Yandex

Yandex Yandex Start Page (Russian Version) Later discovered there's an English version, so the manual translations and alphabet look-up was a waste of time (but fun) ...  ;) Don't know why Ubuntu didn't give me a choice re download version (ie English or Russian) and why I can't set up the English version in the search engine preferences. ---------------------- ---------------------- COMMENT Still messing around with search engines. Wanted something different to the standard engines. Chose Yandex because I have some hope of reading Russian, whereas I'd be totally lost looking at, say, Chinese.  Plus, I especially like the Russians.  Legacy of Boris and Natasha cartoon programming?  LOL After spending pretty much the whole day messing around with Russian Yandex, I've found that there's an English version ... I think. Hard to explain.  I'm not where I was.  Thought I found an English version before system crashed for the millionth time, and before I gave up (for the time being). Spent the day doing nothing.  It's freaking me out how much time has passed while I've done nothing but crash and look up the occasional Russian word, flip from search engine to search engine, uninstall and re-install, fiddle with finding Linux commads to remove and to reinstate what I'd removed etc.   It's insane how much time has gone and I've done nothing.  But I've learnt to find the name of programs on Linux, in order to purge (which is a plus) ... but the purge didn't seem to work.  When I reinstalled etc, all my imported bookmarks were there and I could even access the tabs prior to the last crash, so that was no purge.  Don't know what went wrong. I'm back in Firefox for the time being, because the PC has crashed about a million times playing with Yandex, and I can't take any more.   Tried to find a method of figuring out what's wrong in Ubuntu but it's too complicated for me.   I'm not up for simulated crashes or post-crash analysis.  I was hoping for something simple.  As in REALLY simple.  It's taken me forever just to figure out how to re-enable cookies on Firefox so that I can get on here, because f#%$@ Google won't let me on unless I enable. Yandex is described the world's fourth-largest search engine.  Has a substantial market share on its home turf  (plus regional) and is a competitor to the invading Google. Frustrated a little by not being able to specify the ENGLISH version of the site in the list of search engine options -- and being unable to list any more search engines, after having added in DuckDuckGo.  Not sure if they have a search engine list limit, or if I was just doing something wrong. It's fun playing with the Russian version, but not being able to read Cyrillic script is a drawback -- it becomes a hassle of either trying to manually translate or do alphabetical look-ups to get a clue (when you can't use copy & paste).  Very tiring.  But it's unnecessary:   as I said, there's an English version. Although I've look at Cyrillic script a little here and there, and I've tried to remember the alphabet, it was a pretty slack effort on my part. As in, I looked a couple of times & didn't practice to recognise the script with ease. So I've gone back and revisited the unfamiliar letters of the alphabet, in the hope of getting more comfortable being in a Russian online environment.   I'm good as long as I have an alphabet cheat-sheet. The symbol that stands out for me is the 'D' that looks like a funny 'A' shaped house on stilts ... which is a good fit, because house is:   дом , the perfect memory aid. There's lots of rules regarding the sounds, but I don't care about the rules.  I'm not looking for precision.  I just want to be able to recognise basics, like 'карта' for 'karta' which means 'map' or 'maps'.  'карта' also means 'card'. There's French from Latin derivatives in English that go back to Greek, so I'm going to guess that maybe the Russian skips the Latin and goes straight to the Greek (Byzanntine, perhaps?) ... which in turn goes back to possibly early Greek and Egyptian (re 'karta'), but otherwise Greek is associated with Phonetician (I think). Briefly looked at Yahoo (UK), as I wanted to search an English site for quick further info. Imagine ludicrous social engineering propaganda combined with a smorgasbord of the crass, bizarre and perverse, that includes a Tesco upskirt pervt, and you have the British version of Yahoo: Has Yahoo always been so appalling? Russian news (translated by Google) via Yandex was an oasis of sanity: The UN Security Council is a joke:  it's always blocking anything the US oligarchy and its accomplices want blocked. Not sure if this will show up.  Video's weren't publishing.   Казачий ансамбль "Братина" Cossack ensemble "Bratina" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1tWUNI2cA&nohtml5=False Between numerous crashes, looked at the following for fun: cartography -- map (or chart) making fm. 'carte' ('map') fm. Old French fm. Latin:  'charta', 'carta' - paper made from papyrus  [thefreedictionary] charta (obsolete) - a 'character' [thefreedictionary] Английский - Английский - Charta  произношение n. written contract or document, pact; constitution  n. charter, document granting certain rights and privileges, charta, contract, pact; constitution  n. charta, written contract or document, pact; constitution  LINK | Source Blessed Thistle carduus benedictus -- blessed thistle -- common plant, considered weed -- used 2,000 years for medicinal purposes http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Carduus+benedictus carduus aster family cartel -- businesses regulating production, pricing & marketing as a cooperative group -- also parties, factions or nations united in common cause; a bloc fm. German Kartell fm. French cartel fm. Italian cartello - placard fm.  Medieval Latin cartellus - charter       diminutive of Latin charta (carta) - paper made from papyrus; see card http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cartel Beta Greek letters adopted from corresponding Phoenician (Semitic) Gk. letter 'beta' derrived from Phoenician (Semitic) 'beth' used to denote value of 2 in Gk. numerals in computing 'beta' = last testing release (preview release) software -- prior to issue of release version http://everything.explained.today/Beta/ Cyperus Papyrus, growing Italy source By pjt56 -- Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22074506 Papyrus -- thick paper made of pith of papyrus plant -- ie.  Cyperus papyrus -- aquatic flowering plant, sedge family  -- native to Africa -- reed-like swamp vegetation -- now cultivated as ornamental plant -- native plant of Niger River & Euphrates -- almost extinct in native habitat:  Nile Delta -- also grew in Syria -- flowering heads make garlands for the gods -- pith of young shoots was eaten both cooked and raw -- woody root as: -- bowls & utensils -- burned for fuel -- stems made reed boats (similar in Sudan) -- Moses reed basket may have been papyrus [wikipedia]

Novi Pazar

Novi Pazar [CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE] sourced from here (amazing image - I like this a lot) ---------------------- ---------------------- COMMENT Old cemetery in Novi Pazar, Serbia. 'Novi Pazar' translates to 'New Market' in Bulgarian (but probably also other varieties of Slavic derived languages). I'm going to guess that 'Pazar' originates from 'bazaar' or similar, and that this has been adopted as a result of the history of invasion and domination by the Ottoman Turks. Word goes back to:  Persian bāzār origins in Zoroastrian Persia origins of word = Parthian language (ancient Persian / Iranian) 7th-8th century = shared word among: Kurdish Albanian Bosnian Turkish = 'pazar' Bengali Odia (eastern India) Bulgarian Macedonian Cypriot Greek Greek Hindi Hungarian So the above is where Persian influence spread OR the Persian word was imported and adopted as result of  Turkish influence, as the Balkan region was subject to invasion and Ottoman rule commencing circa. 1400s (I think).  The conquer and imposition of alien rule explains why animosities remain among those in the Balkan region. Turkish (ie Ottoman) influence of 1500s & 1600s mentioned re spread of word 'pazar': -- Indonesia -- Malaysia -- Armenia -- Georgia -- Poland -- Russia -- Ukraine -- Uzbekistan Guess it's where the Ottomans either defeated and invaded or traded. That was kind of fun.