I had a post back in the day where I regaled the glibs with tales of my learning English and a few audio clips of me speaking. And as the readers clamored “Pie, let’s hear that sexy voice again”, I aim to please. This is that post. Romanian, the one true language, differs from the bastard tongue of the perfidious Albion in many ways. One of those ways is that it is a mostly phonetic language, no mucking bout with your silly English spilling [sic] of words. You pronounce it like you write it, mostly. That may cause an issue with those of the Anglo-Saxon linguistic persuasion, and not just thing like emphasis. Things like not pronouncing letters that should be pronounced. There usually is no silent H Z or WKZR in there. We may also have a few additional letters, like any proper language should, instead of torturing words with unnecessary letter groups.
I can go all Wikipedia here and give various detail on the tongue, like A statistical analysis sorting Romanian words by etymological source carried out by Macrea (1961)[90] based on the DLRM[101] (49,649 words) showed the following makeup:[91]
- 43% recent Romance loans (mainly French: 38.42%, Latin: 2.39%, Italian: 1.72%)
- 20% inherited Latin
- 11.5% Slavic (Old Church Slavonic: 7.98%, Bulgarian: 1.78%, Bulgarian-Serbian: 1.51%)
- 8.31% Unknown/unclear origin
- 3.62% Turkish
- 2.40% Modern Greek
- 2.17% Hungarian
- 1.77% German (including Austrian High German)[99]
- 2.24% Onomatopoeic
There are things like Romanian nouns are characterized by gender (feminine, masculine, and neuter), and declined by number (singular and plural) and case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify. Romanian is the only Romance language where definite articles are enclitic: that is, attached to the end of the noun (as in Scandinavian, Bulgarian and Albanian), instead of in front (proclitic).[104] They were formed, as in other Romance languages, from the Latin demonstrative pronouns.But all these are already on Wikipedia. That is the very place I copy pasted all of the above from.
Now let’s get down to brass tacks (ghinturi de alamă) wherein one more time, Pie (Plăcinta derived from the Latin placenta) is here to drop some knowledge on the fine Language of Scions of Dacia. Besides the basic bitch Latin alphabet, we have the additional letters ă â î ș ț. While the â and î are probably not a sound in English, ș is as the sh in shape and ț is as the ts in pants. Â (called “from a”) and î (called from i) are basically the same sound, and for some period of time only î was used, until â made a comeback at the decision of the Romanian Academy. This was during my time in school and I had to get used to the new spelling. Basically the rule right now is î is used when it is the first letter in a word (e.g început – beginning) and â is used inside words (e.g câine – dog). Also during this time due to changes in î, the verb to be first person / third person changed in spelling and sound, from sînt to sunt.
Special letter groupings are few. Ce ci, che chi, ge gi, ghe ghi. Basically denoting a harder or softer c and g. Here we have the first sound file, me and my beautiful voice saying the various words and sounds from Romanian.
There are also mostly useless letters, like q and y and w, which are hardly used at all, and mostly incorrectly in loan words. Incorrectly is a bit much, but in general, due to the phonetic characteristics of the language, the standard operating procedure is do change words to how they are pronounced in Romanian. A good example is the across the street word, from the French vis-à-vis, which became vizavi. The computer peripheral mouse became maus. Recently, since the explosion of the internet and English as the lingua franca thereof, the youth these days, no respect for tradition, simply use English words and spellings. Which to some is romglish, derogatory off course. I am myself annoyed by some English words which completely replaced local equivalents in 90% of cases, including so called serious journalism, many corporate like “job” or “task”, some not like shopping, fitness and gay (not meaning happy though).
So let us get some words down and their pronunciations, in order to illustrate various sounds:
Plăcintă de cireșe (cherry pie)
Șarpe (snake)
Gheorghe (name , George basically)
Ghimbir (ginger)
Geanta (bag)
Gin (gin)
Ață (string)
Chip (face)
Chestiune (situation)
Chintal (quintal)
Tocilar (nerd or geek or knife grinder)
Cisternă (cistern)
Coropişniţă (a type of insect google says Mole cricket)
Țambal (cimbalom a kind of dulcimer of some sorts popular round Eastern Europe)
Xilofon (xilophone)
In general the letter x can be pronounced cs as in Alexandra (female name) or gz as in examen (exam)
Some words are believed to be of Dacian origin though no one knows for sure:
Mânz (foal) viezure (badger) varza (cabbage) strungă (mountain gorge or something about sheep enclosures)
How to greet a Romanian woman: Ce faci păpusă.
