Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Rules Questions => Topic started by: Hibernator on December 17, 2011, 06:51:39 pm
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Hello, my English is not very good, so I don't know how to interpret "You may discard an Estate card." and the rules leaflet doesn't say anything about it. I would like to know whether you have to discard only a single Estate even if you have more than one in your hand, or whether you can discard as many as you have getting 4€ for each one.
Thank you very much
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0 = gain an estate
1 = +4$
2 = not allowed
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what????????? Can you be more explicit, please? What's the answer to my question?
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You are not allowed to discard more than one Estate to Baron.
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Ok, thank you!
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Your question has been answered, but if you see 'an' or 'a' or 'the' in English, the number is basically always going to be 1.
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Your question has been answered, but if you see 'an' or 'a' or 'the' in English, the number is basically always going to be 1.
Not "the," no. "The horses ran a race." "A" and "an" are grammatically only usable with the singular.
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Your question has been answered, but if you see 'an' or 'a' or 'the' in English, the number is basically always going to be 1.
Not "the," no. "The horses ran a race." "A" and "an" are grammatically only usable with the singular.
The horses is a single group of horses. But obviously a gaggle of geese is more than one as well. And the horse is only one horse.
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In other Romantic languages, there are different equivalents of "the" for singular and plural nouns, so it follows that in English, "the" doesn't imply singularity.
Also consider the nouns that aren't really countable. The food. The drink. And so on.
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In other Romantic languages, there are different equivalents of "the" for singular and plural nouns, so it follows that in English, "the" doesn't imply singularity.
Also consider the nouns that aren't really countable. The food. The drink. And so on.
Uh, English isn't a romance language....
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I just built a cool deck with four Crossroadses and six Nobleses.
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Uh, English isn't a romance language....
Please don't pick at the inconsequential details, and please don't strawman - I never once said that English was a Romance language; its use of definite and indefinite articles, however, is very similar to what's in other Romance languages (like French).
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Uh, English isn't a romance language....
Please don't pick at the inconsequential details, and please don't strawman - I never once said that English was a Romance language; its use of definite and indefinite articles, however, is very similar to what's in other Romance languages (like French).
But that's not linguistically inconsequential. I mean, this whole side-track is pretty inconsequential, but as far as it goes, English being a Germanic, not a Romance language, would mean you'd expect it to act more like Germanic than Romance languages - which it does.
You know, my first comment was just trying to be helpful; if I knew it was going to stir this much trouble up, I'd never have said it - which is why I'm going to stop talking about it now.
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The horses is a single group of horses. But obviously a gaggle of geese is more than one as well. And the horse is only one horse.
No. A gaggle. But not "a horses." "A" implies singularity. "The" does not imply singularity. You can use "the" with both singular and plural. Of course "the horse" is only one horse -- that's because the noun, not the article, gives you the information that it's singular.
If you take a noun that is ambiguous as to plurality, such as say "fish," then adding "the" does not tell you whether it's singular or plural.
So:
"The fish swam behind the coral."
You don't know there if one or multiple fish swam behind the coral. Contrast:
"A fish swam behind the coral."
That's just one fish.
Of course, in english, almost all nouns have unambiguous plurality (even traditionally ambiguous ones are being displaced by unambiguous usages, as I think most people would now say "fishes" in my first sentence if they meant the plural, though "fish" is also correct). So you usually don't have to look at the article in order to tell. But none the less, that does not mean that "the" implies singularity, because it doesn't.
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But that's not linguistically inconsequential. I mean, this whole side-track is pretty inconsequential, but as far as it goes, English being a Germanic, not a Romance language, would mean you'd expect it to act more like Germanic than Romance languages - which it does.
German, and other Germanic languages, share the trait that dondon151 mentions as a characteristic of Romance languages: the equivalents of "the" change for plurality. For example, "der Junge," (the boy), "die Jungen," (the boys). In German, even words that are unchanged with plurality can imply their plurality with the article: "das Mädchen" (the girl), "die Mädchen" (the girls).
