A language learners’ forum

Re: your reading back posts of your log. One of many useful remarks you made concerns grammars and the need to make one's own. I have hundreds and hundreds of files on my computer devoted to one aspect or another of Ancient Greek grammar. Some of them are exact copies of something I found on line, others are notes I put together on my own. Many of them functioned as mere grammar exercises, but some of them I keep at my digital fingertips to consult when necessary.

I have made complete copies of a few grammatical sources from the internet, but sometimes also made shortened versions - for instance I have only copied part of the Gramadach na Gaeilge (probably the best online Irish grammar, but not designed to be downloaded in one fell swoop). Actually I'm right now not active student of Irish because I'm too busy with other things so it is just waiting for me, but a valuable source may disappear without warning from the internet so better download it while you can and store it in a safe place for later use. As for my own green sheets I have scanned a few for use in this forum, but I only use the handwritten versions on paper - and they aren't going to suddenly disappear from my world.

Apart from that: I have now reached page page 75, i.e. roughly halfway through the monster, and that's about the time where I went to Reykjavík to participate in the ....

IC: ... fjöltyngdu ráðstefnunni í í menningarhúsinu Hörpu í október 2017. Ég hafði ekki lagt fram fyrirlestrar tillögu og það var kannski nógu gott - það eru í mesta lagi tvær samsíða brautir, og stundum aðeins ein, og atburðurinn er styttri en í 'gatheringunum'. En ég eyddi tíma mínum á verðugan tilgang, nefnilega að virkja töluðu íslensku mína (sem síðan hefur þurrkað eitthvað inn - eins og íslenskur saltfiskur). Reykjavík hefur frábært fyrirkomulag: fjöldi verslana, veitingastaða og menningarstofnana hefur tekið að sér að bregðast við á íslensku ef einhver ávarpar þau á íslensku. Og ég gerði það skipulega - til dæmis í aðalbókasafninu, þar sem ég þurfti aðstoð við að finna gömlu eintökin af tímaritinu Lifandi Visindi. En Ísland var ekki ódýr áfangastaður .. venjuleg pizza kostar frá 20 € og upp. Og það kostaði líka eitthvað að að gista þar - sérstaklega þegar ég valdi hótel með útsýni yfir Hörpuna.


EN: It was also around 2016 that I first heard about the Yamnaya invasion which brought the Indoeuropean languages to Europe from around 2800 BC. I have since made three lectures about this subject alone in three different languages, which shows how important I find it. In spite of this I'm not going to write much more about the Yamnaya invasion today, but just mention that I during my perousal of my log found the lost link to a vehement attack on the competing Anatolian hypothesis, which basically states that they where brought along with agriculturers from Anatolia several thousand years earlier, and that the process took several thousand years. The genetical evidence which has appeared within the last five or so years gave that theory the final stroke of grace.

But there is also another historical discussion which stretched over several pages and several months: who brought the Germanic language family to Britain? And on a related note: did king Arthur actually exist?

LA: In pagina LXX mentionem feci de transmissione televisifice quod Arthurem quam rex parva regna Powys prope Walliam erat (de programma saepe iterum transmissum agitur). Antiquissimum nostrum fons, monachus Gildas, narrat quomodo 'tyrannus' Vortigernus Germanicum exercitum adhibit sed oblitus est eum pecuniam reddere, et tunc terram suam occupaverunt. Progressus germanicorum ut videtur substitit ad terminum Walliae hodiernae, sed Gildas nomen ducis exerciti loci non afferret. Programma suggerit nomen eius facte non Arthur esset, sed hoc derivationem verbi celtici pro 'urso' -omnia re quod de Arthure ceterum dicitur ficta et falsa est, de autoribus postea inventata ut lectores oblectaret.

EN: The English Wikipedia is extremely sceptical about the whole thing, and it is close to declaring that the venerable Bede and various chronicles have invented the Arthur character for fun, and that later authors like the notoriously lying Geoffroy of Monmouth basically took over the idea and added all the other salacious details about this fictive guy named Arthus. But Wikipedia is almost certainly wrong - there must have been a leader of the resistance against the invaders, otherwise Wales wouldn't be speaking Welsh today. I actually dug down into one of these other early sources, namely the Anglosaxon Chronicle which probably was launched during the reign of king Alfred, men using older sources that may or may not have reached back to the relevant time span. And I actually succeded infinding an online version in Anglosaxon and to my undiluted satisfaction I found that it wasn't too hard to read - even for an ignominous lazy dilettante like me. I should definitely have tried to write my comments to these chronicles in Anglosaxon, but shied away from doing so for a totally inadequate reason - I haven't studied the language.


