particularly liked the later quotation:

“To invite a person into your house is to take charge of his happiness as long as he is under your roof”.

Brillat-Savarin, French gastronome

A few translations:
Calvo - Spanish surname from the Middle Ages, originally meaning bald.
Crianza - basic or table wine which can be drunk young (pronounced criantha)
Gonzalez - Spanish surname meaning son of Gonzalo. Second most common surname in Spain after Garcia.
Marqués - Spanish for Marquis (not to be confused with the French word marque which means brand)
Pablo - Paul
r e s e r v a - reserve or reserved for ageing in the barrel and later longer in the bottle

More information on the wines and this new opportunity to taste and buy at the castle where you can do a tour from:
Marques de Murrieta
Estates and Wines
marquesdemurrieta.com
pazolbarrantes.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Wine Society - Spiral Staircase Wine Cellar to see

If you join the Wine Society, which costs £40 a year, you get invited to wine tastings, some free, some for a fee. You get their newsletter. You can try wines in their Enomatic machines (often half a dozen free, the rest at assorted prices). You are invited to events which include talks and tastings and sometimes snacks or meals (various fees). And if you are a member and visit you can see the newly installed wine cellar, which you could buy to store a wine collection under a home, hotel or business, for a few thousand pounds. 

This is what it looks like with one of the glass display covers lifted so that you can descend to see the wines. 

I asked, 'What if you got stuck inside?' A button inside at the top releases the cover which lifts automatically. The wines are temperature controlled. And there's a free flow of air so you can breathe with the doors shut. 

I suppose you could hide down there. Or cover you lid with a rug to hide the wines.

If you don't want to buy one, it's an amusing feature to see.

To visit the wine society, you must join or be taken by a member. But it's really only £20 because your membership fee of £40 gives you £20 off your first purchase of wine.

The Wine Society, Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage, Herts SG1 2BT.

Tel: 01438 741177.

https://www.thewinesociety.com

Opening times are 10-6 Mon-Wed and Friday, Thurs an hour later, 10-7, Sat 9.30-5.30 (closed on Sunday).

The Wine Society is in Stevenage. Whilst in the area, you could visit Stevenage Museum, which is free, or Hatfield House or Knebworth House. For a description of the Stevenage Museum, beside the spiral staircase church tower, see the previous post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker.