| 22 MAR 2009 at 9:39am |
| Deleted User | The context in which he saw it? More or less) ?
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 1:01pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | That was my first question. We were driving back from a lovely afternoon at the beach today when a car overtook us with the rego plate of VALE. Naturally it prompted his memory and out popped the question so no, no context, no recent example just 'what does vale mean when a journalist writes it in the margin?'
I discounted the journalise and margin bits as not being restrictive and googled like mad. My OED was no help either. So, I'm stumped. I was hoping Terry might have an idea but then again Lady Kestrel is one helluva knowledable dame so ..... here's hoping.
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 1:27pm |
Lady KestrelGuild Master
Posts : 4036
Joined: 27 SEP 2004
Location: US, NJ
Status : Offline | Vale in Latin means farewell. Could it be used to show the end of a paragraph or section?
"Where is the fountain that throws up these flowers in a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy?"
-Rabindranath Tagore
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 1:28pm |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5536
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | There's of course vale in the sense of valley. An Australian place name? Possibly a last name of some sort, too.
I did come up with one reference to Vale from your corner of the world. A New Zealand cartoon with a character by that name:
http://www.answers.com/topic/bro-town
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 1:29pm |
| Deleted User | Although I was editor of a quarterly magazine in London for 3 or 4 years about 65 years ago I was not a journalist and never came acroos the word "vale" in that context as opposed to "This vale of tears" ! [smiley=embarassed.gif] [smiley=grin.gif]
http://www.dictionary.net/vale
http://www.answers.com/topic/vale-1
etc., etc.
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 1:35pm |
Lady KestrelGuild Master
Posts : 4036
Joined: 27 SEP 2004
Location: US, NJ
Status : Offline | I'm thinking it could just mean "The End."
"Where is the fountain that throws up these flowers in a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy?"
-Rabindranath Tagore
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 2:33pm |
| Deleted User | Yup, well, unless it's an abbreviation. That possibility opens up a whole world of possibilities.....
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 5:05pm |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5536
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By TheTraveler (22 MAR 2009 2:32pm)
Yup, well, unless it's an abbreviation. That possibility opens up a whole world of possibilities.....
Right, or an acronym of some sort. I found a few of those, but they were pretty obscure -- "Vacuum Atomic Layer Epitaxy", and
"Vernier Adaptive Line Enhancement", stuff like that.
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 5:53pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By Andromus (22 MAR 2009 5:04pm)
Originally Posted By TheTraveler (22 MAR 2009 2:32pm)
Yup, well, unless it's an abbreviation. That possibility opens up a whole world of possibilities.....
Right, or an acronym of some sort. I found a few of those, but they were pretty obscure -- "[highlight]Vacuum Atomic Layer Epitaxy", and
"Vernier Adaptive Line Enhancement",[/highlight] stuff like that.
[smiley=rofl.gif] [smiley=rofl.gif]
...oh. : *cough* Sorry. :-X Perhaps I wasn't supposed to find that... amusing
Ahem. Interesting. Very interesting. (If only I knew what those meant... :-X ) Well it's sounds like the kind of scientific term that Len will know the exact meaning of, actually. Anyway, they don't really sound like journalistic terms, do they?
In any case, I can clearly see that Andromus has taken the bait here, and he is viewing this whole "vale" thing as quite a challenge.
Well, I bet we will all laugh our heads off when we find out what it actually stood for.
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 6:10pm |
| Deleted User | Well it's sounds like the kind of scientific term that Len will know the exact meaning of, actually.
[size=14]Hardly [smiley=doh.gif] [smiley=hair_pull.gif] [smiley=angel_smiley.gif]
BTW While Googling this, I discovered something somewhere to do with a boy's first name --- "Vale" ??????
Could the guy just be meaning to refer somethings in the text to a colleague of that name ? [smiley=devil_smiley_grintail.gif]
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 6:11pm |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5536
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By TheTraveler (22 MAR 2009 2:32pm)
In any case, I can clearly see that Andromus has taken the bait here, and he is viewing this whole "vale" thing as quite a challenge.
Well, word meanings and web research are two of my favorite things to start with, and I can't stand leaving something like this unknown, either. A perfect storm of latent OCD tedencies, you might say.[smiley=laughing.gif]
Another possibility I dug up:
http://www.vale.com.au/
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 8:34pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 6693
Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
As you know, the Latin term "ave atque vale" or "ave et vale" means "hail and farewell".