In the thread I also comment on as varied subjects as the Edicarian biota from the early Cambrian and women who have four different cones in their eyes because the genes for cones apparently are located on the X chromosomes, of which women have two and men just one, and their two X's can in rare cases code for slightly different versions of a cone. The rest of us only have the usual three kinds of cones.

Normally I'm not amazed at the quality of TV programs, but yesterday evening I was nevertheless happy to watch 3sat for hours on end. OK, it helped to the decision that my internet connection went pouff around 19:30 and only returned late, maybe around midnight. But ...

GER: aber es war anscheinend der große Abend der Alpinen Gebirgsbahnen, und wir wurden durch die eine schöne schneebedeckte Winterlandschaft nach der andere gefüht, derunter einige total verrückte Unternehmen wie die Eisenbahn, die im Inneren eines Berges Namens Jungfrau fast bis zur Spitze fährt. Damit bin ich nie gefahren, und mit der Zahnradbahn, die so schief aufwärts fährt, daß die Mitarbeiter Getränke in speziellen Gläsern mit Kreisel servieren, die mit dem Aufstieg des Zuges kippen, auch nicht. Sogar deren Zahnrad ist etwas Besonderes: Es ist horizontal mit einer zusätzlichen Führungsschiene - wenn sich die Kerben in einer Reihe von Zähnen zwischen den Schienen verfangen, könnten sie auf den steilsten Strecken herausspringen, und dies wäre nicht praktisch, wenn man in einem Zug sitzt, der zum Bergsteigen neigt. Ich bin nicht mit diesen seltsamen Bahnen gefahren, aber kenne die alpine Züge von normaleren Exemplaren.

FR: En mars 2002, j'ai pris un train pour la Suisse, et là-bas j'ai abordé le train Montblanc de Martigny à Chamonix, où j'étais probablement la seule personne qui n'avait pas l'intention de skier. Mais je pouvais voir Montblanc depuis la fenêtre de mon hôtel, et jadis je fus même le fier propriétaire d'un stylo-plume appelé Montblanc - je l'ai utilisé pour écrire des notes de musique. Après Chamonix j'ai voyagé à la Côte d'Azur et retour au Danemark via l'Alsace. Beau voyage, mais après Chamonix il n'y avait pas beaucoup de neige - cependant pas mal de trains...


GER: Im folgenden Jahr, 2004, bin ich mit einer Fahrkarte in der flachen Nordschweiz herumgefahren - und dann fing es an zu schneien. Dann änderte ich sofort meine Pläne und bin nach Graubünden abgefahren. Einige der bekannten Alpenzüge mit 'Namen' akzeptierten meine Zugkarte nicht, aber der ganze Kanton wurde von kleinen roten Zügen der Rhätischen Bahn durchquert, in denen ich so viel fahren konnte, wie ich wollte - alles ohne extra zu bezahlen. Ich habe später Liechtenstein auf derselben Reise besucht und es schneite dort immer noch. Entschuldigung übrigens, daß ich dies nicht auf Ladinisch geschrieben habe - ich habe tatsächlich versucht, ein Ladinisches Wörterbuch in St. Moritz zu finden, aber vergebens - weder Putér noch Vallader wird dort gesprochen.


RU: Кстати, я изучал русский текст о мамонтах, пока смотрел телевизор. И в связи с предыдущими путешествиями: я видел мумии мамонтов во Петербурге и Москве, но сейчас сижу дома в Дании и никуда не могу.

After a few days with little activity I have now continued the perousal of this thread, where I reached page 90, where the main topic was Irish grammar. Right now I'm not working actively with this languages, not because I have lost interest in it or found it intractable (it is weird, but not intractable). The problem is that I have other occupations right now, and since things I learn in a Slavic language indirectly will benefit my study of the others, so investing an hour in a Slavic language reaps a higher profit than spending it in Irish. But "I will be back"...

Yesterday's streak started with a case of sheer terror: : I had opdated an anti-virus program in mid November 2017, and suddenly I had big problems acessing the internet. It turned out that the culprit was a function that checks all links that occur on a screen, and that can take a lot of time if you're looking at a Google Search or Wikipedia page with links. When I suspended that function my computer functioned again.

