All:
Many years ago, I aided Karl Finkemeyer, an IBMer on assignment in NY at
the time from Germany, and a great friend of mine to immigrate to the
US. He eventually became a citizen, and a director at Fidelity
Investments. During the immigration process, his daughter, who by that
time, spoke fluent English and German, showed me a paper which made fun
of pronunciation of words in English. Unfortunately, I did not obtain a
copy, but this discussion made me go and look on-line, hoping to find it.
Although this is not Friday, for those of you that like language
(especially English), Google "English pronunciation poem" or "English is
a crazy language". Lots of good chuckles for language fans. My favorites
were:
https://archive.org/stream/EnglishCrazyLanguageEssay/English%20Crazy%20Language%20Essay_djvu.txt
http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/
the one above as a poem: http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation
Goldsboro, NC 27530
(919) 341-5210 - office
On 03/13/2017 05:28 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote:
"English is a _stupid_ language." Every language is stupid in its own way, some
more so than others. If English were rational and simple, everybody would be using it. ;-)
.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of John McKown
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 1:56 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin <
[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:
It's cultural. Consider how Europeans write dates.
https://xkcd.com/1179/
And significance is subjective. About 10 years ago, I asked an
astronomer, "When is the equinox on Saturn?"
"Nine fourteen." (orally)
September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she
meant, "September, 2014."
In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some century), all local phone numbers
were (303)442-xxx or (303)443-xxxx. People routinely exchanged phone
numbers (orally) by only the last 5 digits. The first 5 were, if not
insignificant, inconsequential.
Computer science professor W.M. Waite used to say, "Top of memory,"
pointing to the floor, and "Bottom of memory", pointing to the
ceiling.
Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top to bottom. We
write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest last, at the bottom. And then we
confuse everybody by calling them "ascending" memory addresses while writing
them in a descending pattern. English is a _stupid_ language.
-- gil
--
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's
called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
Maranatha! <><
John McKown
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