Good topic! I can't get enough of it. By force!

In Korea, they put various kinds of mustard in all recipes, including breakfast cereal and seafood.

It's fortunate that I happen to enjoy strong, spicy, pungent food that would make even the French blanch.

I actually printed out your last two emails so I could make a proper reply- I'll be catching up on that later today.

Merry Holidays!! (do you get any winter holday?)

Will be looking forward to email. :)

Merry Holidays to you - no, we don't have any time off, but I did get a very nice bonus added to my salary this month, and the boss just announced that the company is taking us workers to Rome, Italy, for a 4-day weekend late March this year, all expenses paid - so I'm pretty pleased with my job right now. ;)

How grand. Be sure to take photos of the Sistine Chapel and the Empire State Building.

I wish I could go to Rome too.

I've been in Rome already, back in '97 or so, I think - and also to Napoli, Firenze, and saw the famous tower of Pisa exactly when it was at its "most leaningest". On a later trip, around '01, I've been around the Lago Grande (Great Lake) in the north, and a quick visit to Verona. Fantastic place, Italy. :) But particularly Rome - most of the best of architectural history all within walking distance.

On that first trip, I sprained my ankle on the second day, so they patched me up with some strong elastic cast in a hospital, absolutely no charge, and didn't even try to tell me not to walk. Gotta love'em. ;)

There is no night life in Rome, however. When asked what they do at night, the hostel owner said: "we go to sleep". And he wasn't kidding! :s

Although a "traveler" of sorts, I tend to actually stay where I travel and start thinking I can't go anywhere else.

I'm glad you already got a chance to experience the benefits of mysterious Italian culture.

I've a mind to take a holiday in Firenze for the sole purpose of informing locals

"Actually, your city is called Florence."

I wonder how well that would go over. Do you think people would still pinch me on the bum?

Two years ago, the company took us to Antalia, Turkey for one of these 4-day weekends. I got a nice chess board and set there... Gotta admit it's really not a bad place to work. ;)

<Jess> the best time to travel is when you're young, maximally healthy, and relatively free. Now, IOW. ;)

Not that you can't or shouldn't travel later, but it gets more complicated.

Although I'm reluctant to go anywhere except Canada for a while, because my Mom won't be around too much longer and I can only see her three weeks out of the year as it is.

I wonder why you can't take photos?

Would a "flash camera" damage the paint?

Do they still have "flash cameras"?

Or maybe they just want to restrict it so that people are forced to buy the official photo books.

Which Indians said "Uff" and what does it mean?

They claim it's the flash thing, indeed, but the commercial angle is definitely in there somewhere too. ;)

Hmm, I believe J.F. Cooper and Karl May (the former American, the latter German), both of whom where writing Indian (American Indian, that is) stories, claimed that "Uff" was used by said gents to signal they were done speaking on formal occasions. They may have been fake nevertheless. :p

Also, I read those books in Hungarian, so you never know just how faithful the translation was. :s

It may not get any better than that... except maybe the long, long history of persistent serial mistranslation of <The Bible>.

The Korean versions of the Gospels, for example, are so slipshod that many of my Christian students (and there are many) tell me the most comical things about Jesus and his pals. Many of them are convinced that Jesus married Mary Magdelene- a persistent belief that is a combination of two factors- Dan Brown's "DaVinci Code" and the Korean excision of every vaguely sexual reference of any kind from *their* gospel translation.

After I explain a bit about it, and the history of the translation, they are genuinely puzzled.

Them: "Chin-cha?" (Really?)
Me: "Neh" (yes)

Most Korean gospels are translated from the King James version-

As you may suppose, each new translation compounds old errors and creates new ones.

Get your story straight!

Yes, you might say that! ;)

<As you may suppose, each new translation compounds old errors and creates new ones.>

Heh... there's that joke about the old abbot who, warned about the possibility of typos slipping in when new scrolls were just copied from previous ones, went down to the archives to check the original scrolls, and was found hours later, sobbing, mumbling to himself 'the word was "celebrate"!'

I think everyone heard that one already? Probably everyone else, too. ;)

OK, time to catch some zzzz's here, I have to work "tomorrow". Well, I have to go to work, anyway. :p

You'll surely make a hit list or two. :)

(especially if you keep sending out spam...)

A guy could write a bible round that. Or a medium-sized Book of Mormon, with car chases.

When George Washington died, a group of American clergymen agitated to have his farewell address to the nation added to the Bible as an appendix.

But other Xtians got upset, heavily armed parsons began a civil war way too soon, and Nordamerica was handed back to its original owners, the ruminants.

Thank you! ;)

Seems that a genuine Norwegian phrase <uff da>, transposed in Minnesota English to become an expression of confusion, denoting Scandinavian ancestry. They seem to go together, there.

Meanwhile, separately, all these responders ask if it's the same as English 'ooph' (it isn't -- that's either toonspeak for 'ouch' or an old word for 'money' ... as in "There's oof oot in t'Oort Cloud". And other reactions. Not the Magyar(szy?), I think.

It's *possible* that the Hungarian Uff/Oof (as a generic cross-linguistic term of formal greeting by an 'Indian') is the same word given in English as 'how'...

If you think about it, a sort of coughing noise or throat-clearing phoneme would be appropriate, and transcend all those Ute-Aztecan linguistic barriers. And might be variously heard and rendered as 'how' or 'uff', depending on the phonetic sensitivity of the hearer/transcriber.

As for it being "Hungarian", I think I'm gonna have to check a Cooper book in English - I have one somewhere... - and see if it's still "uff" in the original as well. Also, May may have been German, but his usage of Indian languages (he used a little Apache, Navajo, and some others) seems to have been well-researched. So if an English version of a Cooper book agrees with the usage, I'll conclude that Hungarian really can't be held responsible for it. ;) Although these Wild West adventure stories are very popular there, and as such, surely "uff" has been taken up by kids sporadically, and most everybody would understand it (the way it's used in those books), it hasn't really entered the mainstream language.

<Uff da. The bewildered one, with Scandinavian relatives...>

And Mr Dylan, far as I know, doesn't use it in a song, despite roots among the Frozen Chosen.

Oh btw - you mentioned that term before (including source and context), I forgot to mention at the time how hilarious I found it. :D