From owner-freebsd-chat Wed May 22 1:34:26 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from picard.skynet.be (picard.skynet.be [195.238.3.88]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 10A2337B412; Wed, 22 May 2002 01:33:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [10.0.1.4] (ip-27.shub-internet.org [194.78.144.27] (may be forged)) by picard.skynet.be (8.11.6/8.11.6/Skynet-OUT-2.19) with ESMTP id g4M8XnT02360; Wed, 22 May 2002 10:33:50 +0200 (MET DST) (envelope-from ) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: bs663385@pop.skynet.be Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <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> <20020522064417.GA893@lpt.ens.fr> X-Grok: +++ath X-WebTV-Stationery: Standard; BGColor=black; TextColor=black Reply-By: Wed, 1 Jan 1984 12:34:56 +0100 X-Message-Flag: Your copy of Outlook will expire in 3 days. Please contact Microsoft about purchasing a new license. Remember: software piracy is a felony! Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 09:40:20 +0200 To: Rahul Siddharthan , "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c) Cc: Brad Knowles , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 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 At 8:44 AM +0200 2002/05/22, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > 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... True enough. > 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. Whereas in Belgium, we have septante, quatre-vingts, and nonante. They fixed seventy and ninety, but for whatever bizarre reason, they left eighty alone. > 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. Any time that some French-speaking person starts ragging on the English language, I usually just ask them what the word for "ninety" is in French, and it helps if we had recently been talking about differences between Belgian/Wallonian French versus French/French. -- Brad Knowles, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message