Frohes Neues Jahr!

Sunset at Chez Sarge
The 2nd of January
2013

Well, here I am, a day late and no doubt a dollar short. But all the same, Happy New Year to all of you out there, especially to my faithful readers. You know who you are. (If you're not sure of who you are, let me put it this way, if you are reading these words, YOU are one of my faithful readers. Whether it be your first trip here or one of many, if you're reading what I wrote, I sincerely appreciate it.)

Obviously (or perhaps not) the title is German and would be the kind of thing one says in Germany on New Year's Day. And that's the only hint you'll be getting from Yours Truly.

How's that particular phrase flow in other languages? Mind you I'm limiting this to human-spoken languages only. I am a computer guy and know multiple computer languages, ALL of which are boring beyond belief. Besides which, computers have no soul, so who cares whether or not they wish you a Happy New Year?

Here we go:

Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!  Dutch

Godt nytår! Danish

Gott nytt år! Norwegian

Gott nytt år! Swedish

Bonne année French

Feliz Año Nuevo Spanish

Feliz Ano Novo Portuguese

새해 복 많이 받으세요 (Saehae bog manh-i bad-euseyo) Korean

新年おめでとう (Shin'nen'omedetō) Japanese

祝您新年快乐 (Zhù nín xīnnián kuàilè) Chinese (simplified)

С Новым годом (S Novym godom) Russian

Note the similarities between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish! A friend of mine in NATO who spoke Swedish (and Dutch, and English and prolly a couple of others as well) told me that spoken Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are very similar. The written languages have some differences (as you can see).

Also note how similar Spanish and Portuguese are, a Portuguese buddy of mine assures me that they are very similar. Though he describes Portuguese as badly-pronounced Spanish, I'm sure other people of the Portuguese persuasion may differ with that assessment.

If you're up to it you can plug all of those phrases into Google Translate and if you hit the little speaker icon, Google will pronounce them for you. (Type in the English, select the target language and then hit the speaker icon.) Note that the Asian versions were typed in as "Best Wishes for a Happy New Year". Typing in "Happy New Year" just gets you the English phrase spelled phonetically in the Asian language selected. Trust me, I know these things.

All right, now that I've bored you completely to tears (forgot all about the ee-jits in Washington though didn't ya?) let's move on to something else.

Well, I was going to write about something else, but I was called down to assist with an iPad question the Missus had. It being a new year, I resolved to try and help. Bad mistake.

For you see, in 2012 I discovered that I had a passionate, perhaps unreasoning hatred of the iPad. I had resolved to never touch one again, ever. But the Missus had a question and I thought "How hard can this be?"

Well, not hard at all. Just frustrating as hell. So here I am, POed once again at the iPad. All possible trains of thought have gone astray, so I must end here. But a little pipe music to start the year perhaps?