Palm CEO brushes off Apple cell phone threat - Page 4

I wouldn't quite describe any of the variations on English as "solid." One could even make the argument that English has survived transplantation remarkably well considering how "soft" it was when England was out and about making colonies.

The English were consistent in one way though as far as I can tell many of England's other former colonies still have insane import duties.

One of the strengths of English is that it came from a society that wasn't afraid of new influences. They accepted words from the languages of their colonies, and others.

Here, in America, we have continued that practice, using many Native American words, and have absorbed many words, and expressions, from the successive waves of immigrants.

France, on the other hand, has done all is could (and still does) to keep all foreign words out of the language. One result of that was a complete lack of interest in it for international relations, or scientific work—even in France!

It does have occasional interesting side effects. One of the many funny things I heard from our fearless leader was when he suggested that the French didn't have a word for "entrepreneur". I suppose that's what we get from a "C" student.

Sort of true and not true at the same time.

English adopted many French words and spellings, hence the U in colour, whilst American English is stuck with spellings from Ye Olde English from the 1700s. Where American English has gone off on it's own though seems to be a recent thing using nouns as verbs. I cringe whenever an English news report heads off into Kent Brockman -age -ize land. Then again, that's mild compared some of the phrases your president comes out with.

Anyway, the point I was making wasn't whose version of English was the best (it's ours obviously - we invented the friggin thing) but that it's annoying that often you get American English as the default and not English even if your computer has it's locale set up ok. In Firefox it's yet another sign that it's a bad MacOSX citizen.

I wouldn't say that. Mac OS doesn't have a British English localisation any more

Aegis, I think that's a case of French re-influence. English picked up lots of words from the many countries that invaded/conquered bits of it, including France and the Teutonic nations, long before the Puritans were chased across the pond, and of course Rome before that.

Really, by the time folks got around to sorting out rules for modern English, America had already become independent and so wasn't under the sway of colonization.

Ugh! I would hate to use him as an example.

Another guy bringing up Bush! Please, we're trying to forget him already.

Actually, you didn't invent it. It came over to you when you were conquered. You had no choice.

It's a matter of numbers, as I mentioned earlier. Hundreds of millions of people compared to about 65 million, unless it's less over there by now.

It's so fun to write about this, isn't it?

And it was an American, Webster, who wrote the first widely recognized dictionary, if not THE first.

Since we are talking about language


Fewer.

I presume you say that because Samuel Johnson left out the word 'Sausage' from his famous dictionary of 1755.


That was 800 years earlier. You got that version.


Add in all the pink bits on the map.

ROFL

But his dictionary was not widely used amongst the population. That was still at the time when books were mostly for the wealthy, and most people didn't read. Websters was used here in the school system.


Heh. Good try.


Ok, you lost me there.

The pink bits I believe refers to spheres of influence; ie., not under direct political control but "friendlies."

Well yes, it pre-dated printing presses.



You're right there. I always presumed that since in ye olde English text where 'color' is quite common, that 'colour' was a later change (post French revolution when many French Protestants fled France maybe) but apparently Webster changed a lot of words in his dictionary in the 1800s.



The 'Pink Bits' are the bits on the world map which belonged to the British Empire and thus which speak English as a first or second language. It largely correlates to the Commonwealth now although most countries no longer like to be coloured in pink. At one point that was estimated to be half a billion people. Still not as many as Chinese of course.

It's interesting that Apple includes 'Australian English' as a dialect too. I was of the impression there was no difference between that and English.

Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755 was written before Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, of around 1450?


A lot of American spelling has dropped letters that we didn't pronounce. I just with we could change far more.


Ah ha! That must be from a British printed map!


There are quite a few dialects, but they are mostly the same, thanks to moden travel and communications.

You've never seen Blackadder have you ?

sorry, somehow, I didn't see this email.

Actually, yes, all of the versions. Some of the best stuff I've EVER seen on Tv.

Well there's a billion Indians in *that* former colony that strictly would be learning British English on top of whatever their native language is (Hindi, Gujarati(?), Tamil, etc.).

