I was commenting on the fact your quote says “Shit the windows” ("Scheiße das [sic] Fenster) rather than “shoot the windows” (“schießen die Fenster”) (if my translation is correct).
I don’t remember which Gruber said.Though I agree about the absurdity of (incorrectly) translating German to a German speaker!
Your translation is correct, but you read my post wrong. I put the “i” before the “e.”
“Schiess!” (or “Schieß!”) is a strong imperative. It could be made even stronger by adding “mal”: “Schiess mal das Fenster!”
My German isn’t so rusty that I don’t remember the difference between “shoot” and “shit”! :eek:
Or, indeed, “die Fenster” if we need the plural.
Mine is rudimentary, but I sure love languages. If only I could speak more than one!
‘Toc’ is phonetic T in the older British alphabet dating back to the Great War (hence the ‘Toc-H’ welfare organisation, originally based at Talbot House). Only some letters had a phonetic equivalent; Ack for A, Emma for E, Pip for P being some others I can think of.
British-American staff conversations before 1941 focussed on common RT procedures and a new alphabet, amongst other things. The later WW2 British one has Tare-for-T, (not Toc) while such terms as Yorker (a particular bowling action in cricket) were unlikely to be known to Americans. Zebra had the defect of being pronounced differently by the two nations.
A 415 fight group, with chains and knives.
I realize that. What I was asking was: Does the word actually mean something *other *than that in British dialect? Why else would it be used in a work of fiction written in the 19th century? 
Thank you!
Vehicle type isn’t what I was worried about. I was trying to establish that Abe Lincoln 30 was improper and that 8 Lincoln 30 kept with the nomenclature that was established earlier.
But redundancy in the first word is a deliberate feature of radio communications.
Would you believe I watched this last night?
Powell could clearly see the muzzle flashes on top of the building, but they were very far away, and could easily have been mistaken for fireworks.
McClane never shoots at the lights. The gangsters shoot the lights out.
We are shown Powell’s POV, and he sees flashes of light, but hears nothing, so he thinks nothing of it. There’s lots of things flashing atop LA skyscrapers.
It is somewhat unlikely he wouldn’t have heard the shooting, though; you are asked to believe it’s too far away. However, we know Nakatomi Tower is only 35 stories high; it is, in fact, precisely 493 feet high. That is quite close enough to hear gunfire. I suppose it’s possible shots fired from the roof could be behind an acoustic shadow created by the roof itself, but it seems unlikely. The building has many neighbours and you’d hear echoes. You just have to accept it, I guess.
“Die Hard” is a wonderful and immensely important film, but I’ll agree with Roger Ebert; the movie does have a glaring flaw, and it’s the LAPD being a bunch of complete boobs. They are portrayed as comically inept and yet there’s no reason for that to be true. You could have made the LAPD competent and still have the movie go more or less as it does; it would have made Gruber and his henchmen seem even more menacing.