I csn't help but to get in on this one...
>> >I always wondered why Munich sometimes gets shown as Munchen.
>> Because that's what the Germans call it?
>
>Good enough reason. Beats me why it is taught to us as being Munich then.
Why do we call it Germany when it's really Deutchland?
I know that Cymru is called Wales because of the Saxon word 'wealas'
meaning 'foreigner' or 'slave' which is odd because the Saxons were the
foreigners.
>> > Extras? It's the same characters. Accented. If you think about it, it
>> actually helps pronounciation.
>
>Not really, well, not in English anyway..
Yeah, the phonetic english letters confuse me also.
>>Can you explain why English words are
>> pronounced the way they are?
>
>Some I can, others I doubt if Mr. Oxford himself could explain.
>
>>Like not how they are spelt?
>
>Indeed, english spelling and grammar is awkward to non native speakers.
>Particularly since the rules seem to change depending on the word, in some
>cases anyway..
Three reasons... Mutations due to surrounding letters (very much the case
in Welsh), Poor and/or lazy pronunciation (i.e. 'spelt' instead of
'spelled') and the introduction of foreign words (i.e. 'fajitas' & 'resume').
>> >all this masculine/feminine/neuter gender and case stuff. Confused the
hell out of me.
>> m/f/n is no that difficult. Just different from language to language.
>
>Well, no not really. Simply doesn't exist in English. Everything is um,
>neuter I guess, we don't have a term for it that we didn't pinch from
>another language actually.
>Trying to think of another language that doesn't do gender (in the
>linguistic sense), Norwegian is almost that way I think, but Indonesian is
>about the only one that is fully ungendered that I can recall. There may
>well be others, I am far from being even mildy competent in this area..
Gender! YUCK! What a bad development (IMHO).
>> >1) Everybody speaks English. ('Cepting a few migrants/boat people....:^)
>
>> Now they do...
Not in the US. (Which I am not criticizing)
>> >3) 240VAC 3 pin sockets are a national standard.
>> I think only the English (and Swiss?) are the ones that want to be
>> different to the rest of Europe - in this case anyway (there are many
>> others).
>
>What about the mains voltage? Does that vary a lot? We're all 240v 50hz.
>(In theory, anyway)
240V was chosen to be the standard to reduce line losses??? Why 50cyc?
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Received on Fri Apr 16 1999 - 10:28:18 BST