1e6 = 1e9

I once worked with a French import who was working on his PhD in English. When asked why English over French, he replied that there was no more beautiful language than English, if for no other reason than its size. His argument was that poetry just doesn't work as well in any other language. Jokes and puns are in the same category, for the same reasons.

I used to work in a language lab, doing studio recordings and copying tapes and stuff (for 75 cents per hour.) I decided that the most beautiful sounding language was Portugese.

But English is probably the most fun language. A sound may have several different spellings, and each spelling may have several unrelated meanings. And, as you note, we have lots of words to play with.

But math is easier in french: What's 4*20+10? quatre-vingt-dix (4-20-10) :-)

English - as a language - doesn't have much to do with English orthography, which is the business of representing the sound of the language in arbitra ry characters, so you can produce a written representation.

English orthography is vile - the written language uses some six different sets of sound-to-character rules, depending on whether a word comes from th e Germanic vocabulary (as most do), the Romance vocabulary (mostly French b orrowings), Latin, Greek, Hindi or Malay.

Most languages have both homophones - words that sound the same but mean so mething different - as well as homographs (like "lead" = Pb and "lead" = guide).

English does have a rich vocabulary, so has more of both than most language s. Chinese does have a lot more homophones than most, but I've not heard of it being categorised as a "fun" language.

Baybe he wad lisseding to subone wid a code.

RL

That is a weird view of history you have there.

It is the native americans who were forced to "accept" the British and other colonists. ("almost annihilated" might be a better description).

It is the natives of India who kicked them out.

Wow, someone seems to have got out of the wrong side of his bed. Don't you ever read or watch comedy where much more outrageous misrepresentations are made in fun to the enjoyment of the audience, often including the butt of the joke? How many times have we seen right here in this group USans put down Canadians, the British, Russians, Europeans in general, etc - and sometimes vice versa -, all in good-willed humour? Or do you consider Indians to be so inferior to you that they have no right to poke a little fun at USans?

Rnglish is obviously not my native language. But I think that the use of "let's" in that context would be allowable within the bounds of colloquial licence. Even if it's not, I think most native speakers would grant it to a non-native speaker.

I see no need to expand on John Devereux's post in answer to those preposterous statements. Except to say that you could be accused of making "an appeal to propagate a bald-faced lie" (your words). The difference bwtween my statement and yours is that you you made them in all seriousness.

Are you claiming that no language existed in America before English became the dominant one?

Four score and ten.

Cheers

It is completely logical, if you count in the ape way, using both fingers and toes.

Seems you did not get it. The french word for ninety is "quatre-vingt-dix", meaning (4-20-10). The answer to the question is the question in french.

Good point. It has already been established that *I'm* in charge.

I did - I have learned in French lessons over half a century ago.

A still more advanced example would add nine to it: 4-20-10-9, quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, which is obviously simpler than ninety-nine or neunundneunzig - right?

Still - counting in 20's needs both fingers and toes, like in French and Danish, for example.

That's insane. America was successfully colonised by the British, and it wa s the British colonists who eventually rejected British rule - and British taxation.

India was conquered and exploited by the British, and the Indian independen ce movement saw itself as an action - by the conquered - to throw out their conquerors. American Independence wasn't a restoration of the Iroquois Fed eration.

India standardised on English because a couple of centuries of English occu pation made it everybody's second language. The sub-continent is host to a number of mutually unintelligible languages, and it was politically easier to settle on one that was foreign to everybody.

The US standardised on English, because it was the mother-tongue of the maj ority, including the rich and powerful. Nothing else had a look-in.

--- I think that, at the time of the rejection - some 150 years after the first discontents divorced themselves from England, the other discontented settlers who had emigrated from England were the real colonizers, and in order to get away from George III and the church of England, considered themselves to be Americans and wanted, fiercely, to get out from under his thumb.

At that time England _was_ George III and, having been brought up by those he trusted and who touted him as being infallibly powerful, was perpetually forced to be bent on achieving the ultimate goal of world domination, and couldn't abide the thought of a bunch of upstarts standing between his wish that the riches of the new world wouldn't be poured into his coffers and loss of that fortune as well as face was unacceptable,, so a military adventure was put in place in order to quell the rebels.

And here we are...

was the British colonists who eventually rejected British rule - and Briti sh taxation.

That's a misreading of the history. The drive for independence came largely from the merchants, who wanted to trade directly with foreign countries, r ather than having to go through the UK, and resented paying taxes to the UK which weren't buying them anything they thought that they wanted.

Once the founding tax evaders had determined on independence, they were abl e to suck in Radical Enlightenment thinkers - like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine - to sell the scheme as a revolt against foreign tyranny - but they p ushed both of the off to Paris as soon as the war had been won and put toge ther a ostensibly "democratic" constitution which has allowed the people wh o own the US to run the US ever since.

The government is always the biggest protection racket in town. The America n colonists were refusing to pay their protection money, so they had to be brought back under the thumb. George III was acting just as any other head of state would have done, and as George Washington himself did in 1791 when he put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

I find the best scope for puns comes from mixing two languages (English and Norwegian for me, but I expect any two languages would work).

Danish is famously convoluted - 90 in Danish (translating literally to English) is "half-fives", meaning halfway to five twenties.