Languages/Expressions (Was: why you should tell friends to save you electronic stuff :))

On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 11:42:15PM +0000, Jules Richardson wrote: They can, if all the parties in question can actually speak the language. This discussion reminds me of freshman English in college. I had Dr. Dutt, a woman from India who went to college in England and was trying to teach English in America. She loved to compare English and American expressions. Her favorite was "You can have your cake and eat it too." Apparently the English version is "You can eat your cake and have it too." I really didn't seen enough of a difference between the two to warrant the number of times she brought it up. Unfortunately she would frequently say, "This is the word I am using" as she wrote a word on the board because we couldn't understand what she was saying. Now folks, don't start asking the English to learn to spell. I have enough trouble when I see center spelled centre. When I see the English spelling my brain tries to pronounce it like century without the u. If they start working on their spelling we might end up with words like doctor spelled doctah. That would really take some getting used to. <VBG> English spelling I can handle. What they really need to work on, or perhaps America needs to work on, is their date formats and their idea of what a decimal point is. If I see 3.000 somewhere I read it a three, not three thousand. English dates that are between the 1st and 12th of the month are very easy to mis-interpret. I interpret 01/02/2006 as January 2nd, 2006, not February 1st, 2006. Spelling variations are understandable. Differing date and decimal point formats can really cause confusion. According to dictionary.com a decimal point is a dot: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decimal%20point A comma is a puncuation mark: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/comma Now, if we can just come up with a standard date format ... Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.