And now for something completely different...

[drago]

This thread has developed to a clan forum called the english corner. Sooner or later it will be moved there but you are welcome to visit us there any time you want. You might like to start with our OT Thread


No no no... this is not a Monty-Python-Thread (though it may become one).

It is rather a very normal OT thread except for one thing: everything here is in english.

"Why this stupid idea?" some of you might ask. Now... the story started some weeks ago in the CPP Forum (criticism, plaudit and proposal = KLA in german) when someone made a proposal for an english or even multilingual subforum. But with regards to time end effort especially on the side of the staff this idea got more or less forgotten.

So this is my attempt to find friends of the english language or maybe just people who like to try their best to talk in foreign tongues. The goal of this thread is not to teach anyone the language or to blame somebody for his stupid style. It is rather a test if there are enough people interested in english small talk, LOD strategy discussions or anything else discussed in this forum.

So just join me and have a little conversation with me. As for my own knowledge: I had english in the "Abitur", reading mainly Shakespeare and other very uncool literature. Typically I wasn't able to talk to some normal person, but I could ask a victorian woman to marry me ("Wouldst thou spend thy life with mine?"). Very stupid.

After school I used the language in my job, talking to customers, other software designers like me and few people more. I got pretty good at it, but for some years now I lost my sense for the language simply because of the absence of usage. I forgot half of my vocabulary and even a small talk (like starting this thread) is hard to do nowadays.

So this thread is for me to get used to the language like it was years ago. For you it may be some other reason. Maybe you are at school and want to test your own knowledge. Maybe you are afraid to do so in the "real life". Maybe you even are a native speaker and this is your chance to finally ask questions about the game in your own language. Or maybe you are just happy to read and write some simple sentences for your amusement. Of course you even may post about Monthy Python

So whatever your reason is for posting in this thread, you are welcome as long as you follow
three simple rules

1. Everything should be in english. The only Exception: If somebody doesn't understand something, you may ask or explain this in german (or any other language of course).
2. No Spam here. Don't fill this thread with sheer "good morning" or smiley posts.
3. No insulting or joking about the other guy who posted nonsense because of his bad english. Everyone of us may learn something here and train his "tongue".

With these rules followed I look forward to interesting discussions, nice atmosphere and a long life of this thread. And if it is very successful maybe we get our own subforum later along with other languages like french or spanish.

And by the way: this is my first thread in this subforum, so to the mods: be nice

So here is the first thing I'd like to ask you: Do you have the english version of the game installed and why?

 

[Popelmon]

had it in english once, was a nice experience, but i think it doesn't really matter if you play d2 in english or german.

in games like neverwinter nights is a bigger diference, you miss a lot of the story when you play a translated version.
same for most books/movies, especially adams hitchickers guide to the galaxy is a lot better if you read it in it's original language.

excuse my typos, i'm a bit high on coffeine right now :x

 

[drago]

Too much coffeine? Did you have a tripple espresso?

You are right with other games like NWN. I really enjoyed Minsk talking to his hamster in BG 2. I played both english and german versions and there was a clear difference.

Hitchhikers guide I must admit I did not understand completely in english. Some jokes probably passed by without me recognizing them.

 

[Popelmon]

i'm not sure i got them all either, but i think i got most of them. especially adam's puns are awesome. when i read it on german some years ago, i laughed ~2 times per page, when i read it on english, i didn't stop once.

recently, i read shakespeare's macbeth, it's one hell of a book, but hard to understand. sometimes i had trouble to follow goethe's thoughts in faust (german), but to read a book in english which is over 400 years old is something different.

how about movies? i almost stopped watching german movies/tv shows.
for example: gilmore girls. i started to watch it about a year ago on vox. some weeks ago i "bought" some seasons in english, and was surprised how much you miss in german. it has a good localization, but the english voices are just awesome, especially alexis bledel (rory) has one of the cutest voices i've ever hear.
i'm watching a lot of old (30-50's) movies at the moment, and i have to admit that these are hard to understand from time to time. yesterday i watched breakfast at tiffany's, i loved the movie, but the talk faster then i do (and i talk REALLY fast, everybody is complaining about it :/).

i'm high on coffeine because i thought it would be a shame to throw away the 1 liter i didn't drink in school

 

[drago]

i'm high on coffeine because i thought it would be a shame to throw away the 1 liter i didn't drink in school

*shudder*

I read Macbeth at school, too. The only thing I remember is the first scene with some witches. Everything else was gone right after I left school

I don't watch movies in english, because when I watch them for the first time I watch them with my wife who doesn't understand too much so we have to watch in german. Watching a movie just for the language is nothing for me so usually I don't. Monthy Python was an exception.


And now it is time for me to sleep, I have to stand up early in the morning. Have a good night.

