Challenge: Produce a 4 word description of the cosmos? - Page 6

17th Angel · 08-28-2007, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dondi

See, all this talk of bible codes and koran numerology is all very interesting, but if one's motivation is to convert someone to their faith on that basis it is really off-base. Are we supposed to be amazed to the point where we just toss out our belief system and turn to the other because "God is proved numerically" in a particular text? Gosh, I've been following the wrong God because I didn't pay attention to the number 19.

It would be much more rather convincing to know in what ways your partucilar beliefs have radically changed your life for the better. How has it changed your relationship with your family? How has it changed relationship with other people you know? How has it changed your attitude to toward the things of God? You don't get that kind of "meat" out of trying to present to others from some clinical test of "proof" to win people to your faith. The proof is in the pudding.

This does win though Dondi... People love, mystery, conspiracy, crazy theories... and all that crap lol.... You will pull the punters in with this kinda stuff.... Majority of people are drawn to the unknown and mystical.

omner · 08-29-2007, 06:35 AM

Ok, I'm working on my "verse" (in English) a little more:

life born from nothing:
in inky darkness, light!
my miracle of creation:
a beautiful living egg.

time unfolds, eons pass,
until this present day.
history is the record:
and you're the recorder!

witness to the mystery,
now come to conclusion!
today awaken from life:
this dream we've shared.

in eternity, our garden:
the restive soul's home,
sing aloud this melody
written in your hearts!

omner · 08-29-2007, 07:03 AM

one more verse came to me while i was taking a bath

you came from paradise:
every soul's first home;
a world of possibility
through life to unfold.

Muslimwoman · 08-29-2007, 06:28 PM

Omner, if you can just translate that into Arabic, we might be getting somewhere.

omner · 08-29-2007, 06:54 PM

Muslimwoman,

Well that wasn't the challenge of the OP, though it seems to have been expanded to include being in Arabic back on the first page or 2. Sorry I'm really only fluent in English though I can read a lot of other languages, I can't write or speak them very well.

I love your picture BTW ... do they call that an avatar? OK, I see it is so... I put one up

Muslimwoman · 08-29-2007, 09:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by omner

Well that wasn't the challenge of the OP, though it seems to have been expanded to include being in Arabic back on the first page or 2. Sorry I'm really only fluent in English though I can read a lot of other languages, I can't write or speak them very well.

I love your picture BTW ... do they call that an avatar? OK, I see it is so... I put one up

Oh your avatar is fabulous, although the poor thing appears to have had a hair cut too far.

Sorry Omner, the original challenge is hundreds of years old but only works (or not) in Arabic, which is why I suggested part way through this thread that the challenge should be withdrawn by the person that made it. It has become a scholars game but you need a knowlede of the rythm of the Quran to try it.

That is a most unusual skill, normally people can speak another language but not read it. What languages can you read?

Salaam
MW

omner · 08-30-2007, 02:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

....
That is a most unusual skill, normally people can speak another language but not read it. What languages can you read?

Salaam
MW

Latin, Spanish, French, Italian pretty well -- I had the first three in grammar school because I went to a good school I guess. I kept studying Latin and Spanish for quite a while. A friend of mine claimed we shared a past life in France and after speaking with her for a while I found myself getting more fluent at an inexplicable rate so maybe she was right.

Portuguese with some difficulty, though it sounds like the other romance languages, the spellings seem a bit more difficult.

When I was in Ethiopia I was trying to pick up some Amharic -- learned the alphabet which is very complicated (over 200 characters) and could read a bit but it's been about 5 years and I've forgotten most of it. The locals frequently spoke some English and seemed thrilled that I was interested in learning their language. Once it became clear that I was a willing student they would sometimes gang up to teach me.

OK, I guess there are some that I can understand spoken but not written, which I forgot about until I thought about it just now:

On my visit to Germany I found I can understand spoken German, and had a lengthy conversation with one woman where I was speaking English and she German and we understood each other. At times I found myself forgetting she was speaking German. With German, many words sound just like English words but are written very differently. Dutch too is like that my neighbor was Dutch and when she got old (and either very senile or doped up on medications or both) would talk to me in Dutch "so that I will understand"

People in my family spoke Ukrainian and Greek so I picked up a little of that when I was a kid but can't read any.

I've watched hundreds if not thousands of hours of anime in Japanese and can understand a bit. I would think more by but I never got exposed to Japanese until after I was an adult so maybe it makes it harder to retain what I've learned.

bob x · 08-30-2007, 04:48 AM

I am semi-literate in a lot of languages, but have a terrible time with the spoken forms.

Muslimwoman · 08-31-2007, 10:24 PM

Wow Omner, you have a bit of a gift for languages then!!!

I have no gift for languages, English, German, some Latin (what is left from school days) and some Arabic and none of them very well. I have to think about them all and end up speaking a mixture of them all when I get tired. It is very entertaining, even though I make no sense to anyone but myself.

Take something like the term ma'lesh. It is spelt very differently but pronounced the same way in German and Arabic. German was my first language, so I am always saying it in inappropriate places during Arabic conversation. People do not realise it is also German, so just think I am a very slow learner and can't remember what it means.

Bob, what languages do you speak?

bob x · 09-01-2007, 05:16 AM

Decades ago when I was overseas I could speak German and French well enough to get by (I would not call myself fluent in either), and picked up a little Serbo-Croat when I spent a month in Yugoslavia. I can still read French and German, but doubt I could speak them anymore; I can puzzle out most Romance languages, and with a dictionary I can still get through Russian (sometimes I need to read mathematical text in Russian); I have studied Greek and Hebrew, would not consider myself an expert in either (I know the Biblical forms better than the modern); I was once better at Tibetan and Sanskrit than I am now; I tried Arabic but it defeated me (I cannot hear the consonantal distinctions, and cannot see the distinctions in the letters); I know a small smattering of Chinese characters.
What languages do I "speak"? English! In those others as I say I am just "semi-literate".