A GIFT FOR YULETIDE.......

Food and Drink that we enjoy from all the places in the world where we pursue our milsurp collecting hobby. Share a favorite recipe that others may try. Tell us about your favorite wine, beer or other spirit. Cigars too.

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Niner
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Re: A GIFT FOR YULETIDE.......

Post by Niner » Sun Dec 13, 2020 12:43 pm

I was raised Catholic and back in the day the mass was said in Latin. Then some decades back the mass was converted to the vernacular of whatever country it was said in. Wonder if Priests even take more than a short course now days. Back in the 50's and into the 60's the good Catholic might have a Sunday Missal with latin to English translations and all the various yearly Saints days noted. As I kid you knew all of the latin responses by heart and had a general idea of what the meaning was without a missal.

On the language in School theme I took two years of Spanish in high school my freshman and sophomore years. Then two years later when I had to have a language in college I had forgotten enough of the Spanish to make it six of one and half dozen of the other in picking so I took French for two years starting from scratch. I actually got where I could read a French book from the library without having to look up many words to make sense out of it. College was way more intensive and took the language thing more seriously....probably because language majors would end up having to teach in schools someplace. But.... just about anything I knew about French then I have forgotten now.

The only time I remember using French after college was in the Army. I was on a training exercise after coming back from Vietnam. I was put in a quickly assembled battery fire direction center group. Everybody in the handpicked group, including a couple of E7's had done such work in Vietnam. The idea was to conduct tests in efficiency against a new computer system they were developing. No actual firing was taking place. It was all about computation accuracy and speed differences. I had spent all my time in either the field or latter with the infantry clearing grids for fire....although I had gone through the FDC school, my fire direction computing skills had atrophied at best. So I was pretty useless when assigned so just stood back. Then the senior NCO's were handed foreign maps from which the data was going to be calculated as the bogus fire missions came in. One of them said in a panic.... "I don't know if this map is in meters or miles. We'll have to figure it out". I stepped forward and looking at the bottom edge of the map saw the words "Fait en mètres", or whatever the correct French, and told him not to panic as it was done in meters.
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