 

[Popelmon]

i have school tomorrow :/
fourth graders get an introduction day, and our headmaster thought "hey, lets fill up the school with pupils". asshole.

btw, there is a good terry pratchet book based on macbeth, called macbest. don't know what it's about anymore, but i think it was good

 

[Sandstroem]

Hey, nice thread.

I must confess that I haven't played the English version of Diablo 2 yet. Wouldn't make much difference, since I haven't listened to all the dialogues for a long time.

Most of the lectures I attend at University are held in English, the same with the exercise groups, seminars and so on, after some time you get used to it. During the last winter term I did an apprenticeship in a big American IT company in Germany, and there I normally had to talk English, my tutor was French, I had to talk to Indian colleagues, to American colleagues and colleagues from Israel and normally the English you learn at school is even enough. Afer one week I even dreamed English. By the way is it called Israelian colleagues?

I don't think that it is much important to have a 100 percent perfect English, of course always trying to improve is the best to do. But being able to communicate with other people in english is almost enough in the most situations.

Since i have started my studies I also started to watch a lot of TV shoes. (what a surprise ).
At the beginning I watched them on the German television, but since some of them are not very popular in Germany (a lot of German people don't like never ending tv shows like Alias, 24, etc, they prefer shows like Cobra11 ) a lot of them are not shown in Germany anymore, so you have to watch the English original shows and I agree that they are always much better than the German ones. The more I watch the more I understand and it helped me to improve my English skills a lot.

At the end I have one question to drago. I just wondered whether someone in this forum would be interested in joining a Mafiagame , which is completely held in English. Interested?

 

[Blackness667]

Great idea to start an english thread to train your english on the one hand and just blab 'bout things on the other. ^^

I converted my D² to english just a few weeks ago. Mainly 'cause I wanted to see the cutscenes with the original dubbing. But I haven't found the Video-Files anywhere. In the end I borrowed a friends english CDs and copied the necessary files.
(In my opinion the cutscenes lose a lot of their atmosphere in the german dubbing. The german voice actors have done a great job, especially marius and tyrael, but the english original still sounds a lot better.)

I usually watch films in english and I own a lot of dvds which i have never seen in german. ^^
i also read english books and i don't feel any difference in my speed of reading.
If i read a text on a webpage or somewhere else you could ask me about half an hour later which language it was in and in 90% of the cases i wouldn't remember.

I hope to study Language and Communication in English and Español in Siegen in the next winter-semester and later (when I'm old... ) I want to translate movies and help making the localization as a job or become a translater for english, spanish and japanese literature.

That brings me to a new question:
Do you speak any other foreign languages?
I speak german (duh...), english (as if you hadn't figured THAT out yet), some spanish, a little bit french and an itsy-bitsy tiny bit japanese.



I hope this thread stays friendly (and open) even though we're in the Off-Topic Forum. *doubting it*

 

[Sandstroem]

I had French and Latin at school, but speaking is something different.

By the way, translating or synchronizing movies is a big business in Germany. Skandinavian countries e.g. watch the original movies which sometimes have subtitles.

 

[destrution]

nice to have something like that here...
if I wanted to write English bevor, I had no joice but to go to the Phrozenkeep

Well, my D2 is German, but if I want to do some business in modding its much better to have the English Version. Its just much more comfortable to make the tbl entries and you don't have to pay attention of the ä, ö and ü which are some kind of strange signs in there^^

although my written english is usually not that bad (here I don't pay attention to mistakes, so don't wonder if I write completely crap here ) my oral english is a kind of disaster...
So I don't watch English television because I don't understand the half of the whole thing^^

I have to make 2 oral marks this year in English: one 3 Minute by telling something about some current news (political and/or business related) and one 3 Minute talking about some concidental topic without any preparation. There you have a choice from about 30 topics where you have to draw one which will be yours. I have to say that it's really the greatest shit, if you draw something like politics or fasion -.-. Well fortunatly while doing this practise last your I had some better topic^^.

I don't speak other foreign languages. I had french for one year, but I had some health problems in that year and together with my mind which got weaker and weaker through that I came to another school, where I could choice whether to take french or book keeping...
Well, now that is my best subject at school together with maths

 

[Popelmon]

uhh, don't remember me of oral marks.
i attended the CAE (Cambridge advanced english) test earlier this year, and 1/3 of the test was oral. problem is, there was a fatal party at the evening before.
so i got there totaly wasted, can't remember much of it, but apparently it wasn't that bad, i passed the test

so, now i habe to go to school. hooray.
:/

€dith: www.bash.org i loves this site, it's so incredibly funny, just read the top 100.

 

[Raudorn]

*waves at everyone*

Hi folks.