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In Dutch, the original meaning of those articles has long gone, that's why Dutch is such a hard language to learn.
For instance: It's "de vrouw" (the woman), but also "de man" (the man), so there is no real distinction between male and feminine words. For plural, "de" is always used: "de vrouwen", "de mannen". The article "het" is used for neutral words, but who can tell me if "deur" (meaning door) should be m/f or n? In this case, it's "de deur".
It gets really confusing with words that have different meanings and use different articles for those different meanings.
"De wiel" means a lake which is a result of a hole in a dike (how typically Dutch).
"Het wiel" means a wheel you can put on a wagon.
We only see the original genus of the nouns if we use possessive forms (his, hers, etc), then we can see what it's supposed to be.
Dutch people know that it's: "Ik sluit de deur, ik doe hem dicht." (I close the door, I shut him, translated literally).
So Dutch is a language that we learn mostly through our parents and social contacts, more so than on school. The use of articles is very confusing to people who are just learning to speak Dutch and they more often than not do it wrong. This makes it very easy for us to spot foreigners. :)
Oh, and the story of Hansje Brinker with his finger in the dike is made up just for American tourists. :)
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Once when I was on holiday to Duinrell (Wassenaar, have you been? It's pretty awesome) I turned on the TV and there was a program on called "Plop". Man, that was one fucked up show. Then, when I went to Oostende last month there was a leaflet in the hotel and apparently there is a themepark based on the show in De Panne. I wanted to go but we couldn't :(
Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnppryU4IMY
It's probably not as good if you can understand what they are saying.
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I have been to Duinrell and they have an excellent aquapark there (Tikibad) with some of the fastest and longest slides in the Netherlands.
"Kabouter Plop" is Belgian in origin and it's meant for kids. ;)
Indeed, there is a whole themepark based on it as it is quite a popular show among children in the Netherlands and Flanders. I don't know if it's still as popular as it was when it started in 1997. As a matter of fact, I don't really know what kids are watching these days, Anime?
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The best thing about the Dutch language is the fact that it sounds funny. All kaasschaaf and other words that sound really funny to me.
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On a related not, I have worn clogs instead of slippers ever since I first visited the Netherlands many many years ago. Everybody I know thinks I am weird.
Edit: Also, what's the official Dutch take on the whole Netherlands/Holland thing. As far as I'm aware Holland is a part of the Netherlands and it annoys me when people refer to the whole country as Holland. Is this right or am I just being picky because the Netherlands sound better?
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You are right, Holland is a province. Or, to be exact: two provinces (North and South). They were the most important and wealthiest in the time of Dutch colonialism.
However, I don't think I ever met anyone Dutchman who minds if Holland is misused. In fact, we use it ourselves, mostly in situations where want to shout the name out. "Hup, Nederland, hup!" (Go, Netherlands, go!) just doesn't have the right soccer-y ring to it.
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Our country can be confusing for foreigners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-csGDoSSZyc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-csGDoSSZyc)
Holland is for informal usage and it originally meant the two dominant provinces, but is now used to mean the entire country, which is officially called The Netherlands. We are called the Dutch, which is a leftover term.
"Holland" and the "Netherlands" both have the same meaning: They imply a country that is very flat and low-lying. This is true, 25% of the area is below sea level and this has forced us to come up with ingenious waterworks called "Deltawerken / Deltaworks" in the province of Zeeland (literally "Sealand"). We also built the "Afsluitdijk" and even pulled an entire province (Flevoland) out of the water. There are no mountains in Holland, our biggest hill is 321m. above sea level and yet we have a Snowboarding Olympic gold medalist: Nicolien Sauerbrij.
Anoher informal term that is used for both the Netherlands and Belgium is "Lage Landen" (literally: Low Countries).
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"Holland" and the "Netherlands" both have the same meaning: They imply a country that is very flat and low-lying.
Apparently the origin of the name "Holland" is from "holt land", meaning 'wood land'.
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I'm sure the OP is getting more enlightened by the moment
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I know I am.