UPDATE 25/09: Marius Zaliukas deal looks dead

[JTP 0]

Well, I marked the signings, I'll leave the age-calculator to you. Snatched it from our German board squad-list: replace "geb." with "born" and "Vertrag bis" with "contract till":

 

Goal:

Alan Smith (geb. 25.05.1993 ) – Vertrag bis 2014

Scott Gallacher (geb. 15.07.1989 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Cammy Bell (geb. 18.09.1986 ) – Vertrag bis 2017

 

Defence:

Emílson Cribari (geb. 06.03.1980 ) – Vertrag bis 2014

Luca Gasparotto (geb. 03.09.1995 ) – Vertrag bis 2014

Chris Hegarty (geb. 13.08.1992 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Ross Perry (geb. 07.02.1990 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Steven Smith (geb. 30.08.1985 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Ricky Foster (geb. 31.07.1985 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Bilel Mohsni (geb. 21.07.1987 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Kyle McAusland (geb. 19.01.1993 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Sebastien Faure (geb. 03.01.1991 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Lee Wallace (geb. 21.08.1987 ) – Vertrag bis 2017

 

Midfield

Andrew Mitchell (geb. 06.04.1992 ) – Vertrag bis 2014

Kyle Hutton (geb. 15.02.1991 ) – Vertrag bis 2014

Ian Black (geb. 14.03.1985 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Nicky Law (geb. 29.03.1988 ) – Vertrag bis 2016

Dean Shiels (geb. 01.02.1985 ) – Vertrag bis 2016

David Templeton (geb. 07.01.1989 ) – Vertrag bis 2016

Lewis Macleod (geb. 16.06.1994 ) – Vertrag bis 2017

Robbie Crawford (geb. 19.03.1993 ) – Vertrag bis 2017

Barrie McKay (geb. 31.12.1994 ) – Vertrag bis 2017

Arnold Peralta (geb. 29.03.1989 ) – Vertrag bis 2017

Fraser Aird (geb. 02.02.1995 ) – Vertrag bis 2018

 

Attack

Lee McCulloch (geb. 14.05.1978 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Andrew Little (geb. 03.05.1989 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Jon Daly (geb. 08.01.1983 ) – Vertrag bis 2015

Nicky Clark (geb. 03.06.1991 ) – Vertrag bis 2016

 

Bar Daly, we bought seasoned and not to old campaigners.

 

Oaft ................. I'm getting Old.

[Super Cooper 0]

All depends on your point of view. We have the old horses, Mohsni is 26, and the we have ...

 

Sebastien Faure 22 (*03.01.1991 ) – Contract till 2015

Kyle McAusland 20 (*19.01.1993 ) – Contract till 2015

Chris Hegarty 21 (* 13.08.1992 ) – Contract till 2015

Ross Perry 23 (* 07.02.1990 ) – Contract till 2015

Luca Gasparotto 18 (* 03.09.1995) – Contract till 2014

 

Essentially all vying for a CH slot and some are still eligible for the u20s / u21s. We can all argue about the qualities of some of these players, but the fact remains that they are all there and unless moved, in the way of people like Urquart. It is essentially the same as with Gallagher. These players will not develope their skills unless thrown into a competitive environment. We might have thus loaned Urquart and some others (and hopefully will), but this is not just about what the club wants. Urquart could well have been loaned and remained for three more years, only to see his place blocked by newly signed experienced veteran (25+) players ... like Rangers have done for decades. (And before people come up and say that is wrong ... that is the way all great British teams assemble their successful squads. You have to be a very special youth player to break that habit, whether that is considered wrong or not.)

Should we sign Zaliukas, it may spell the end for some of those actually blocking the path of our younger talent, i.e. Perry and Hegarty. Neither of the latter two convinced enough last season.

 

We could sell or free 4 of them and still not weaken our starting 11. Too many passengers.

[The Real PapaBear 0]

We could sell or free 4 of them and still not weaken our starting 11. Too many passengers.

 

aye, but it's about more than just the starting eleven. Ideally, for each position you want a first choice, a back up and a youngster learning the position.

[alexscottislegend 2,320]

All depends on your point of view. We have the old horses, Mohsni is 26, and the we have ...

 

Sebastien Faure 22 (*03.01.1991 ) – Contract till 2015

Kyle McAusland 20 (*19.01.1993 ) – Contract till 2015

Chris Hegarty 21 (* 13.08.1992 ) – Contract till 2015

Ross Perry 23 (* 07.02.1990 ) – Contract till 2015

Luca Gasparotto 18 (* 03.09.1995) – Contract till 2014

 

Essentially all vying for a CH slot and some are still eligible for the u20s / u21s. We can all argue about the qualities of some of these players, but the fact remains that they are all there and unless moved, in the way of people like Urquart. It is essentially the same as with Gallagher. These players will not develope their skills unless thrown into a competitive environment. We might have thus loaned Urquart and some others (and hopefully will), but this is not just about what the club wants. Urquart could well have been loaned and remained for three more years, only to see his place blocked by newly signed experienced veteran (25+) players ... like Rangers have done for decades. (And before people come up and say that is wrong ... that is the way all great British teams assemble their successful squads. You have to be a very special youth player to break that habit, whether that is considered wrong or not.)

