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Love Niven (and Pournelle, too). Great writers.
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Yes indeed. Was saddened to hear that Jerry passed away just a few days ago.
Software Zen: delete this;
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What??? Oh crap - missed that. 
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[^]
They are all over the place!
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it's what you get when you take a Germanic language and then tack on two millennia-worth of words and externally-imposed spelling and pronunciation rules from Latin languages.
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Doubtlessly posted here before The Chaos - Gerard Nolst Trenité , didn't spot it in the previous thread. It really is a mongrel language, but that's also what makes it so flexible.
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How come the word Australia has 3 A's and they all are pronounced differently?
(This has been brought on as my new girlfriend is French and lived most of her life in Spain so is educating me on the weirdness of our language)
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that's true for everyone except Austalian's:
being somewhat simplistic simple for them it's only got 2 ayy's and pronounced sayed 'straya' (all the a's have the same sound and it's all lower casesmall letters - more than that is way too hard for them.)
signature upgrade failed. Please contact our support department during office hours and quote this number: ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif)
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Well y'all speak what ever lingo ya like then. 
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In Spanish the letters always make the same sound. It makes learning it much easier.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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The same in Welsh - but we have different letters and different sounds from the English ones!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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'The cat with nine lives lives next door'
Two ways to pronounce 'lives'.
English is a mess. Actually, it is a joke it is so bad, and English language pedants who insist xyz is correct are just silly. Nothing is, or isnt, correct in English, so bastardised is it.
Heck, even our greatest writer invented thousands of words, and used nouns as adjectives, so why cant any of us! 
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Our English teacher used to say: "Don't be confused. It's written as elephant, but we pronounce it like piano."
(It sounds better in Hungarian )
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Like the, is it, nine ways to pronounce -ough.
Cough, slough, plough, though, thorough, through, er, probably a few more...
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"Je vais aller au parc"
French for "I'm going to go to the park"
The word "To Go" spelled and pronounced two different ways in French.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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No, 'vais' is the first person present form of 'aller', it is not the same word.
--edit-
let me add that the present continous form, 'i am going' does not exist in french, so je vais is just 'i go'.
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You might ponder on 'fox', the male, and 'vixen', the female.
The -en is a female ending (as well as plural) in germanic languages and the f and v interchange often, as in 'van', and 'from'. I seem to recall one is old saxon the other old norse.
Then the 'he goes'. Used to be 'he goeth', in proper southern style english, but apparently we ended up with the northern version.
There are some very close conections between English dialect forms and for example Dutch.
The Brummie yow, for you, is straight out of Dutch, and the yorkshire 't as in "going 't pub" is also used in Dutch. 'thuis is home for example.
Yet these forms are even't officially english despite their obvious ancestry.
It is a mess English, really.
Then you add French on top... just gets worse! 
modified 13-Sep-17 10:05am.
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Read and lead rhyme, and read and lead rhyme, but read and lead don't rhyme, and neither do read and lead.
You also can't have manslaughter without laughter.
I like English - it keeps the foreigners away.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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But read and red do rhyme, with led!
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: it keeps the foreigners away.
I thought that was the customs unit
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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To your rant list, add "adjective order". Nobody teaches you this - or at least I don't recall it ever being mentioned - but there is a definite order to adjectives before a noun which when broken marks you out as a non-native speaker (Possibly a managed speaker?)
Quantity, Quality, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Material or origin, Purpose.
A dozen fine small old oblong green wooden French sports bicycles please. Try it with just one out of order:
A fine small old oblong green dozen wooden French sports bicycles please.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
modified 13-Sep-17 10:24am.
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That's a new one to me, but you are right, it does have a certain flow to it.
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 That was on my list. Hoping to bring the lounge back to the interesting discussions of the pre-otds of yesteryear.
For example I'm currently writing on a French Macbook, which has a different keyboard. The Q and the A are swapped aswell as the M and the B. but most annoyingly you have to press shift to get the "." where as not pressing shift gives you a ";"
What the f*** is that about? How is the ; used more than the . in French.
Even the cheese eating surrender monkey of a bird can't answer that.
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The word "dozen" is a noun, not an adjective. The 2nd example you provided is simply an incorrectly assembled sentence, and that's why it doesn't make sense.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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