GER: Ich habe dabei ein kleines Listchen über die Namen der deutschen Zoo-Programme, die in der Regel so etwas wie Tier X, Tier Y und Co heißen:

Leipzig: Elefant, Tiger und Co.
Münster: Pinguin, Löwe und Co.
Berlin: Panda, Gorilla und Co.
Stuttgart: Eisbär, Affe & Co.
München: Nashorn,Zebra und Co.
Frankfurt / Opel: Giraffe, Erdmännchen & Co.
Lüneburger Heide: Wolf, Bär & Co.
Hagenbeck Hamburg: Leopard, Seebär & Co.
Bremerhafen / Jaderpark: Seehund, Puma & Co.
Loro Parque (Tenerife): Papageien, Palmen & Co.

Für diejenigen, die sich für die deutsche Sprache interessieren, sind diese Programme sehr relevant, da die Tierhalter nicht versuchen, besonders "schön" zu sprechen - sie sprechen wie zu Hause. Ich zitiere von meiner Reaktion zu einer Sendung aus Wilhelma in Stuttgart:

"Plötzlich waren alle n's am Ende der Worte stumm geworden. Zum Beispiel waren alle die Futter-Heuschrecken übernacht "Heuschrecke■" geworden, und 'geworden' war 'geworde■' geworde■. Und ja, jetzt zeige■ sie Tiere von Wilhelmina Tiergarte■ in Stuttgart statt Tiere aus Hellabrunn in Münche■ - aber ich habe beide Institutione■ besucht und sehe gleich gerne Sendunge■ aus Stuttgart wie die aus Münche■."

EN: There are a quite few similar cases where I had forgotten about a list or clarification of sorts, but that is to be expected with such a long thread. I'll just mention one other case, namely the comments to a TV series about into the history (and prehistory) of the Centenary war between England and France. The whole thing actually started when Aliénor d'Aquitaine divorced the boring king Louis VII of France and instead married Henri Plantagenet, who soon became Henry II of England - and this meant that the kings of England got a claim on the French throne which became extremely relevant when king Louis X 'le Hutin' died in 1316 and only left a pregnant queen, whose bimbo died after 5 days, thereby becoming known as Jean I 'le Posthume'. The following subsequent history is replete with weird characters and implausible events, but I can't go into details here.

AF: My goeienag-lesing is tans 'n eksemplaar van die tydskrif Weg! vanaf 2007. As u in Suid-Afrika is, sien u nie veel van die miskien 7 miljoen Afrikaans-sprekendes nie, en die meeste boeke en tydskrifte daar onder is in't Engels. Maar juis binne die onderwerp van wildernis en ekspedisies is dit moontlik om materiaal op Afrikaans te vind. Ek kon Afrikaans nie in 2007 lees nie, maar ek kan dit nou doen - selfs sonder 'n woordeboek (wat moeilik sê om te bestuur as jy op jou bed lê).

Yesterday I wrote that I had reached page 90, and I did mention that I was busy studying Irish grammar at the time (mid 2018). In the evening I reread some of the messages about that subject, and it surprised me how complicated matters I got involved into at the time - with benevolent assistance from other members, including Galaxyrocker and the late Josquin. I must say that I almost couldn't stop myself from plunging myself headlong into that stuff again, but right now it would be a bad idea - I'm busy with another (music related) project.

I also found out that I had inadvertently skipped some pages that turned out to be quite interesting: they covered the period where I really got into the topic of the Yamnaya invasion that quite possibly brought the Indoeuropean language family into Europe - and again other members contributed, not least Kraut. As you may remember it has been proven beyond doubt that a group of male warriors from the steppes North of the Black Sea around 2800 BC came to Europe and spread their Y-chromosomes with such an efficiency that even in the distant Ireland about two thirds of all men are direct descendants from these people.

On page 86-87 in the thread there are some supplementary details to the simple history. The Indoeuropean languages are divided into two major groups: Centum and Šatem languages (meaning 100 in Latin resp. Sanskrit). The Germanic and Italo/Celtic languages are centum, and so are the extinct Tocharian languages of Central Asia (albeit with some reservations). But the Balto-Slavic languages and the Indoeuropean languages from modern Iran to India are satem - how come?. Before writing these lines I consulted the English Wikipedia, which states that..

