User talk:Cakeandicecream

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Cakeandicecream, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 09:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

License tagging for Image:TRDZ 1.jpg

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Changing attribution for an edit

Hi,

I saw your comment on my talk-page.

I'm sorry, but I don't have access to change attribution for an edit, and the service to do so is no longer provided: Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. :-/

For the future, though, you should know that it is possible to be logged in on multiple languages simultaneously. (I do know, though, that it's hard to remember to check whether you're logged in on every language you're editing.)

Ruakh 14:40, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

German future Tense

I don't know what your qualifications are, and they very well may exceed my own - I could be very much in the wrong. But I'm a junior in college who is a German major and future graduate student with seven continuous years of german study, and my father and grandfather both teach German at the high school and university levels, respectively. I've also studied abroad in Cologne for a semester. And I have never heard anyone even so much as mention that the future case contains any kind of expression of doubt. It's quite true that the simple present tense is often used to indicate future action, but, so far as I understand, that usage isn't strictly grammatically accurate, and falls under colloquial usage, no matter how widespread. Archaic English frequently does the same thing. However, according to everything I've ever been taught, Er wird morgen kommen = He will come tomorrow, a statement of fact. Er kommt morgen "sounds" better, but the two don't differ in meaning. And if I wanted to say, "the book will be good", (refering perhaps to an as-yet unpublished work, etc.) I would have to say "Das Buch wird gut sein." If I were to say "Das Buch ist gut", no one would possibly think that I'm referring to the future - basically because unless you've got some reference to a time in the future, the simple present only implies future based on context - it doesn't inherently imply future action, and needs modifiers to do so outside of specific contexts (morgen, übermorgen, etc.). So, that's my position. I'm still willing to concede the possibility that I may have been wrong to delete that excerpt, but I'd like to hear your explanations as to why.

Thanks for the quick response. Regarding my qualifications I'm a physicist, a registered translator and have been living and working in Germany continually for the last 40 years. My wife is a native German. Among others I taught English at the evening school here and computer sciences at Maryland University on their european campus. Linguistics is my hobby.

"according to everything I've ever been taught, Er wird morgen kommen = He will come tomorrow, a statement of fact." is absolutely correct but only because of the word "morgen". Leaving a definite time out (morgen) of a sentence in the future tense creates an uncertainty at once. I couldn't find a confirmation among my few American sources. But if you should have access to German references please consider "Gutes Deutsch in allen Lebenslagen" by Edith Hallwass, 1. Auflage 1967 Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf und Wien Page 162 ff. I'm not authorised to cite her here. If you should still have doubts send me an eMail at "pf2203@gmail.com and I'll be happy to refer you to as many other German sources as you would like.

If you're really working on a book I'd like to hear more about it especially if it has to do with German. Typical for the present tense used for a future event could be: Ich freue mich auf das kommende Buch.

Cakeandicecream 09:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dialect

Thanks for the Websters definition. I think that might reasonably provide a useful example in the "Dialect" or "language" section if you'd care to work it in. Differing of course is different from deviating, and the wording of that Websters definition is fairly carefully framed to encompass the concept of an isogloss without having to invoke the term in the definition.

Unfortunately, I remain utterly baffled by what you are trying to convey about Native American languages and English. Could you elucidate? Man vyi 12:49, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for your fast response and encouragement. Sorry for bafflying you.

Linguistics is just a hobby of mine. At first I want to understand definitions linguists give to the various terms they use. I understand their definition of a dialect as a language spoken within geographical boundaries meaning that all englishmen and all americans speak a dialect but a different one. This definition of Dialect agrees neither with the Websters nor the common definition. The Websters is known. As for the common understanding of the word, to tell an inhabitant of Oxford or Paris that he's speaking a dialect could well be considered an insult. Either I'm overlooking something, the linguists themselves have constructed their own dialect redefining words from ours or the definition is just crazy.

Cakeandicecream 10:13, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rand Health Insurance Experiment

Hi,

In RAND Health Insurance Experiment, what did you mean by "There were as many in the higher cost-sharing group needing care as not"?

As I recall, the study found higher copayment rates reduced spending because people did not seek care as frequently -- and it reduced spending for necessary care as well as unnecessary care.

We should probably continue this in the Rand Health Insurance Experiment Talk. Nbauman 08:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]