🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DrD7E...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>, Simon Pasieka
<spas...@novice.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>
>>It might be odd but you'd better get used to it (I see you already
>>have), its the worlds number one (unless you count Mandarin but that
>>hardly counts).
>>
>
>Mandarin doesn't count, huh? Nice one. I think you might need to come out 
>of your nobody-else-but-British-English-speaking-counts-in-this-world box 
>someday.
>
>Simon

I knew this would happen, mandarin may be the worlds most spoken
language but seeing as 99% of those who speak it live in China and are
too poor to travel it is unlikely many people are going to need it as a
second language so it hardly counts. English on the other hand is spoken
by (other than the British) (most) Americans, (most) Canadians,
Australians, New Zealanders, Hong Kong Chinese (more as an equal rather
than second language) and probably one or two other countries I cannot
think of at this time.

I don't think 'nobody-else-but-British-English-speaking-counts-in-this-
world'. I beleive it is only courteous to do business with people in
their own tongue and find French a very beautiful language to speak
(though I am not fluent I get by on visits to France) and German is a
very direct language, you say exactly what you mean, no more no less
sounds great to me. But English is the most widely spoken language in
the world and is the native tongue of (probably) the worlds most
influential/powerful/important (sadly) country (US) so it is a fact
people need to have an understanding if they are going to travel/do
business/be politically active anywhere outside there own country.

Anyway, I was only light-heartedly correcting someones grammer, perhaps
I should have put in a smiley, humour can get so lost without vocal
inflection and facial expression.

-- 
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jus...@j-catter.demon.co.uk               Beauty is not love. 
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