bart-michels

[bart.michels]

Dag iedereen

I'm Bart Michels from Belgium. I did my bachelor in Ghent University (3 yrs), after which I moved to Paris 6, where I'm soon starting my second master's year in Mathématiques Fondamentales. My main interest is number theory, which is very broad, but it's hard to be more specific. I do like analytic methods. My thesis subject and advisor remain unknown.

Other interests include foreign languages (but I don't speak Italian), psychology and holistic health.

I've been fed two courses on linear algebra, the second focusing on bilinear and quadratic forms and combinatorial aspects of finite vector spaces, a first course on groups, rings, modules and a second course on groups and fields, a course on projective and incidence geometry, another on commutative algebra and finally a course on Lie algebras and one on algebraic topology, along with two courses on number theory that both had an algebraic component. Unless you count the Chinese way, all your fingers should be up now.

some regards

B

[Vavilov Nikolai]

 

 

26.07.2017, 15:04, "bart.michels" <bart.m...@gmail.com>:

Dear Bart, fantastic! Which makes 10 algebra/algebra related courses altogether (actually, in Russia

we DO fold our fingers, rather then straighten them, if that's what you meant, and we DO have 10

fingers, unlike British people, who only have 8 of them -- how many do you have in Flemish?)

Gent (or as you prefer to spell it, Ghent), is another fantastic city! I was there a couple of times in

the 1990-ies from Antwerpen, mostly for the XV century paintings, of course, but was also most

impressed by the city itself.

 

Best Nikolai Vavilov

[Bart Michels]

I didn't expect counting gestures to be this different!

A Flemish 3 is a Russian 7, indeed.

[Vavilov Nikolai]

 

26.07.2017, 17:21, "Bart Michels" <bart.m...@gmail.com>:

I didn't expect counting gestures to be this different!

A Flemish 3 is a Russian 7, indeed.

 

Of course, to show in a pub that you take X beers, in Russia too you would

expose X STRAIGHT fingers, maybe slightly waiving your hand(s) forth and

back. I meant a different thing, when we COUNT 1,2,3,... we usually fold them

one by one, whereas in some countries even in that case people unfold them.

But we feel that the difference between cardinal and ordinal numbers is

extremely important.

You know, Dutch/Flemish are THE ONLY languages I know of, where "more

or less" = "piu' o meno" = "более или менее" = "mehr oder weniger" = "plus

ou moins" = ... is rendered as "min of meer", in the OPPOSITE order.

 

N.V.

[Bart Michels]

Oh well, cardinals and ordinals are more or less the same.

We do have some other languages on our side:

https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/19617/9681

[Vavilov Nikolai]

 

 

26.07.2017, 23:42, "Bart Michels" <bart.m...@gmail.com>:

Oh well, cardinals and ordinals are more or less the same.

We do have some other languages on our side:

https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/19617/9681

 

Well, you are exactly right! As someone who used to speak Polish as the second language

(as a child, not anymore, actually, largely superseded by German and Italian, countries,

where I've spent 6 and 4 years, respectively), I should have thought better! Of course, in

Polish IT IS indeed "mniej o więcej", and I should have realised the difference!

I've studied SOME Hebrew and even much less Turkish some 45 years ago, but was never

any good at any of those, and which are NOT Indo-European anyway, so they do not count.

But I WAS rather serious with Farsi, and used it on many occasions, and it is obviously as

closely related to Russian and German, as you can imagine, so I have to think and consult

my Iranian friends.

Lithuanian, that's what makes me slightly alarmed. It is BY FAR the most archaic of all

Indo-European languages (it still preserves the dual number, alongside with singular and plural,

both in the nominal and verbal systems, separate masculine and feminine verbal forms IN

PLURAL for PAST tenses, etc., etc., etc.) This suggests that Lithuanian forms might be THE

most ancient ones.

 

N,V.