Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

How did you cause the crashes?

They're not real words, they're just packing you shove between the real ones.

"Is" is a verb which we can't really do without. "A" is an auxiliary denoting a lack of "definiteness"; as opposed to "the". Scandinavian languages use endings of word to denote definiteness.

Ancient languages used endings (usually) of words to indicate case, person and so on. (Know any Latin?) English is somewhere between. We use auxiliaries for case (to and for), and endings (usually s) to indicate plurals. Possessives use either an apostrophe s, but can also be indicated with "of" preceding.

I think Chinese and Japanese use auxiliaries for pluralising, and, in Japanese, I think they use a different auxiliary according to the thing pluralised. (I think that they only pluralise words if they want to stress that it is a plural - which is why Orientals often don't bother with plurals when they speak English.)

So it looks as if ancient languages are more complex that modern ones, with all their inflexions. It's thought that the first utterances were complete sentences and they were simplified by splitting into words later. This facilitated analysis of concepts and enabled greater understanding of the world.

Not always. The local aborigines duplicate the word for plural, so Wagga Wagga. Wagga means crow.

Keeping stock is expensive.

What would they do with more bulbs? Nowhere to connect them. They didn't know how.

They did not have non-bulb things. Too poor. When people started getting things, the company started installing meters. Yes, they easily found out.

It was also expensive for the company to install meters if all they were using was a bulb or two per house. Not worth it.

Does 'wagga wagga wagga' mean three crows? Seriously there have been anthropologists that claimed the local counting system was something like 'one, two, a hell of a lot'. otoh I don't think Mead was the only anthropologist that ever got trolled.

Nope, there is only two forms, one word means singular and two means more than one. They don't even have any numbers at all.

Theirs doesnt even have two, just one, more than one.

Ours have hundreds of local languages, so it can't be that.

Tho there is this hilarious skit

Means "one minute". Wait a minute. Universal. :-p

Nothing like universal. Never heard of that and doesnt happen here.

I thought the Highway Code says it's "I am prepared/suggest you overtake (or some such).

Neither have I. It might mean, "Please keep quiet" in company or a meeting.

(*Two* fingers of course means "F*ck off," probably in Oz as well is the UK.

Used to in my youth but a finger with the other fingers one the fingerer's side is much more common now.

And I'm supposed to know this how? It's not taught in school.

My wife studied linguistics at Uni - the origin and development of languages.

About the only thing I learned from that is that there are no rules.

For example - plurals - we have singular and plural. One or many. Some languages have 1, 2, many. Some add or change prefix for plurals, some suffix, some use a separate word...

I just make use of her ability to speak like a native in 3 languages, and have a useful amount of another few. We're planning a holiday in Japan, and she's said she'll have to swot up a bit ;)

Andy

In quite a lot of the world a single (usually middle) finger is a phallic symbol corresponding to the UK V sign. AFAIK the V sign is from English heritage only.

Andy

Doesn't it supposedly have something to do with longbows? Or victory?

Depends on which way round it is. Palm inward (usually with up and down movements) means "f*ck off", palm towards the spectator means "victory" or "peace" (man).

The longbow explanation is dubious.

I was once told that it is associated with longbows, where captured archers would have their fingers removed.

The two fingered sign was to say to the enemy I have my two required fingers to pull back the string on my longbow.

And some like the australian aboriginese use the same word twice to indicate more than one.

Frankly, I doubt he will understand anything.