The Peace Arch lies on the Medicine Line, which follows the 49th parallel for over 2,000 miles. The Peace Arch is in Blaine WA, USA and also in Surrey BC, CAN. The Peace Arch is a monument celebrating the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 that ended the War of 1812.
It is built on the exact United States–Canada boundary, between Interstate 5 and Highway 99, in the grass median between the northbound and southbound lanes. It has the flags of the US and Canada mounted on its crown, and two inscriptions on both sides of its frieze. The inscription on the US side of the Peace Arch reads “Children of a common mother”, and the words on the Canadian side read “Brethren dwelling together in unity”.
The US - Canadian border used to be called “the longest undefended border in the world”. Now, the world’s longest undefended border is between Norway and Sweden. There is a significant presence of armed personnel defending the US-Canada border, where travelers now suffer the same indignity as people crossing the India-Pakistan border.
The longest undefended border may be the US-Mexico border, but only from the Mexican standpoint. Persons foing from USA to Mexico do so unobserved, without papers or questions.
Of Norway and Sweden, only Sweden is part of the European Union, so while the border is undefended, there are still customs checks along it. And even though Sweden is for the most part nearer to Finland than Norway is, the Finland-Norway border is longer than the Finland-Sweden border.
(I haven[t been up there since the 1960s, but then, there was just a sign on the side of the road from Finland saying “Border Norway”. There were no passport of customs checks within the Scandinavian union.)
The longest border in Europe if the Finland-Russia border.
TLTE: According to google streetview, there is still only a sign marking the Finalnd Norway border
The present King of Norway is Harald V, who has reigned since 17 January 1991. The heir apparent is his only son, Crown Prince Haakon.
Following the introduction of a parliamentary system of government in 1884, the duties of the Monarch have become largely representative and ceremonial. He or she:
- Is Head of State
- Opens the Storting
- Formally dissolves and installs governments
- Presides over meetings in the Council of State
- Functions as the nominal head or High Protector of the Church of Norway
- Is Commander-in-Chief of the Norwegian Defence Force
- Receives credentials from Ambassadors-in-waiting
- Represents Norway during state visits both abroad and in Norway
- Serves as fount of honour
- Holds audiences with prominent Norwegian figures within politics, industry, commerce and culture.
From this, Norway–Sweden border - Wikipedia
Still in play:
One of the most influential playwrights of his era was Norway’s Henrik Ibsen. James Joyce admired Ibsen’s work so much that he studied Norwegian in order to read his works in the original.
North Carolina native Earle Hyman, best known in the US for playing Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable’s father Russell “Slide” Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” and for voicing Panthro on “ThunderCats”, is a resident of Norway and a fluent speaker of the language. He was awarded the St. Olav’s Medal in 1988 for his stage work in his adopted country. He began his acting career, and his interest in Norway, after seeing his first play at the age of 13 - Ibsen’s “Ghosts”.
Modern Norwegians cannot read Ibsen in the original any more easily than Americans can read Beowulf. In 1907, linguistic reforms were extended to include not just orthography but also grammar. The characteristic Norwegian “hard” consonants (p, t, k) replaced Danish “soft” consonants (b, d, g) in writing; consonants were doubled to denote short vowels; words that in Norwegian were monosyllabic were spelled that way; and conjugations related to neutrum were adapted to common Norwegian usage in cultivated daily speech.
Although Finland has been named " The Land of a Thousand Lakes", Norway has far many more lakes, about 450,000 lakes compared to 188,000 lakes in Finland.
According to the Foreign Service Institute, learning the most difficult languages requires a minimum of 88 weeks (over 2,200 hours) of study time. Languages in this group include Arabic, Finnish, Japanese, and Korean as well as Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese.
In the Finnish language, there is no word for “please.” There is also no future tense.
Turku is Finland’s oldest city, and the favorite city of this article’s author: Some interesting facts about my favorite language, Finnish – thisisFINLAND Foreign Correspondents' Programme.
Dick Biondi, a disc jockey on WLS in Chicago and a friend of Vee-Jay executive Ewart Abner, played Please Please Me on the radio from February 1963, perhaps as early as 8 February 1963, thus becoming the first DJ to play a Beatles record in the United States . Art Roberts, legendary DJ and music director at the time, tells how the record came to be played first at the station:
The record was released on the Vee-Jay label. It was a local Chicago recording company. The owner, Ewart Abner, brought a copy of the record to WLS. I was the music director at the time and listened to his story about a group, and looked at pictures in teen magazines he brought back from England. I figured, what if this group would get as popular in the United States as they were in England and Europe. So I added the record to the list.
Many languages have no single word for “please”. including French, Spanish, Irish, Albanian and Malagasy. English has no single word for “merci/gracias/danke/spasebo”. Even the English “please” is an abbreviated idiom for “if it pleases you”, from the verb “too please”.
You mean like “thanks”?
No translator would ever enter “thanks” as an English translation for “merci”. It is a slangy idiom, not considered standard English. Just as “doon” would not be considered a one-word greeting. Every language has many of these usages, often varying locallyk and not considered standard.
Nitpick: “to please.”
The people who named the holiday “Thanksgiving” might take offense at that idea.
Back on track: Alice “in Wonderland” Liddell’s middle name was pleasance, meaning
a secluded enclosure or part of a garden, especially one attached to a large house.
Are you saying that ‘giving thanks’ is a slangy idiom? It’s a common usage and has been for a very long time.