Natural Language Processing with Python

This is a novel, not a text book, although the reader may like to use some of the content of this book for German language teaching or learning. This is a novel that is intended to serve a dual purpose: For reading pleasure and for picking up and/or boosting one’s existing knowledge of German. The book should be read chapter by chapter, starting from Part I all the way to the end of Part II, as the story and the progression of the language instruction and discussion follow a linear thread. As far as the story goes, the reader will find the two main characters, William and Becky from Hong Kong, both college students who have just completed their first year of a degree programme and are now on exchange to University of Freiburg in Germany for a semester – August to December, which eventually turns out to be a bit longer, extending to end of February. This is part of an internationalization programme that they are going through and capitalizing on. On arrival in Germany their first stop

Sam, working as a trainee waiter in a small Italian restaurant near the West End of London, was one day fooled by a bohemian sort of man with a bad sort of logic that led to his dismissal by the head waitress. Feeling lost and trotting along Regent Street he bumped into his girl friend Amy who had just been through a similar scenario, and that made them both laugh away their ‘misfortune’ to start afresh. Sam decided to take a critical thinking course run by a certain Professor Panggloss, a name that rang a bell for him, recalling Voltaire’s famous novel Candide, and the course turned out to be very useful, albeit puzzling at times, which therefore troubled Sam quite a lot, so much so that he had to share his critical thinking problems with Amy, even when she was already away from the UK, holidaying at her aunt’s invitation in Hong Kong. The lovers, separated by at least six thousand miles, carried on their intimate communication using state-of-the-art IT, frequently disturbing each o

This book is a novel modelled on Plato’s Republic as a series of dialogues between a half-retired college professor and his former student, taking place in several weeks in a row on various scenic and memorable locations in Hong Kong – in Central, on the Peak, on Repulse Bay and in Stanley on Hong Kong Island, as well as in Cheung Chau, an outlying island of Hong Kong. The story starts by the professor greeting and receiving his former student Julian to tea and for a friendly chat in the professors’ favourite old teahouse in Central. Their conversation, initially centring around the current events taking place in Hong Kong, soon evolves into an in-depth discussion of the immediate and subtler causes and factors leading to such a state of affairs that has been described by the local media and the Government as ‘public activities’. Since both the professor and Julian find their discussion and exchange very interesting and fruitful, they decide to continue with it in the weeks that follo