A Bit of French

Les Mots de la Semaine

"Le Pêcheur" - noun [$10] ê is pronounced as it 'pet'

Le pêcheur means the fisherman (male).

"Le Pécheur - noun [$10] é is pronounced 'ay' as in 'day'

Le pécheur mean the sinner [male]

La Phrase:  L'homme du bunker espère que Grand Al et Grand Jean sont les grands pêcheurs, et non les grands pécheurs.

Sentence:  Bunkerman hopes that Big Al and Big John are great fishermen, and not great sinners.

[Otherwise, he's a couple dinner meals short for the wilderness canoe trip next week. ]

Books

Reading books is one of only two ways to learn anything serious or important about the past or present world and human cultures. The other way is intensive travel. Travel plus reading books is optimal. I'll write about travel later, but I'm going to start a new "Book of the Week" feature for the blog today. Each book will be one that I've actually read or listened to on CD in its unabridged entirety.

Today I feature a fun and useful book: "The Secret Life of France" by Lucy Wadham. This book was just published. Here is the "Publisher's Description" from www.amazon.com - "In this candid and funny account of her escape from English boys and her love affair with a Frenchman, Lucy Wadham describes the mutual bafflement and fascination that characterised both their subsequent marriage and her unfolding relationship with France. Using her own personal experiences over 25 years, Lucy offers a rare, insider's view of a nation that may be deeply incompatible with ours but is also, she thinks, chronically misunderstood. In "The Secret Life of France", Lucy leads us on a journey through the French moral maze, and examines French attitudes to a range of subjects from marriage and adultery to work and race relations. By taking apart the cliches she helps us gain a better understanding of this nearest and most alien of neighbours, and suggests that on some matters we have much to learn from them. "

I concur. And two reviews in Financial Times concur as well - that's where I discovered it. The book was a very enjoyable read. I learned a lot about France and French culture. The author's perspective is British, but the American perspective is rather easy to extract as she makes British cultural comparisons explicit. France and the US have a mutual love-hate relationship going back 350 years to colonial times. Modern cliches really do France and the French a disservice. Reading this book helps one understand both much better.

By the way, since I read only about one book per 2-3 weeks as I spend lots of time learning languages and listening to lectures, many of my books covered here will be past reads. I have a 700 square foot library full of books, many that I've read.

Actions

I checked Krypto Fund over the weekend; it's doing very well. Some asset classes are probing re-allocation checkpoints, but not quite there. I'll wait.

Otherwise: Je ne fais rien ... Ich machte nichts ... Nic nie robię ... Estoy haciendo nada ... Non faccio nulla ... Nihil facio ... I am doing nothing.

Word of the Day

"Epigone" - noun [$10]; also "Epigonous" - adjective [$10] and "Epigonic" - adjective [$10]
Epigone means an imitiative follower especially an inferior imitation of a creative thinker or artist.
Sentence: For serious learning, the Internet is a mere epigone to books and travel. In a more complete sense, it's analogous to a visual, searchable card catalog that can help one find where to obtain reliable knowledge, but not actually obtain it directly.

TGIF

I just heard a Russian billionaire say he paid $200,000 to go to the Davos conference. Amazing.

Illinois governor impeached.

Bears attacked in force yesterday.

Obama attacks Wall Street bonuses.

Most of House "stimulus" bill is crap - aid to states to "replace" their spending is NOT stimulus.

I hope Senate fixes it. Pelosi is soooo bad - a partisan hack. Obama needs to show some leadership on it. he's only got one chance, or it becomes his mess (politically).

It's raining layoffs.

I started working on my French vocabulary at 4AM this morning and learned some "interesting" French terms. They have a very colorful language. I found them by looking up the term for "bolt" and following the chain of connected words. Hehe.

Word of the Day

"Diglot" - adjective & noun [$100]
Diglot means (adjective) bilingual; (noun) a bilingual book or edition. I suppose a bilingual person could be a "diglot", too.
Sentence: Will Bunkerman successfully become a diglot by learning French, or will he fail ? Time will tell. Perhaps if this blog became a diglot blog, it would help him. Thinking ... Maybe I'll try one sentence a day for awhile as a motivational force for learning.

Les Bourses replongent ce matin.

That's French for "the markets are plunging again this morning." To find practical current terms in French to describe the stock market actions, I turned to Le Monde at http://www.lemonde.fr/ because just simply translating American idioms might not have made sense. But I read this morning that French does use terms like "red" aka "rouge" and "green" aka "vert" to characterize gains and losses.

Did I mention that I am learning French ? I've been doing this from about six weeks now and have made fine progress.

Why ?

Simple, I need more culture and often good writers include some French phrases without translation. And the French language has innumerable works of great literature, unlike Spanish which has had little for four hundred years since Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. And one even comes across French in fine TV shows like the old "The Avengers" series with Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel. Last evening while watching some shows from that series [I bought the entire series on DVD], I understood the French that John Steed spoke.

And a bonus, research shows that learning a language helps one improve and retain memory skills as one ages. And I am aging. After 40 years of cramming science and finance into half of my brain, the verbal, literature and language side is "relatively" empty. After a session of French, I can actually feel that my head is "pumped" like a muscle after lifting weights. So this does work to "exercise" one's mind.

My guess is that since language skills were certainly a critical ability in the development and evolution of human beings from apes, to exercise and develop one's mind fully really requires learning languages.

Learning more words and usages in one's native language is one way to that. But I think learning a foreign language is another, complementary way.

By the way, English borrowed so many words from French that learning French vocabulary gets a huge boost. And so far, I think much of the grammar is a bit similar, too. I had learned some Latin and Russian in the past. To me, French is far easier and also far more rewarding.

PS: I see that web site for Le Figaro has helpful writing about stocks in French, too. See http://www.lefigaro.fr/

Markets

What will the ECB to today ? And the Bank of England ? Both central banks have base rates far too high for conditions. They need to cut rates in large steps.

PS: Bank of England cuts 150 bps from 3% to 1.5% ! Good move. Will "The Ostriche" awaken ?

PPS: I see the Sgeve Leisman on Babblevision reads this blog. He just said that there never was any inflation ... just a commodity bubble.

Actions

None. Two shippers (DRYS and EXM) posted fine earnings. Both benefit from having a majority of ships under long term contracts at good rates.

Word of the Day

"Argosy" - noun [$10] poetic
Argosy means a large merchant ship, originally especially one from Dubrovnik (aka Ragusa) or Venice.
Sentence: Every voyage of an argosy in world trade among nations requires financing the goods being transported for the duration of the voyage until delivery. This is a critical corner of credit that is having problems in recent weeks according to recent articles in FT and WSJ. Governments looking to help cure the credit crisis need to focus some resources and / or verbal suasion here.