Frankly, I've never seen the word "vale" used by an editor or a teacher to mark up or comment on text. I have however seen "val" used often as an abbreviation for "value" in numerous situations.
If for instance an editor sees a general reference to profit or quantity that lacks a specific value, he/she might jot down "val?" in the margin in telling the writer to be more specific.
Otherwise, beats me what "vale" would mean other than farewell, goodbye, the end, finis or simply a valley - unless it's a proper name, in which case the V would be capitalized.
Cheers, Terry
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 10:21pm |
| Deleted User | As you know, the Latin term "ave atque vale" or "ave et vale" means "hail and farewell".
Who knows ???
Not me --- and I was forced to learn 2 years of Latin against my will from the age of 11 (73 years ago) ----- and hated it !!
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 10:34pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
Originally Posted By LenG (22 MAR 2009 10:20pm)
As you know, the Latin term "ave atque vale" or "ave et vale" means "hail and farewell".
Who knows ???
Not me --- and I was forced to learn 2 years of Latin against my will from the age of 11 (73 years ago) ----- and hated it !!
The shortened phrase "ave et vale" seems to have proliferated quite a bit around the Internet in recent years Len. So just I thought most avid web users would be familiar with it - especially literary types like Caroline who are also currently studying to be writers.
Cheers, Terry
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| 22 MAR 2009 at 11:00pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Hubby has remembered where he has seen it. In the local Sunday paper there is a left-wing, forked-tongued critic who earns a living spewing out weekly criticism on all things Adelaidean. He has on occasion put the word 'vale' at the end of his What's good, what's bad list.
That's it folks. So I'm guessing that it's being used as a final farewell. I think I've seen it myself when someone is writing about someone who's just died.
All my own research only turned up the farewell meaning in the linguistic area. Many thanks for your comments. :-*
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 12:26am |
| Deleted User | Terry ------- I am not a linguist. I found it extremely hard to learn Hebrew --- and then teach Physics and occasionally Maths (Math to you Americans) in that back-to-front language (which, with reservations, is a very clever one!).
When I entered the somewhat posher secondary school at age 11, where my parents decided to send me, I was furious that in addition to French they taught Latin. All my friends went to an 'ordinary' damned good secondary grammar school where they taught French and German instead of Latin.
I was pretty terrible at ‘foreign’ languages, and hated them when I was a kid. But I thought that if I HAD to learn (up to a point) foreign languages, then at least they should be useful ones in later life.
The dead-language, Latin, might be OK to help give some background to English, but since I was going to go into the sciences I didn't see why I should suffer !?!
I didn't know then that in my mid twenties, when my brain was less malleable, I was going to learn a very much harder language than Latin --- completely different 'alphabet', from right to left, totally different grammar & syntax, masculines & feminines, no vowels, and so on ! [smiley=crazy.gif] [smiley=cry.gif]
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 12:37am |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
Wish I had studied Latin at an early age Len, instead of French and German. As things have turned out here in America, Spanish would also have been much more useful and someday soon, Chinese might be essential for a lot of us westerners. Heck, they already hold a mountain of U.S. paper and trade with them will only get bigger in the coming years.
Cheers, Terry
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 2:57am |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | My sister did French and Latin and I was deemed smart enough for the Latin class but was allowed to request the headmistress to let me do German instead. Then I added Spanish. Lovely language Spanish - so easy once you've got a little French. I did try Japanese in night school but couldn't master the connection between the sounds and the shapes - they ought to have the same alphabet as us. It'd be a lovely language then and a lot easier to learn..... [said very tongue in cheek...]
My sons have experienced Italian & French classes and 4 years of Chinese (which they hated) and then in high school it's back to French and German. They both prefer German.
I think the exercise of learning any language is valuable but when it's related to our own then it's doubly so. As for Chinese, Australia does more trade with China than any other country. Lucky for us they are learning English.
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 3:11am |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 6693
Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
Although I've never studied it formally, Italian seems to be quite easy for we westerners to learn. We already adore the cuisine and have adopted many common Italian words and phrases. The language is also used very expressively and (at least for me) it's easy to pronounce be it for proper names, places, foods, wines, musical works, etc. Most of the time for us, Italian is pronounced pretty much the way it's spelled (with a little extra verbal oomph and emotional gesticulation for effect).