How to greet a Romanian man: Ce faci coaie
As an example of how not to pronounce Romanian, Ian of forgotten weapons trying to say : Haralamb Dimancea.
https://youtu.be/fOrG_WTg4rc?t=29
vs
The Full Romanian alphabet, spoken: A, Ă, Â, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, Î, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, Ș, T, Ț, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.
And that is about it, innit?
The lettuce?
(Oh, and first)
huh?
Ohhhhh! Romanian
that was bad
*nods*
Megjavítottam neked.
I don’t speak finno-ugric
I don’t think anyone does, it’s a long running joke hiding the fact that the language family is a post hoc attempt to apply linguistic logic to drunken grunts.
My Hungarian partner has assured me that no matter how much Hungarians suffered from Russians, they really hate only Romanians.
the hate is mostly mutual. mama lor de bozgori
We just want transylvania back, the Szecklers are restless.
How bout you just go back to wherever you came from?
Can’t, no one knows where we originated. You’re stuck with us.
Have you considered Mexico?
Too many romance speakers. Csöbörből vödörbe.
How to talk Romanian good
“I vant to suck your blood.”?
Lugosi was Hungarian, wrong accent. Romanians will most likely mess up r, t, and d when speaking English.
“I wand do suck youl bloot” would be a better approximation of a heavy Romanian accent.
is the ‘oo’ in bloot still pronouced as it would be in ‘blood’ or is it now pronounced as in ‘boot’?
If they were familiar with the word’s pronunciation thet would pronounce it with a mid front rounded vowel, the same way as in English, but no idea how a Romanian would pronounce it if they were reading it.
Very interesting, Pie, though not many of my neighbors have commented too much on the lack of Romanian speakers here. Oh, there was this one guy, nahhh, he wasn’t, that was someone else.
Just kidding, Pie, I did enjoy your article and always look for the foreign words that I might know in English. Thanks for trying to make me smarter anyway.
I’ve long assumed that surnames ending in “-escu” are Romanian (just as most surnames ending with “-ian” or “-yan” seem to be Armenian.) Am I correct in that assumption? Does it perhaps mean “son”? That seems to be the common surname ending across multiple languages. (Disclaimer: not a linguist by any stretch.)
It means “child of”.
I am not personally 100% sure of that, but I am no linguist. Some say it was related to place names as a form of origin.
I’ll defer to the experts, since my knowledge of Romanian basically amounts to my basic background in romance languages as a whole supplemented with tidbits I’ve picked up from learning Hungarian, but what I’ve seen it is derived from Latin -iscus, and a cognate with the French -esque.
It may be either or both. I am not sure. I remember it was first documented for some boyars related to the area of their estates, but I do not know of a clear source for that
And Slavic -ski? That was my assumption.
…took some digging but that does seem to be the case.
er… better link
Cool! Thanks!
It is not really known, but it is not considered Armenian. Either Slavic or older. Some say maybe Latin iscus, maybe Slavic, maybe even older Thracian root. Who knows.
Thracian? Not Dacian?
they were related. as I said, the duck come from the trucks
For how many bucks?
ehm…
just as most surnames ending with “-ian” or “-yan” seem to be Armenian
Or names ending in “-vili” being Georgian.
“8.31% Unknown/unclear origin”
the ducks come from the trucks
Man, that sucks!
tucks gaze
“1.77% German (including Austrian High German”
Austrian is most definitely NOT Hoch Deutsch. God, it is even worse than Swiss German.
“High” in this context basically means standard, government approved Austrian German. It’s still bad, but it has all of the proper paperwork in order, signed and in triplicate.
There is nothing “high” about Austrian dialect…unless it is easier to understand whilst high.
“Sich ausrasten”
*Yes, I realize the Austrians have formalized their dialect and call it “High Austrian German”….*
Just a poke at the pan-tuetonic fetish for order, you have a much better handle on German than I do, a svájci barátom.
I never miss a chance to dig at Austrian German…most of instructors were Austrian, and my Master’s translation project was Austrian War Archives stuff 1797-1805.
Now, all I come up with from Austria is this.
I always thought it odd that if I hear plattdeutsch being murmured in the Low Countries, it sounds like English from a short distance away.
That’s my experience in bars/taverns/pubs.
The ones in the Low Countries and Germany have the same background “murmur” that I perceive in the English-speaking parts of North America. Conversely, bars in France have a weird sonic ambience to them that I couldn’t put a name to at first. I felt distinctly less comfortable in them.