It is no longer thought that the Proto-Indo-European language split first into centum and satem branches from which all the centum and all the satem languages, respectively, would have derived. Such a division is made particularly unlikely by the discovery that while the satem group lies generally to the east and the centum group to the west, the most eastward of the known IE language branches, Tocharian, is centum.

Actually the logic here is debatable - it is more likely that there was a first East and West wawe representing the centum languages, and then later there could have been a satemization in the middle which sent satemized wawes towards Northwest and Southeast. One little curious detail in this picture is that Albanian is falling somewhat midway between the main schemes, and it has been hypothisized that the ancient Illyrians actually got their version of Proto-Indoeuropean via Anatolia (which to some extent would revive a whisper from the otherwise outdated Anatolian hypothesis) - but this question is still under scrutiny. Anyway: I did two lectures in Bratislava on the subject (and one back home in Danish), and then in 2019 the Gathering selection committee chose to refuse my lecture proposal (on the theme of how to use translations in language learning - NOT the Yamnayas once more), so that I now have lost an important venue for language related activities. And then corona did the rest ...

I have now passed page 100 in my log, and during that time I have among other things participated in the Esperanto Universala Kongreso in Lisbono, and of course there is a rant about that, but ..

EO: .. estas almenaŭ tri problemoj kun la kongresaj prelegoj. La una estas, ke oni iom obsedas kun akademiajn titolojn, sed la valoro de la prelegoj ne nepre rilatas al tio, ĉu la preleganto havas titolon. Kaj rilate al ĉi tio: estas ideo, ke la prelegoj estu kolektitaj en ia kolekto post ĉiu kongreso (kio estas en ordo), kaj la prelegantoj do estas petitaj submetu siajn manuskriptojn longe antaŭ la kongreso - kaj la rezulto estas ke multaj el ili nur laŭtlegis la tekston (kio estas en ordo). La tria problemo estas, ke mi ne ke mi ne eltenas aŭdi pli pri d-ro Zamenhof (saŭ monda paco). Tio kio savas la kongresojn, estas tiu malgranda angulo nomata 'scienca kafejo' (establita de la bonega Amri Wandel), kie la temoj estas multe pli interesaj kaj la etoso estas malpli dormema kaj formala.

Kiam mi devas deklari numeron da miaj lingvoj, mi kutime diras, ke mi faris vojaĝojn en 11½ lingvoj - la duono kompreneble estas Esperanto, ĉar mi parolas Esperanton nur ene de la loko kaj se mi renkontas aliajn esperantistojn. Kaj jes, ĉi tiu povas okazi ..

SLK: V roku 2016 som sa zúčastnil kongresu v Nitre na Slovensku a počas neho som absolvoval exkurziu v Bojniciach, kde je zámok a zoo (je to oveľa lacnejšie ako kúpa exkurzie) - a pri vstupe na hrad sa stretávam uvidel kopu neohrozených esperantistov. A sledoval som ich okolo, pretože potom som dostal príležitosť hovoriť viac esperantom ako na prednáškach.


POR: A língua fora do local do evento em Lisboa (na universidade da cidade) era, claro, o português, e eu caminhei pela cidade e vi seus pontos turísticos - e só falava português lá. Estava muito quente e quando continuei para Tomar depois de Lisboa, estava perto de um recorde - 44,4 graus Celsius à sombra. Mas não posso deixar de vagar nas minhas férias, sem consideração por o tempo. Há tantas coisas para ver e raramente bastante tempo (no outro sentido). No entanto, sentei-me quando li 2061 de Arthur C. Clarke por volta das 3 horas, apenas interrompido pelo intervalo para o almoço da biblioteca. A ficção científica foi o último gênero literário que quis ler.

Mais uma coisa especial aconteceu durante a minha visita a Lisboa: houve um eclipse lunar total e claro que saí à noite para fotografar a lua de sangue. Como disse, o congresso aconteceu na universidade, na faculdade de direito, e meu hotel ficava a poucos passos de lá, e havia muito espaço para olhar o ceu. A propósito, fiquei no mesmo hotel no ano seguinte quando viajei para o Brasil via Lisboa.