Cheers, Terry
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 3:26am |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5536
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | I would have liked a chance to learn Latin, but my school never offered it beyond one semester, when it disappeared as quickly as it came.
I took some Spanish in high school. I never became very good at writing or speaking it, but it was still worth taking because of my interest in etymology. And of course it turned out to be useful in dealing with other Romance languages, too.
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 5:43am |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Ahhhh Andromous is talking dirty again.... etymology..... what nerdy person isn't fascinated by the origin of our words....?
See the writers of Enterprise upgraded Uhura into Hoshi and made her a linguistics expert. What a gal, what a brain that cookie had. I so enjoyed her mental acrobatics with alien semantics...
They put her in the show just for people like me. And then they even got her daks off so she'd appeal to the .... er .... visually stimulated among the audience. [chuckles]
But she was still one of the most brainiest characters ever written into the entire franchise.
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 6:39am |
| Deleted User | Although I've never studied it formally, Italian seems to be quite easy for we westerners to learn. We already adore the cuisine and have adopted many common Italian words and phrases. The language is also used very expressively and (at least for me) -----
I don't know how easy Italian is to learn Terry, never having studied it properly --- but it's a beautiful sounding language!
I don't know either how many Italian words have been absorbed into everyday English!
But I doubt that it is nearly as many as Hebrew words which are now "English" --- albeit mainly USA-English!
Actually, the words which are now 'kosher' (pure Hebrew) English have been absorbed from Yiddish which is a hybrid language made up of Ashkenazi Hebrew and some European languages... mainly German.
I would guess somewhere between a dozen & two dozen.
If you've played the game "Shivah" there is a small Yiddish/English dictionary there.
Yiddish is a fantastically expressive language which is now in the process of dying out now that f0or the 7 million Israelis (and some more) Hebrew is a living language. It was originally based upon biblical Hebrew which was used exclusively for prayer (like Latin) but is now as modern as any other spoken & written language --- and some !!
N.B. "Shivah" means "seven" --- i.e. the seven days of mourning which religious Jesws practice after the death of one of their very close family --- involving various prayers & special customs.
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 6:46am |
| Deleted User | I can empathise with all the Latin-haters. I have a fascinating love-hate relationship with it, and would love to know it without having to learn it. Latin was probably the main reason why I changed my BComm (Law) course, (I had originally wanted to specialise in Law) to a BComm (Accounting) course, and sadly I turned out to hate accounting. So boring for a creative person.
Ah well.
For the Law course, we had to have two other languages besides Latin, and I chose English and would have chosen French, but decided to do French later for non-degree purposes. (Which I still have to get around to).
I had chosen to do German at school, because my father had some German/Dutch ancestry on his paternal side, but I hated German. My pronunciation was pathetic, as I didn't like the way it sounded. Aber, was ist gut, jetz, ist Deutch hilfen mitt Deutche spiele, ja? (Hope no Germans around) Yep, I sometimes manage to figure out a little bit of what is cooking on those German boards, with games like Gothic and Drakensang.
So in the end I chose Dutch. Just to be able to actually pass my first year.
Dutch felt a lot easier, although my pronunciation there is also sadly lacking. However, I found it a much easier language to master gramatically, compared to the inimitiable Latin. Not that I mastered it at all, but I did manage to read a few books in it. Yeah. From start to finish.
*Buffs nails proudly*
I've always wanted to be able to read and speak French. Must reaally, reeeaaalllly make a plan now.
Then Italian. Greek would also be nice. Although a Greek person told me that sadly, modern and Classical Greek is quite far apart. Sad that.
*Daydream mode off*
Ah well.
Pity about the gaming addiction.
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| 23 MAR 2009 at 11:35am |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Traveler
The French govt supports establishments in several cities around the world (including Adelaide) where subsidised French language lessons are held for the general public. Look up Alliance Français in the phone book and see if you have one. I have attended evening classes there to keep up my conversational French. They also run French film seasons and French cultural events such as gourmet fairs, etc. All done to promote France and the French language. got to combat les Anglais somehow... )
It's not a difficult language but you do need to perfect the accent and if you had difficulties with German - which doesn't need an accent - you may not like French as much as you imagine. Still, I'd recommend you give it a go - as a fun activity.
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