Tell me about it.
Austrian
even worse than Swiss German
A language that allows many holes in communication.
*GAZE, NARROWED*
Have yo ever though about glasses? It can’t be good to be squinting all the time.
you*
thought*
It’s definitely good I haven’t sent any work related emails today.
For whatever reason, I found Austrian German to be the easiest dialect to understand. That Swiss shit is incomprehensible to me.
They are BOTH incomprehensible.
Thank god they all speak English, eh?
Tocilar
So the c here is a hard c?
Thanks, Pie, very interesting. The library assistant at the school where my wife is a librarian is Romanian. She’s always giving us meats wrapped in cabbage like a cigar. They’re tasty though, I’m not complaining.
Plăcintă de cireșe–Cherry placenta? This sounds disgusting. I hope my wife’s library assistant sticks to the cabbage-meat cigars.
Tocilar
So the c here is a hard c? – I am no linguist but I think that is a soft c . Maybe I had those mixed up
“cabbage-meat cigars”
Aren’t they going to be at Lollapalooza this year?
They canceled out of SXSW.
It is a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate, which is to say neither a hard or a soft ‘c’, but a ‘ch’ sound. Toecheelar would be a decent phonetic rendering in English.
meats wrapped in cabbage like a cigar – sarmale. there is also rice. and they can be wrapped in all sorts of leaves. my mom makes some good ones in horseradish leaves.
I just checked, and Romanian is on Duolingo. I guess it is a real language.
Just like Klingon, High Valyrian, and Esperanto!
I thought you were joking, but Esperanto really is there. I’m assuming Klingon has more speakers, however.
Now I want to know how many people are learning Klingon vs. Romanian.
According to Wikipedia, more English speakers are learning Romanian over Klingon, but High Valyrian is more popular by almost double.
I had to look that up.
OFFS.
People need to learn the true dragon tongue! From Earthsea.
Fun fact – she did create a language for this book. It was a little too hippie-ish for my taste but the language stuff was fun.
You have to know Romanian if you want to beat the Romanian Star Empire.
I thought Romanian was just Vulcanian plus emotions.
“11.5% Slavic”
This seems like a high amount for a non-Slavic language in a country that was never ruled by Slavs (I don’t think?). But only 3.62% Turkish–and the Turks were in charge for centuries. Curious.
Romania was never a province though, just payed some tribute, gold cattle, children
Pine stakes?
Yes? Oh, sorry, nevermind.
I am all for trying new marinades, but ‘pine’? //jk
It’s less a marinade than a stuffing.
The church in Romania is Orthodox and uses Church Slavonic. Romanian is the only non-Slavic language I know where yes is da.
uses Church Slavonic – not since the early 1800s
Obligatory.
One of the many reasons I didn’t like studying Latin. However, learning these linguistic concepts with Latin have helped me immeasurably when I started to learn Japanese. Fortunately Japanese has no gendered nouns and even better with rare exceptions like people makes no distinction between singular or plural.
So no “catch all” case like ablative in Romanian?
A catchall case? That must be nice.
Latin likes to make up for its “simplicity” with it’s declensions.
MY HOVERCRAFT IS FULL OF EELS!
MY NIPPLES EXPLODE WITH DELIGHT!
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO UPSTAIRS? BOUNCY, BOUNCY?
DROP YOUR PANTIES, SIR WILLIAM. I CANNOT WAIT TIL LUNCHTIME.
So, you will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched?
I work with a Romanian lady who isn’t very popular because she tries to tell everyone how to do their jobs. I’m not sure if that’s a Romanian trait or just her. Also she smiles at me and leans in really close. Again, might be cultural or she might want to bang me. That’s my sum experience with Romania other than the wine I tried and liked. Nice write up.
I’m not sure if that’s a Romanian trait – it is not
Also she smiles at me and leans in really close. Again, might be cultural – hell no
So what you’re telling me, is that she is a domineering bitch that wants to party with me? I’ll need a minute to process this.
“Again, might be cultural or she might want to bang me. ”
Ask her is she’d like to share a cabbage-meat cigar. The way she answers should let you know which.
Should I amend it to meat cigar and then feign ignorance?
sînt and sunt sound very different. It’s interesting that such a major change to such a basic word was introduced so recently.
The Romanian Academy need to keep themselves busy.
“We have an important announcement…. we have slightly changed the word for …fluffy!”
pufos
Getting back to basics! – sum es est sumus estis sunt
Ego mei mihi me me tu tui tibi te te su sui sibi se se
Oh you sound pronounce…
said …not sure how I got sound
That surprised me too.
