[PRCo] mon freight incline... on video

[Fred Schneider]

Had not realized Ed answered me two different ways … to the list and personally.   Second, and more detailed answer, to the list.  

Yes, very early color film … a special hand-colored kind.   Notice that the tree leaves in front of St. Paul's Cathedral are a mix of green and black.   The photo shopped kind of color film.   But they are fantastic early pictures showing Pittsburgh a century ago.   

Wish I spoke Dutch (Nederlandish?) or whatever you call it.   It would be nice to read the captions. 

The language spoken in Holland reminds me of a cross between English and German which no German could ever speak.   Back in my college days when I was forced to take German (one of three times I've labored to learn some of it and have forgotten it), one of the lessons was created to show how dialects evolve.   We were asked to translate a piece of a spoken dialect in the North Frishischen Islands in the North Sea, which was a very distinct cross between German and English … more so than the Holland Captions.  

When I said that no German could ever pronounce, it was either Frits van Dam or his wife Renike who explained to us how a person from Holland would find out, during the Nazi period if the person infiltrating their neighborhood was Dutch or Deutsch (German).   You tricked them into pronouncing a certain town name ….  a coastal town north of the den Haag (the Hague) spelled Scheveningen.   No German can possibly pronounce it.   Neither can I but it is something like HLE (cough)VEN-ING-IN-EN.   

Over the years I have become astonished at how we can travel from Maine to California on one language but a German from the Saar cannot understand a German from Hamburg or Munich unless they revert to Hochdeutsch (High German) and a chap from London speaking Cockney will never comprehend a bloke from Glasgow speaking Glaswegian English.    Maybe it has to do with how fast we populated the nation and how we all were entertained by radio, television and movies.   

Oh, sure, you drink pop in Pittsburgh and it might be soda or soda pop or a soft drink somewhere else but those differences are trivial compared to how languages can become completely different in other parts of the world and stay that way for centuries. 

Frits had his own comment about our English.   We once conversed about how many languages he spoke.   He said he was only fluent in English and Dutch but he got by in German and French.  When I probed more deeply, I found that what he meant was English and Dutch were equals … almost like two tongues you learn from birth.   German and French … our idea of getting by might mean asking for dinner, a room for the night or a rest room.  His idea of getting by was sitting in a restaurant and holding a conversation or writing a university essay..   He also "got by" in several Scandanavian tongues.  I remember the time he wrote saying he was reading a book in Swedish.     But he said we didn't need to apologize because "You can go 3,000 miles on your language, I can go only 50 miles on mine."     Amazing when we think about it.      


On Jun 23, 2015, at 9:59 PM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

> Very nice.  Presumably some early German color film?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pittsburgh-railways
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounces at mailman.dementix.org] On Behalf Of Fred
> Schneider via Pittsburgh-railways
> Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 8:51 PM
> To: Daria Brashear; Western PA Trolley discussion
> Subject: Re: [PRCo] mon freight incline... on video
> 
> Very good Ms Brashear.   Thanks for posting.
> 
> 
> 
> On Jun 22, 2015, at 11:35 PM, Daria Brashear via Pittsburgh-railways wrote:
> 
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCzIQ91y_1U
>> 
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