Should we sign Zaliukas, it may spell the end for some of those actually blocking the path of our younger talent, i.e. Perry and Hegarty. Neither of the latter two convinced enough last season.

Agree re Perry and Hegarty. But my point was prompted by the fact that I thought Urquart was considered a special talent - like Charlie Telfer, who also seems to have sunk into some kind of obscurity.

[Blinkyman 0]

Agree re Perry and Hegarty. But my point was prompted by the fact that I thought Urquart was considered a special talent - like Charlie Telfer, who also seems to have sunk into some kind of obscurity.

 

FYI, Telfer made it to the bench in the East Fife game

[Super Cooper 0]

aye, but it's about more than just the starting eleven. Ideally, for each position you want a first choice, a back up and a youngster learning the position.

 

Of quality, those 3 or 4 are mediocre at best.

[der Berliner 3,744]

English is essentially a germanic language (from the tribe of the Angles who spoke Aengelisch which developed into English, with some French words thrown in.

The French words came from the Normans who were, of course, the masters of the germanic peoples of England.

 

For example, we have two words for cow/cow meat. The Norman masters didn't farm the animals, just ate the meat, so a cow (Kuh) which the Germans farmed becomes beef (bouef) which the French ate.

 

This is not unconnected and very cool: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f54_1337075813

 

English, as well as Dutch and German belong to the West Germanic language group. The North Germanic LG consists of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, while the East Germanic LG died with the last Krim Goths, it was the language of the Goths who toppled Rome.

 

Much of the English spoken these days within Britain south of Hadrian's Wall comes from West Saxon, i.e. the "Old English" dialect spoken by the Saxons who invaded Britain after the Romans went south. Northern Britain was the domain of the Angles, they spoke their own "Old English" tongue, not that different to the Saxon dialect, but not the same nonetheless. "Anglish" was dominant up to the Viking invasions, with the cultural centre of the Anglo-Saxon culture shifting north somewhat. The Vikings put an end to that, though the final nail was applied by Alfred the Great, who not only sent the Vikings packing, but also made his West Saxon dialect the dominat one for all his realm.

The north, i.e. Northumberland and Southern Scotland up to the Celtic Highland line and parts of Galloway (some British Celtic language enclaves) remained "Anglish dialect territory" though. Out of that arose "Scots", the language of John Barbour's "The Bruce" - first called "Inglis" (i.e. "the language of the Angles"), but once Scotland got its freedom: "Scottis". It is very similar (you may agree?) to the English dialects in Northern England (Yorkshire, Cumbria, Northumberland). Due to its closeness (same West Germanic roots) to the (Saxon) English spoken in England, and the latter's dominance in politics et al for more than 300 years (1707), much of the language spoken in modern day Scotland is essentially "English (= West Saxon) English with a Scottish accent", rather than full-blooded Scots.

So you got a number of languages spoken in Scotland, i.e. 1) "British English with a Scottish accent" (e.g. Tom Miller on RTV), 2) Scots , and 3) Scots Gaelic (BBC Alba talk). And obviously there are speakers who try to speak "English" without any accent. "Scots" would probably be what Bavarian or Saxon is to German nowadays. You understand them fully if you get a grip of the pronunciation and certain words/vocabulary.

 

As for pronunciation, the main difference between German and English is the vowel shift, which happened around Shakespeare's time, and the amount of French loan-words. The further north you get in Britain (i.e. into Anglish territory), the less obvious the differences in pronunciation become (i.e. "but" remains "but" like in (Terry) Butcher, not rhyming with Standard English "cut"). Likewise, Northern German dialects and Dutch are not too dissimilar to English when it comes to certain words.

 

And tomorrow's lecture will be about ...

[The Real PapaBear 0]

English, as well as Dutch and German belong to the West Germanic language group. The North Germanic LG consists of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, while the East Germanic LG died with the last Krim Goths, it was the language of the Goths who toppled Rome.

 

Much of the English spoken these days within Britain south of Hadrian's Wall comes from West Saxon, i.e. the "Old English" dialect spoken by the Saxons who invaded Britain after the Romans went south. Northern Britain was the domain of the Angles, they spoke their own "Old English" tongue, not that different to the Saxon dialect, but not the same nonetheless. "Anglish" was dominant up to the Viking invasions, with the cultural centre of the Anglo-Saxon culture shifting north somewhat. The Vikings put an end to that, though the final nail was applied by Alfred the Great, who not only sent the Vikings packing, but also made his West Saxon dialect the dominat one for all his realm.