/my pronouns are they/them
Is it really any different from the Neue Falschschreibung?
It’s still »daß«, and always will be!
Yes. Altering speech is way more significant than spelling.
Thank you, Pie! This is fascinating for some of us who aren’t linguists, but just enjoy learning languages.
I’m surprised at how similar Romanian sounds to Italian – at least listening to these snippets, that’s the first thought I had.
It ‘sings’ the way Italian, does which led me to wonder: are there Romanian operas? And now I think I need to go look up Romanian music, out of curiosity.
are there Romanian operas – I don’t think so
think I need to go look up Romanian music – you mean besides my posts on manele romanian pop and romanian carols?
I was thinking of doing additional romanian music posts but not sure if there is interest
There are Romanian language operas, but not many; they are all fairly recent.
Here is one. It is “Golem”, by Nicolae Bretan. It is based on the story of the golem of Prague, composed in 1924.
I did not know that one.
I thought about finding one where most of it is in Romanian but the libretto is in Hungarian, but that was too much effort for a troll no one would likely find.
1. Be Russian
2. Speak Italian
And you’ve mastered Romanian.
Hey fuck you man we are not filthy slavs. We wuz Dacians and shit
The horse people!
filthy slavs
*starts to get slightly offended but doesn’t*
At least I’m not Polish.
Polska na zawsze
Ask a man who knows
Talking about the health care and literacy in socialist dictatorships is like admiring how clean everything was on the Death Star in “Star Wars.” There is free health care in prison, but it’s still a prison. What value is literacy if you’re told what you can and cannot read?
Unless you are making the case that there is unique value and something vital to learn from such regimes, why not choose examples that don’t include censorship, gulags, and mass murder among their “achievements”?
For Bernie Sanders, the answer is because he wanted, and wants, to promote socialism. To make a distinction often lost on Americans with their two-party system, Social Democrats want to use policy to soften the edges of the free market. Democratic Socialists — which is what Sanders calls himself — want to reshape society to eliminate the evils of capitalism.
He and his followers may like to tout Demark and Finland, but his own words also highlight the socialist dictatorships of Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. These latter endorsements refute those who say that “socialism” is just another word for higher taxes and a better social safety net. It would be easy to advocate for those things without defending aspects of police states, but Sanders chooses otherwise.
Warning: Kasparov has a full blown case of TDS. His complaint is less about Bernie’s socialist authoritarian tendencies than that he might not be able to beat Public Enemy Number One.
Evergreen:
soften the edges of the free market
Because there is currently zero regulation in American trade.
And one study found that a Sanders candidacy is more likely to increase turnout for Trump, not the Democrats. In contrast, a moderate Democrat need only attract a few of the many disgruntled Trump voters, or keep them at home, requiring no miraculous transformation of the electorate (a transformation, incidentally, that for Sanders failed to materialize in the Super Tuesday primaries, as young voters, once again, largely stayed home).
Militant progressives may be willing to gamble their entire agenda and the future of the republic on the illusory chance of seeing their democratic socialist hero “occupy White House.” But I hope the majority will prevail and agree that safest path forward is to first restore sanity and stability. Even if you love Bernie Sanders and agree with his message, it’s far too risky to believe that he’s the best one to carry it to the White House.
If I thought Bernie would get the full Ceaucescu treatment, I might even vote for him myself.
“Disgruntled Trump voters”? Why would people who voted for Trump the first time around be disgruntled? They hat the economy, the tax cut, the border control, no new wars? What exactly?
“hat” = “hate”
Although in the SugarFree universe “hat” almost works.
According to TheBern! the economy only works for
millionaires andbillionaires.He should know.
gamble their entire agenda and the future of the republic
Their agenda is to destroy (what’s left of…) the republic.
safest path forward is to first restore sanity and stability
Nothing says sane and stable like a demented, old perv.
the many disgruntled Trump voters
I wonder how he handwaves away the turnout for Trump in the primaries?
Wow. 83 on topic comments. That’s gotta be a record, or something.
I’d have tried to derail things, but for some reason I’m actually expected to work today.
Oh that’s right, my supervisor is out and my direct report started this morning.
I am just happy if my posts get to 100 comments
Happy? I thought happiness was more or less forbidden east of those frivolous Bohemians?
if that were true why did god make Țuică and Fetească Neagră huh?
The same reason he made vodka? To drown your sorrows.
“Fetească Neagră”
Yum!