Except for the call centres where you gotta speak like an American and pretend your call centre is somewhere in the USA ...Goooo Buckeyes....!!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_State_Buckeyes)

I tells ya what though, the most important language Internationally after English is Mandarin. Then Hindi or Spanish (Spain/ South/Central American/ Mexican). Then French. Actually, screw French.

French is down the list further. I believe Portuguese is after Spanish. Is Mandarin the largest language grouping in China, or might that be Cantonese?

I think we can just lump all English together, as the differences are really minor.

Have you done your normal exemplary work on this, or are you dropping you standards to what the rest of us are working at?

EDIT:

I just did the smart thing, and checked. Sigh! To think that it would have to come to this.

Mandarin is the largest group, as you said.

But, it's a bunch of "related" dilects. Some of them are barely understandable by others. So, what does that mean for the actual numbers?Being that it is China, the country with more dialects than most of the rest of the world, that' not surprising. According to the article in Wiki, there are more Mandarin speakers than those who speak English, but I'm suspicious of that. I don't believe it to be true.

Naah mate, we don't use trash or garbage except when our birds are in Aus or the US trying to 'fit in' - or just get laid in Bondi

3 days! - it's great to see you chaps fighting the cause but I thought we all spoke Microsoft English these days - there's only so many red underlined words you can see before believing it.

Blackadder's old but good though I did see 'Children of Men' last night, a generally dour & dark film but with the most perfect, inappropriate English-humour in a long time. "fugee-face" - wonderful!

Thread RIP

China is actually yeah, a very wide geographic area with many dialects and ethnicities. Cantonese originates from the region of "Canton". In Malaysia for example, immigrants from China say 10-150 years ago come from different regions, speaking Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Khek and others.

My understanding is that a "Unified China" has been a big thing for many hundreds of years. Some of the emperors are responsible for sorting out the written Chinese word - initially they are actually pictographs, eg, a horse character used to kind of look like a scratchy-quick pictograph of a horse. Since I've dropped to your standards, I don't know if I'm talking about a pictograph or hieroglyphic. But anyway the written Chinese word, traditional or simplified, is "unified" and different dialects pronounce the words differently. For example "Magic Five Seasons Restaurant" will have the same traditional or simplified characters on the signboard regardless if it is spoken out in Hokkien, Cantonese or Mandarin. Of course dialects will have slightly different ways of saying stuff, particularly if you're talking about slang and cracking wise about somebody's momma.

The "Unified China" takes on a bold new step under communism and the current socialist-communist government. Also to streamline economic communication within and without China, Mandarin is strongly "enforced" in some way as the "Standard Unified" language in China - traditional or simplified characters in writing... Not sure why everyone just uses simplified characters, but definitely Mandarin is the standard China is going for. Singapore is a microcosm of this, Mandarin is the official Chinese language for the majority Chinese-ethnic population - despite there being Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, speakers. Hong Kong movies, last time I was there, are in Cantonese but in Singapore it is re-dubbed into Mandarin.

Hong Kong is interesting because the people are mainly from Cantonese-speaking regions so that's why that's the main language there. Taiwan though is definitely predominantly Mandarin.

It is possible that there are more Mandarin-speakers than English speakers. This is because if you speak a Chinese dialect you mostly know some Mandarin because that's how you communicate with people of other dialects. So Mandarin-speakers is a superset of dialect speakers by "design" of the Chinese government.... and perhaps for convenience of trade, commerce, communication within and without China. Definitely Beijing and Shanghai are dominantly Mandarin-speaking.

A lot of ethnic-Chinese around the world speak Mandarin in addition to English, as well as their dialect if one of their Chinese parents is of a non-Mandarin dialect background.

In communist and socialist states forcing everyone to standardise to one language is well, "easy".

What high standards? It's definitely dropping, I gotta reserve energy for real-world activities, can't friggin' devote all my brilliance to these forums.......

Yeah, Portuguese because of Brazil, I think. But meh.... English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, if I could learn any language besides my current white trash state of just really knowing English (yeah lump all English together - American, British, Australian, whatever... differences are mainly local slang).

....Yeah, your "birds" certainly get "action" in Bondi and surrounds ...

You mean it's not just me when I visit? The sluts!!