The north, i.e. Northumberland and Southern Scotland up to the Celtic Highland line and parts of Galloway (some British Celtic language enclaves) remained "Anglish dialect territory" though. Out of that arose "Scots", the language of John Barbour's "The Bruce" - first called "Inglis" (i.e. "the language of the Angles"), but once Scotland got its freedom: "Scottis". It is very similar (you may agree?) to the English dialects in Northern England (Yorkshire, Cumbria, Northumberland). Due to its closeness (same West Germanic roots) to the (Saxon) English spoken in England, and the latter's dominance in politics et al for more than 300 years (1707), much of the language spoken in modern day Scotland is essentially "English (= West Saxon) English with a Scottish accent", rather than full-blooded Scots.

So you got a number of languages spoken in Scotland, i.e. 1) "British English with a Scottish accent" (e.g. Tom Miller on RTV), 2) Scots , and 3) Scots Gaelic (BBC Alba talk). And obviously there are speakers who try to speak "English" without any accent. "Scots" would probably be what Bavarian or Saxon is to German nowadays. You understand them fully if you get a grip of the pronunciation and certain words/vocabulary.

 

As for pronunciation, the main difference between German and English is the vowel shift, which happened around Shakespeare's time, and the amount of French loan-words. The further north you get in Britain (i.e. into Anglish territory), the less obvious the differences in pronunciation become (i.e. "but" remains "but" like in (Terry) Butcher, not rhyming with Standard English "cut"). Likewise, Northern German dialects and Dutch are not too dissimilar to English when it comes to certain words.

 

And tomorrow's lecture will be about ...

 

Ach, tell us something we don't know!

 

Seriously though, once you start looking into this stuff it becomes clear that the "European Project" is not a political agenda, but rather an acceptance of what has always been true and an attempt to codify it; i.e Europe is a family - and notions of British exceptionalism are just nonsensical. Whether the Ukippers like it or not, we are European and always have been.

 

And there is a cultural element that transcends even the language. I know a lot of north Germans and Dutch very well indeed and there is a certain 'something' that I haven't yet been able to articulate that connects us in ways that we are not connected with southern Germans, southern English or Scandanavians. It's hard to define, but "a socially responsible egalitarian morosness coupled with outstanding engineering ability and a tendency towards strong alcohol" is as close as I can get".

 

By the way, as long as we're on the subject: Your English?

It is freakishly good for a foreigner. Do you have a native speaker parent - or are you just a linguistic Rain Man?

[andy steel 0]

There's no doubt that Scots was heavily influenced by Northumbrian English, due to the coastal trading network which was used before the in-country land was cleared. Add to that the Flanders trade links, the remnants of Celtic/Gaelic which had been pushed eastward, and the heavy influence, as you say, of Norse which remains to this day in the rural north of Scotland, and you had a language (Scottis) which differed significantly from your English of the day.

 

As I understand it, it was the printing of the Bible in what became standard English which tipped the balance. People wished to speak in the sacred language of The Book, this tongue was adopted earliest by elites, gained status and has filtered down ever since.

 

Nevertheless, as the fiction of John Buchan will show you, even up to the early 20th century Scots contained a massively separate lexus from English. My own wee Grannie, Ayrshire born and bred, only died in 2008 and my goodness, some of her dialect was completely incomprehensible to me (only speak Weegie English). I regret the standardisation of English into estuary English; it seems so boring.

 

Further to the comments on another thread last week about impressions of the DDR, I did a little scouting around recent publications (@2000-present day) and the movement appears to be that initial depictions of a living nightmare were overdone, and that the DDR was more bewildering than totalitarian - there are a wide variety of descriptions given it now, to wit:

 

autalitarian: a mix of authoritarian and totalitarian

Stalinist: given the cult of personality around Honecker

Diktatur der liebe: A loving dictatorship

Erzeihungsdiktatur: Education dictatorship

 

This second wave of western scholarship on the DDR insists on so-called 'ego-documents' (diaries, personal interviews etc) to build up a deeper picture than one could get from only reading the Stasi files, I suppose. The tension seems to be between the aim of the DDR (emancipation) and its chosen method of achieving this (repression). Seems like a lot of justifying for nastiness, but there you are, that's how it stands at the moment.

 

info from: The GDR Remembered (editors Hodgin & Pearce); 20 Years On (editors Rechtien & Tate); The East German Dictatorship (Corey Ross); Dictatorship & Experience (Konrad Jarausch).

[der Berliner 3,744]

By the way, as long as we're on the subject: Your English?

It is freakishly good for a foreigner. Do you have a native speaker parent - or are you just a linguistic Rain Man?

 

Nope, "Ossi"* born and bred! Its "just" once you fell in love with Rangers (roundabout 1983ish) you have to start listening to English. 4 years English at school, studying "Anglistik" (i.e. English Studies) at university does help a bit, as does weekly if not daily checks on our scores, stories, games et al. Working as a freelance translator / editor is another bonus ...

 

NB: Zaliukas hasn't signed by now, has he?