EN: But, hey I almost forgot to mention the other topics of my log up to page 100. So let let me just point to page 94, where I do my utmost to explain the concept of Dark Energy and its relationship with the cosmological constant of Einstein and the not-so-empty space of Dirac in Greek Dhimotiki and Romanian. And maybe also to page 100, where I somehow have contrived to concoct a passage in Anglosaxon - as far as I remember the only time I have written anything in that language, and it must have taken me a long time because I don't have the requisite dictionaries and grammars. By the way, there is also an awful lot about Irish grammar around page 100 - and when I return to that language I'll definitely have to reread the discussions about its many quirks in this log. But right now it is resting quietly on its shelf ... like a sleeping volcanoe which can erupt any day (like the Campi Flegrei near Napoli, which I mention on page 98).

I have visited my mother this week, and there was a lot of work to be done with fallen leaves and the rescue of an area that once was covered by cement and later housed a willowtree (felled a few years ago). The result was that I was too tired in the evenings to study, so it was only during the train trip home that I managed to to abit of reading. I had brought along the issue of the South African magazine Weg which I mentioned as goodnight reading last weg, but never finished, and even though the language is somewhat more informal than my usual fare of Wikipedia and articles about current and past fauna I didn't have much trouble reading it - even without a dictionary. More about that below.

And now a totally irrelevant rant, but I thought that some might like to see it - and then return to their language studies afterwards...

Yesterday evening I spent some time in the evening getting updated on the corona situation abroad. And by golly that was depressing - rising infection numbers and ever more strict containment measures in most places, including closures of shops and museums and libraries. But at least I got a multilingual exercise out of the experience - I checked sources in at least half a dozen languages.

Here in Denmark a mutation in the covid virus on mink farms was recently discovered, and promptly the government issued a strict order to kill all mink in the country and furthermore 7 counties in Northern Jutland were shut down almost to the level of countries abroad. But actually the legal basis for such an order turned out to be non-existant so now there is a major row over the way the government has acted - and of course over the amount of compensation the mink breeders should receive. To boot it turns out that no one have seen the strain in question since mid September so it is probably extinct now. To cut things short: contrary to most other countries it seems that our infection numbers have stabilized themselves around 1000 per day, i.e. 180.000 new finds per day. This is not OK, but the situation here could be even worse. At least I can carry on with my life with few other changes than that dastard mouthcloth and not being able to travel around.

I have done some calculations (in red) on a table from a Danish medical magazine called Sundhedspolitisk tidsskrift (probably with data from Johns Hopkins), and lo and behold, it seems that Belgium and Czechia aren't at the top anymore, but the poor Austrians are (and Luxembourg has been there since first time I located the table). The figures obviously reflect the number of tests done on one specific day, but another noteworthy figure (not shown) is that around 1,6 % of tests in Denmark are positive, but from Italy figures like 17% have been reported - which attest to a much graver situation there than here in Denmark. So I ain't gonna go nowhere for the moment ...


IT: In questo momento sto guardando il telegiornale italiano di RaiUno, e si parla di una mossa molto sensata: gli hotelli senza ospiti vengono trasformati in rifugi per persone in quarantena per non contagiare le loro famiglie e vicini. In questo momento si informe che in un comune chiamato Montaga tutto il personale dell'ospedale e la maggior parte dei medici siano risultati positivi, ed perciò anche i medici e paramedici asintomatici devono continuare a lavorare. E in questa situazione, il pubblico consulta "Doctor Google" invece di essere ammesso. Ma il premier Conti vede ancora i numeri andare nella giusta direzione...

AF: In die Afrikaanse tydskrif Weg het ek gelees oor reise na die Drakensberge, wat die oostelike en noordoostelike deel van die hoogste land ter wêreld Lesotho omring. Ek het self al 'n paar keer daarheen gereis (terwyl dit nog moontlik was) en die onderstaande foto is van 'n wandeling op 'n helling naby die gebied wat die Amfiteater genoem word. Er was 'n groepstaptog by die reis ingesluit, en hulle het ons gebete om nie alleen rond te kruip nie (en daar is genoem dat luiperds woon, haha), maar ek hou daarvan om vry van geselskap te wees, daarom het ek ook alleen rondgeloop op de platter gebiede. Dit was mooi..

In the tour-de-my-own-log-thread I have new reached New Year 2018-19 at page 104, and I can see that I celebrated the event by writing a preposterous message in thirty languages - not all of which are normally active, of course, but if I spend enough time on the task I can concoct something like a travesty in each one of them. And I can read most of them fluently. OK, for the time being my Irish is quite rusty and I need a dictionary or bilingual texts to deal with Polish and Slovak and Albanian, but all four of them are still within reach, and once I cut down on my musical projects and return to language learning full time I'll make them them fully functional in their passive form - and maybe also learn enough to be able to write texts without consulting dictionaries and grammars/green sheets all the time. Whether that happens before New Year 2020-21 ... well, maybe. Let's see how far I get...