Ce pula mea?
aia mica?
I am just happy if my posts get to 100 comments
How do you say, “precautionary principle” in Romanian?
Dunno. Principiul precauției to have a literal translation
Uberwald doesn’t do precautionary principles. Igors throw the switch and see what happens when the lightning strikes.
Two thumbs up.
Slacker! Use both hands next time.
Thorry thur, I wath adjuthting the rheothatth with the other hand.
Eeeeh Gun Jesus was close enough. Just need that “chuh” C instead of the “suh” C. Obviously I am an expert in your language.
Close? Where is the H and the B in Haralamb?
To be fair I’m only listening on tiny, crappy speakers at the moment so admittedly I’m not in a position to hear it well.
The first casualty of Brexit.
Britain’s largest domestic airline Flybe collapsed into administration on Thursday, as the coronavirus outbreak tipped the struggling carrier over the edge.
Oops, wrong boogeyman. Trump’s coronavirus kills a British airline. That’s the ticket.
These airlines were already all going belly-up long before all this shit. Last time I went abroad I flew out with Thomas Cook, then the very next day they went out of business. Fortunately I’d booked to fly back with another airline.
This is some of that metadata that’s fed into a database (pretending it doesn’t just look up my IP and find me that way), in which, slowly, piece by piece, out of all the info I have posted on glibs, it’s all enough to identify me individually. For instance, I’d have to be someone that flew with Thomas Cook the day before they croaked, which narrows it down massively. I’d have to be British, which narrows it down again, etc etc.
*enters coordinates into missile guidance system*
Sorry man…
Hey at least I get to high five the damn thing at the precise moment it blows me to Kingdom come.
Uncle John Pegg! I knew it.
I had to look that up but I think I’d quite like to be a wood turner. Woodturner? Wood-turner? Turner of the wood? Dead tree carcass rotational sculpting operations technician?
I’d have to be British
Sucks to be you, as the kids say.
Everything is relative, I suppose. I’d much rather live here than Chicago.
Only certain parts, my friend. Englewood – you dead, then they do shit to your body. Gold Coast…nice.
In his defense it’s probably better to be unemployed in Britain than Chicago.
Probably more lucrative. True.
Have you ever visited Chicago?
“Disgruntled Trump voters”? Why would people who voted for Trump the first time around be disgruntled?
I wondered about that, too. Aside from people pissed off about the bump stock thing, who can one point to as an example of a likely disgruntled Trump voter? People hurt by tariffs? A lot of farmers still seem to like him. I suspect a lot of people who didn’t vote for him last time will be voting for him in November.
Openly threatening Supreme Court judges. Classy, Schumer.
I figured this probably came up in the morning links but it bears repeating. What a piece of trash.
Naturally, the whataboutism has begun.
What about Trump “attacking” Soyomayor and Kagan, Trumptard!!!
*clocks on open tab for BudgetAmmo.com*
Yarp.
They’ve been openly threatening the executive for three straight years now. The habit has probably set in.
Link-adjacent to pistoffnick’s post below:
Please please please prosecute this slimy, evil POS.
Congressman, so can’t be prosecuted.
“IT’S RIGHT THERE IN THE CONSTITUTION!”
No, he can’t be prosecuted for things he says in a senate session. And can’t be detained while traveling to or home form congress. But otherwise is fair game. IIRC.
https://twitter.com/CrimeADay/status/1235032640081842176
Sure, Fourscore, plays the kind man to his friends here, but he rules the National Honey Board WITH AN IRON FIST!
“The Hunny Hammer!”
Now THAT is a euphemism.
Historians: Women Invented Grilling To Trick Men Into Cooking
Damn! They’re on to us, girls!
Fun factoid: in his non-stop efforts to
eliminatemonetize waste, Henry Ford invented the charcoal briquette. He included a bag with auto purchases and suggest cook-outs as part of a fun day’s family excursion.The briquettes were made from the bits of wood left from making wheels.
Damn! They’re on to us, girls!
“I was mesmerized by the flames, and the aroma of meat. The next thing I knew….”
I’m guessing it wasn’t a woman who wondered what would happen if you grilled a chicken with a half-full beer can shoved up its cavity.
Oh, like women never . . .
*thinks better of completing comment*
Coward!
i did that back in my meat-eating days. i drank half the beer, tripoded the bird over the other half, took an hour+ with a 3lb bird. that was the moistest bird i’ve ever eaten.
Dry-brined and spatchcocked is way better. Beer is for drinking.
