From owner-freebsd-chat Tue May 21 23:45:14 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from postfix1-2.free.fr (postfix1-2.free.fr [213.228.0.130]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 25F1337B412 for ; Tue, 21 May 2002 23:45:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bluerondo.a.la.turk (nas-cbv-2-62-147-134-198.dial.proxad.net [62.147.134.198]) by postfix1-2.free.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA19CAB442 for ; Wed, 22 May 2002 08:45:05 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 918 invoked by uid 1001); 22 May 2002 06:44:17 -0000 Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 08:44:17 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey Cc: Brad Knowles , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c) Message-ID: <20020522064417.GA893@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020519100324.GK44562@daemon.ninth-circle.org> <20020519134348.I67779@blossom.cjclark.org> <20020520195703.A79046@dragon.nuxi.com> <20020521103710.C71209@lpt.ens.fr> <20020521133026.L71209@lpt.ens.fr> <20020522112854.A26107@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <20020522112854.A26107@wantadilla.lemis.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.6-PRERELEASE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on May 22, 2002 at 11:28:54: > > > French-speaking people are so damn snooty sometimes. > > Occasionally you will run into one that doesn't speak English but > > will still be friendly and as helpful as possible, but if you don't > > speak French it seems that most often you will run into people who > > take a "But you must speak French in order to exist!" type attitude. > > Again, this is possibly more the case in Bruxelles than in France. > The worst thing you can do is speak Flemish to them. On the other hand, in Antwerp practically nobody speaks French. Seems funny to me that a nation so tiny can be so sharply divided in language... The Belgians have at least one major improvement in the French language to their credit: they have sensible words for numbers above 69. In France, 70 is sixty-ten (soixante-dix), 71 is sixty-eleven, 80 is four-twenties, 90 is four-twenties-ten, 99 is four-twenties-ten-nine. Surely this situation is something the Academie Française should have been concerned about long ago, but no -- the French find the Belgian number system (70=septante, etc) hilarious. - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message