And following up on this line of thought, I think it's about time to disclose how I can write texts in languages which I don't master fully - or in some cases, languages which I never have studied systematically. One big issue is whether I have a reasonably good dictionary from something I know to the pitiful weakling - and for good measure also one in the other direction.

FR: Prenons par example l'Ancien Français. Fortunément je le connais assez bien comme language passive et je peux lire des textes en prose du moyen äge presque sans consulter un dictionnaire. Quant aux effusions lyriques des trouvères, bon ben, typiquement elle ne sont pas aussi faciles, mais toujours abordables. J'ai suivi un cours à l'université de ma ville lors des années 70, et pour cette raison je possède plusieurs collections de textes, la grammaire de Foulet plus des notes sur la grammaire plus le vieux dictionnaire Ancien Français -> Français Moderne de Larousse. Plus tard j'ai en outre acquiert une 'Initiation à.." et j'ai découvert que le formidable dictionnaire Godefroy se trouve sur l'internet et on peut le consulter gratuitement. Il y a là d'autres dictionnaires/traducteurs aussi, mais j'ai les ai essayé sans succès. Hélas, je ne possède pas un bon dictionnaire allant de quelque chose que je connais bien (n'importe quoi) vers l'Ancien Français, et ..

A.FR: .. donques, quant gie ecris queilconque chose dans le vieulx françois gie ne puis oncques estre certain que icel que j'ecrivis seroit d'aucune maniere en ordre (ou mesme comprenable por un home du XII ou XIII siecle). Gie puis deviner, mais quant gie ... *cherche un mot, gie vois mainctes fois que ce mot n'existoit mie dans la vieille langue, et alors.. quoi faire? Por *'chercher' gie puis 'emploiter' (non pas 'emploier' de 'plier') le mot 'queter', sugestioné par le nom du roman "Le quête du saint Graal", mais sovint gie n'oi aulcun ... ahem, euh... (non pas "solucion" = 'paiement'). Mesme le mot 'moderne' n'est se trove mie dans Godefroy ou Foulet (mais "modernement" est attesté en 1581), 'trover' (ou 'trueve') signifie 'faire poesie' et 'po(u)rtant' dit 'a cause de'. Come vos povez voier, il n'est poinct facile d' ... En faict, mesme le mot "*facile" n'estoit adopté adonques...

Re: the mink: What did they used to do with the minks? (or mink: apparently either mink or minks are acceptable as plural forms).

I mean, surely nobody wears mink coats any more....do they?

Well, for several months the authorities did absolutely nothing, but then someone in the SSI (Seruminstituttet, where some of our virologists are employed) found out that the mink on some farms in Northern Jutland not only had covid, but a variant where the small spikes on the virus were different. They apparently added that there might be a problem with the vaccines if this variant spread among humans (actually only 12 infected persons were found, and no new cases have been found since september). This information somehow slipped to our government, and then our statsminister (prime minister) called a press conference where she ORDERED the mink farms to kill every single mink in the country as fast as possible, including the healthy ones .. however in vague terms the farmers were promised a recompensation. Oh by the way: all public transport across county borders from seven counties was stopped, and museums, libraries, hotels and restaurants in those seven counties had to close until the start of December. Actually the infection numbers in those counties were way below those from the outskirts of Copenhagen, but there only the normal regulations are in force.

Then someone told the business ministry that ordering healthy animals to be killed and promising compensation actually wasn't possible according to the existing laws, but apparently the sole person in the ministry for Industry, Business and Financial Affairs with access to the list of mink farmers was unavailable so it took several days before the business minister declared that, ha ha, it was just a suggestion, and maybe it was possible to keep a few animals for breeding, and by the way he was preparing a blitz law that would make the not-an-order suggestion into a retroactive law (which strictly speaking isn't legal either). But at that point the farmers reported back that they already had killed half their animals and that the proposed law would ban all mink farming in the country until at least 2022, and the whole production apparatur would be gone long before 2022 so forget about keeping a few animals for later - there won't be any 'later' - and you've better find some money for the damage claims now, dear minister.

Which all goes to show that speedy and precise information is important in a crisis situation.