I have long argued that Trump can’t be an idiot because he survived, and thrived, in the brutally competitive world of big-city commercial real estate, where fools and idiots are stripped to their bones by the sharks in those waters.
I have to admit that this argument has now been seriously undermined by Bloomberg and Steyer. They are, apparently, idiots who somehow made billions of dollars.
Dammit. Clicked the wrong button.
They are, apparently, idiots who somehow made billions of dollars.
In vastly different industries.
Financial info sales isn’t real estate.
I don’t know what Steyer did.
Looking it up, he was an investment banker and hedge fund manager.
Both are from finance.
Hrmmm..
See also Ted Turner.
They arent idiots, they are idiot savants. They have a niche in which they thrive.
Smarts in one area doesn’t translate over to everything.
^This x googol
Anyone who has ever talked to someone with a PhD agrees.
Hey! I resemble that remark.
Knowledge is quite often compartmental.
Trump had to navigate the unending and ungodly bureaucracy and corruption of banks, bureaucrats, politicians, community organizers, contractors, etc… involved in NYC real estate. I think that makes him overqualified to deal with the average DC swamp creature.
Bloomberg had people who did that for him. He made his money on providing financial data. He’s not used to getting dirty. I assume Steyer is similar.
Bloomberg set up his transaction technology in such a way that he basically taxed every trade on the market a fraction of a penny, After that, the money poured in from a firehouse.
There is absolutely no fucking reason for a civilized language to have grammatical gender and inflected adjectives. None.
Romanians are civilized?
Only if you ask Pie.
*Sends OMWC gift certificate for Esperanto lessons*
Kiu parolas la internacian lingvon?
You just say that, because you’re terified of learning a language that has 67 different grammatical genders.
Shut xer mouth
Shit
lordnoble!You would prefer a language where some, but not all, adjectives are verbs as well?
Unlike adjectives in languages like English, i-adjectives in Japanese inflect for aspect and mood, like verbs.
As soon as I learned that there were two counting number systems, depending on the shape of the object, I moved over to the “two nukes were not enough” column.
Yes, Japanese counters are awful. There are more than just two systems!
That said I guess I should feel fortunate that I don’t have guess what the vowels are in words in the written form.
I have no idea how Steyer managed to make his pot. Bloomberg did it by monetizing information asymmetry. Thanks, SEC.
The Virginia Dems are nucking futs. They continue to try to destroy small contractors.
What’s the point of contracting it out if you have to treat them like employees?
That is the point. Are you not paying attention?
I’m not Woke yet
WHY COME BUILDING COSTS KEEP GOING UP?
This state, man, this fucking state. Went from “normal” to “Holy shit, they’re trying to out-California California!” in about five seconds once those shitheels got the majority.
“Holy shit, they’re trying to out-California California!”
This is something i’ve noticed in some Newly blue Legislatures. It’s similar to how Sanders/Warren are arguing for making all private health insurance ileagal, even though even the european countries they cite don’t do that.
Is it because Virginia’s legislature was captured by a certain faction of leftists, or is there a sense in that they have to “one-up” each-other, or is it something else entirely?
They are ignorant and malevolent.
Not sure I need more of an explanation than that.
That doesn’t really explain why they constantly seek to one-up the insanity.
Why wouldn’t ignorant and malevolent people try to one-up each other?
Oh. My. God.
The knock-on effects from that will be spectacular. GCs will probably have to provide health insurance, sick leave, etc. Their crews will have to meet affirmative action standards. And so forth, ad infinitum.
VA GLIBS: GET OUT NOW!
Your state is being Californicated good and hard. And without the gradual introduction of this lunacy over decades to allow the system time to adjust. Run for it, while you can still get a decent price for your house.
Nonpayment of wages; private action; liability for payment of wages due under construction contracts; penalties. Provides that an employee has a private cause of action against an employer who fails to pay wages to recover the amount of wages due plus interest at eight percent annually from the date the wages were due. If the court finds that the employer knowingly failed to pay wages to an employee, the court shall award the employee (i) reasonable attorney fees and other costs and (ii) an amount equal to triple the amount of wages due.
my guess is this is another plank of the VA Dem’s pro-illegal immigrant platform. first was driver’s licenses. now they’re trying to address subs getting stiffed on the job. just list the GC as responsible for their pay and voila! they get paid.
narrator: in the real world, they won’t be hired in the first place
It goes further than that. The federal law allows employees of subs to sue for unpaid wages.
This law will make the GC responsible for everything concerning the employees of subs, which means that they will have to make certain every sub complies with every employment law on every job.