I installed the german D2, but later on decided to get the english text and sound files. It makes a huge difference, whether you listen to the original voices or the (in this case mostly well done) translations. I especially like the english assassin voice and particularly dislike the german one.

I've not many movies in my DVD collection, but i watch new movies the first time in german and every time again in english or french. In french at school we once watched "L'auberge Espagnole" and if it had been completely translated, we would have missed a lot of jokes.

By the way, i have also a question: Is the "I" written in capital letters?

 

[drago]

Thanx for the Link, Popelmon, I will give it a chance later, right now I'm too busy.

Nice to see that some more people found this thread. Of course it was not because of me giving a little hint here and there

Do you speak any other foreign languages?

Well I had english for 9 years at school and as I said in the start post we mainly read hard literature. As I had literature as its own subject too I finally had three literature courses altogether: literature itself, english and german and in each of them we did some kind of text interpretations.

The only enlightenment was the english extension course where we read "MAD" comics with a native english teacher. That was a lot more funny.

I also had french for five years at school but I canceled that because I hated the teacher. Bad luck that I got the same teacher in my main english course later
Today I only know few words in french but surprisingly I am able to read simple texts.

Half a year of latin I had but it was too much to learn with three languages simultaneously. So I dropped that soon.

I know a little bit of a language you cannot write: As one of my nieces is deaf I had to learn a good portion of sign language but only enough to communicate with my niece. Sometimes I try to watch the news on WDR3 with a sign language translator in one corner but I don't understand much there without listening to the announcer.

By the way, i have also a question: Is the "I" written in capital letters?

I learned so at school but that was 20 years ago so I wouldn't bet on it. But in most texts you find it is written that way except for the people who write everything in lower case on the internet.


I just remember some kind of tv program I used to watch in english: pro wrestling.

 

[Schwarzer Engel]

Gosh, what a cool idea!

And yes, Raudorn, the ,I' is always written in capital letters.

What me belongs, I had english as oral exam, reporting over Short Stories.
Therefore I really admired Stories written by Edgard Allen Poe, since he has such an irratic mind - absolutely marvelous!

 

[Bedard]

First of all: Shakespeare isn't uncool! (<- english smilie btw.)

Perhaps some of his plays, but definetly not all.

Then you propose to talk about Monty Python in your introduction and at the same time you want to prohibit spam. This is obviously an oxymoron .

To answer your question: My D2 is in german. Simply because I don't want to change anything. Never touch a running system .

 

[drago]

black_angel

your name sounds more impressing in english, doesn't it?

/Edit: oh, Hi Bedard

First of all: Shakespeare isn't uncool! (<- english smilie btw.)

Perhaps some of his plays, but definetly not all.

Then you propose to talk about Monty Python in your introduction and at the same time you want to prohibit spam. This is obviously an oxymoron .

To answer your question: My D2 is in german. Simply because I don't want to change anything. Never touch a running system .

- Shakespeare is ok... just reading it at school is uncool
- Monthy Python vs. spam... you are right of course.

 

[Danalin0]

Good morning everybody (:
The first thing I want to say, is that my english is not the best and I hope that you will forgive me my mistakes.
But the idea of a english thread is very good! It might be a help for people like me who wasn't pretty good in english at school, or others like the thread starter who just wants to renew their vocabulary and talk to other people in english.

So hm ... ah yes you asked wether we play(ed) the english or german version of Diablo2 and why. The first time I installed the game it was surely in german, but after years I installed it in english. But I had no problem with it because I know most of the item names or monster names or something from the german version.
At the moment I'm trying to play world of warcraft in english. There are very very much foreign words but it is a good practise, like this thread (:

 

[Sandstroem]

Good morning everybody.

Next question I'd like to ask. Who has ever been to England? I have been there there 6 or 7 times and I like it a lot, the reason might also be that I am half-English since my mother comes from England.

When I was young she always wanted to talk to me in english, but unfortunately I refused and so I had to learn it at school like everyone else. But I know some people which have grown up "double-languaged", and they were always not the best at school in the English lessons.

 

[Zar von Bar2]

First of all: Shakespeare isn't uncool! (<- english smilie btw.)

Perhaps some of his plays, but definetly not all.

Well Shakespear may have been a cool guy but his play Macbeth definitely sucks.
Or at least it was a pain for me to read.

 

[ShooterInc.]

Well, it is nice to have a englishthread. Although i did not play D2 anymore, i have played it in english. And only in english.

Who has ever been to England?

Not yet, but our class want to travel to England, to be precisely, London. That will be fun.

Our class will read a Shakespeare novel. I think it will be Macbeth. Maybe we will go to a theatre to see Macbeth on the stage. But first, we will see "True West" in the theatre.