Here’s the AGC’s take on how it will upend everything:
Requiring GCs to now join the negotiations and enter bargaining with unions of subcontractors will
delay construction startsmake unionized subcontractors completely non-competitive, as no GC would contract with one given the delays and added expense of becoming a party to a union contractAh yes, but the Dems are simultaneously pursuing legislation that would require a “prevailing wages” clause on every public project, regardless of whether or not it’s subject to the Davis-Bacon Act.
I guarantee there’s more legislation coming that will handicap non-union contractors.
They’ve started pushing hard against right to work, too, so there might not be non-union contractors anyway in a few years.
saw that prevailing wage bullshit too. and so long right-to-work status.
Virginia’s business climate is about to become as competitive as Vermont’s.
Other states be warned. Keep the Plunderers at bay and for th love of doG keep Federal Bureaucrats and their hangers on out of your borders.
pushing hard against right to work
I get the notion that they are not in favor of personal freedom, autonomy, responsibility, etc.
New York has all of this and more. You’re catching up, Virginia!
“this may force out SWaM subcontractors.”
No way it forces out WaMs. Unless there are some WaMs that are so large now they are trying to keep other bidders out.
That’s just there to motivate the SWaMs to call their reps.
Sounds like subcontracting is now effectively dead in VA. The only people who will be able to do a project will be those that can do it in-house, soup to nuts, and charge accordingly as a one-stop entity, as they’re now going to be legally considered one.
for people that supposedly hate mega-corporations, they sure do make it impossible for anyone but mega-corps to actually do business
There will be more of what I call “house” sub-contractors that have long-standing contractual relationships with the GCs.
The interesting thing is that GCs have been moving more and more to the role construction and financial management firms and further away from self-performance.
The AGC makes it sound like this is bad for the GC, but the reality is that the GCs are going to make the subs lives a living legal hell if this comes to pass as written.
Leftists won’t admit that they secretly love large corporations because those are the ones that can meet all there regulatory wet dreams.
Related to this is that they hate DIY stuff because it means people are getting work done without being caught by their regulatory regime.
Liable to backfire as a pro-illegal measure.
Since the GCs are now the employer, they are going to have to file I-9s for all their subs. Could well result in a lot of illegals losing work.
They don’t mind . . .just put them on the dole!
And then they will have plenty of time on their hands so they can vote.
Makes you wonder how many newly-elected Dems own contracting companies or have spouses/close relatives that do.
They might as well let DC annex NoVa. It’s pretty much the same type of people and for the same reasons.
Funny thing is, DC was made a separate district in order to keep its home state from exerting too much influence over the federal government.
Now, the problem is exactly the opposite.
If only that could happen!
i wish.
I’d veto that.
The shorthand answer for this is that the Donks’ objective (in this and many other things) is that it’s all about control and driving dependency on the State. Nothing outside, blah blah blah. It’s their whole reason for everything.
about control and driving dependency on the State. Nothing outside, blah blah blah. It’s their whole reason for everything.
No, no, no. They are all about fairness, and equality. It just so happens that their solutions always involve Government Control because there are lots of bad people out there being unfair and unequal, and so of course someone has to control that.
Bill Clinton certainly knows how to manage stress and anxiety.
You just get a chubby girl to rub that stress away.
Does my health insurance cover that?
No
DIY
Only the President gets the Caddillac Plan.
Surprising few people here:
Farmers Fight John Deere Over Who Gets to Fix an $800,000 Tractor
Not an expert by any means, but I think there is a solid anti-trust case against John Deere here.
Good luck with that.
Heavy equipment is quickly shifting to a services driven model, primarily because of software and advanced controls.
Here, let me rant about Adobe again.
In agriculture, the shift to “precision ag”, which requires and generates TONS of data, is a major driving factor. The sensors and such that drive that are all on the machines, and there’s no way you could do that without software.
Also, the automation levels are pretty amazing. Self-driving vehicles on the interstate are a long way off, but self-driving farm vehicles are already common. The operators in the combines are more babysitter than driver.
I honestly think the *best* solution to this would be for some other tractor company to offer the same sorts of features without the lock-in. They’d have to accept lower profit margins, but I suspect they’d be able to make it up in volume (though the article does touch on how the service revenue smooths out the fluctuations in sales, but I bet a smart businessman could work around that).
Yeah. To some extent, I think the farmers want to have their cake and eat it too. I have sympathy for them, but these are highly complicated systems.
Yup.
The thing I wonder is what percentage of problems are emissions related? We have seriously reached the point of diminishing returns on passenger car emissions. I’ve no idea what point we are on diesel emissions especially particulates.
My expectation is that a modern diesel run with modest emission controls is probably both reliable and pretty darn fuel efficient. It’s what they have had to do to remove that last bit that is killing reliability.
Tier 4F emissions requirements on diesel engines are the source of innumerable problems. The emissions systems require a computer in order to function.
I sell walk-behind concrete saws that have computer screens now.
It’s nuts.
Based on TFA, a lot of the issues are emissions related. And notice the one farmer’s solution – “we just leave the machine running all night”. That’s gotta be good for Gaia, right?
I doubt emissions have anything to do with it.
These tractors can navigate a path across an enormous field while maintaining a cross-track deviation of less than a foot. They can spray chemicals in patterns with with pretty much one-square-yard of resolution.
Precision navigation, automated guidance, and industrial controls are some of the best in any industry in the world.
This all requires sophisticated software that is totally locked down to prevent industrial espionage.
That’s basically why VW was kind of forced into what they did. Their systems were much better than the requirements when they were designed and were within the margin on the new requirements.
Totally redesign the emissions systems and the entire vehicle inside the planning cycle or put in a software cheat?
By the way, the new vehicle will be less economical and perform more poorly.
Yes, they’re complex. But there are valid business reasons to *not* require a manufacturer’s rep to clear a software fault. Planting and harvesting can’t always be planned out well in advance due to weather. The anecdote in the article was not exactly a rare occurrence. In libertopia, I’d say that the farmer in that story should be compensated by JD because their business practices cost him 15% of his crop. If they don’t want to be liable for that (or for losses when crops can’t be planted due to machinery malfunctions that can’t be fixed), then they’d need to change their business practices.
I agree. But there won’t be progress on that front until there’s competition.
Maybe – but I suspect all the manufacturers are doing the same thing. One of the anecdotes in the article was about a Case IH machine, after all.
Legal action *might* help drive some change, but sadly that’s a slooooooow process.
Interesting article. A while back somebody was talking about how 25 year-old tractors are in higher demand than new ones.
Sure sounds like a huge opening for Cat or somebody else to grab a lot of market share if they were willing to forego pulling the same shit on the farmers.
SB 838, as passed by the House is much more troubling. It will now require a General Contractor (GC) to act as the employer of record for all workers on the project, regardless of who hired them
What could possibly go wrong?
What are you worried about? This won’t be a problem for Bechtel.
Huh. After I hit post, I checked to see if Bechtel is still around. What did I find (via Wiki)?
Bechtel Corporation is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company, founded in San Francisco, California, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia.
Merely a fortuitous coincidence, I’m sure.
The same fortuitous coincidence behind Loudon County’s population increase of 372% and Prince William County’s increase of 117% since 1990. Just dumb ol’ luck!
Heavy equipment is quickly shifting to a services driven model, primarily because of software and advanced controls.
Will your tractor subscription be covered by crop insurance?
Well money is fungible.
If you’d like one of those subsidized agricultural loans you’ve got to buy the old multi-peril crop insurance…
Click for the video he posted.
A) The joint-employer standards under a variety of federal statutes are used to determine when two or more entities are jointly responsible for the terms and conditions of employment over the same group of employees. These terms and conditions include, but are not limited to, having the ability to hire, fire, discipline, supervise, or direct employees.
-Will the GC now have the power to fire & discipline subcontractor’s employees as a result of this bill?
-Who will the employee go to file supervisory complaints?
And will the general contractor now be able to bring somebody to the sub and say, “Congratulations. You just hired this guy. He’s on your payroll, but his job is to keep me apprised of everything you do.”
Mr. Stock Market, I don’t feel so good.
I missed the morning links. Did anyone manage to time how long it took Warren’s withdrawal to be blamed on misogyny rather than the fact that she’s a petulant, lying, unprincipled fraud? I’m guessing approximately 45 minutes.
They were already blaming her poor performance on misogyny so realistically it was -2 months
Warren was actually in the lead at one point, and let me remind everyone she began tanking right after releasing her absurd Bernie-style health care plan. Not only did this for good move her into the far left lane where Bernie was established and popular, but it also debunked the narrative completely that she was a super-intelligent policy wonk whose ideas made sense.
mcafee 2020
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2020/03/05/still-more-coherent-than-biden-john-mcafee-re-enters-2020-presidential-race-shares-re-entry-video-and-alrighty-then-watch/