Let's do something boring and list weirdnesses in English.
Ever notice that we used to say "1984" as "nineteen eighty-four" but in the present day we say "2008" as "two-thousand eight" instead of "twenty oh-eight"?
Will we still be doing this when 2010 rolls around, or will it still be "two-thousand ten" instead of "twenty ten"?
In A.D. 2101, war was beginning.
Take off every zig! Yeah but aside from "engrish" here :D.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Let's do something boring and list weirdnesses in English.
Ever notice that we used to say "1984" as "nineteen eighty-four" but in the present day we say "2008" as "two-thousand eight" instead of "twenty oh-eight"?
Will we still be doing this when 2010 rolls around, or will it still be "two-thousand ten" instead of "twenty ten"?
Actually, this is kind of an issue of debate... I've heard people say that we should be actually saying "twenty-oh-eight" or something, instead of "two thousand eight", and that makes historical and language sense (looking at how centuries have usually been called), but "two thousand" has stuck in most people's minds, so I don't know if "we should change" will actually change anything.
Why what?
Okay that's kinda interesting.
I also think some people are pretty anal, or used to be, about the whole "2001 was the new millenium, not 2000". The thing is, in astronomical years, 2000 IS a new millenium and 1BC is considered "year zero". They find it a lot easier to work with the numbers that way. Further, if you say that 2001 is the new millenium, you have to say 1901 was the start of the 20th century, not 1900, and that the upcoming year 2011 is the new decade, not 2010.
Quote:I also think some people are pretty anal, or used to be, about the whole "2001 was the new millenium, not 2000".
Bah, 2001 WAS the new millenium, not 2000!
Quote:Further, if you say that 2001 is the new millenium, you have to say 1901 was the start of the 20th century, not 1900, and that the upcoming year 2011 is the new decade, not 2010.
Yeah, I know, I thought of that, and it is kind of annoying. We should just retroactively change all dates and fix things so that we account for the missing year... :D
Wouldn't it be easier to just do it the way astronomers do it and consider 1 BC to be the year 0? Most people do that anyway and it makes sense.
The fact is, it's all completely arbitrary anyway. So, why not do what's easiest to work with, since we COULD technically say the new millenium began on 2003, it being 1000 years since 1003.
Oh I have one thing to add here. If there's no year zero, then not only are the decades "wrong", but the year itself is wrong! It shouldn't even be 2008 right now but 2007! Think about that.
Silent letters.
Bomb
Dumb
Plumb
Thumb makes sense, because you often here people say the B at the end, but it's still retarded. The entire french language is retarded and somehow we get the rejected words with silent non-sounds for absolutely no reason. Then you have unnecessary letters like in the words 'Although' or 'thought' which again, ('which' is also retarded) makes no god damn (N + M = M sound!?) sense.
Sandwitch? Nope. Sandwhich. Still not there. It's a sandwich.
Wich, however, is not used in any way other than in the word sandwich even though (!) it's the exact same phonetically as Which and Which, so why not just use Wich? because people are dum and would get confused if they read that the evil wich tried to steal Dorothy's shoes, wich contain magical powers.
This is why I purposely misspell things as much as possible, I'm eeting, the dumass threw a bom, weet bred, I thot it was altho i cude be rong.
Fuck you Webster.
I think we should honestly create a new calendar! Starting with the date which man first began the neolithic age, The time which civilization first started.
Or we could revert back to the astrological calendar people used for thousands of years before Christ originating from Babylon, Were they went by ages (aeon). Currently we are in the age of Pisces the two fish's and in 2150 we will enter Aquarius the water bearer. Believe it or not Pisces started exactly in the year 1 BCE, So in a sense were still following the zodiac calendar.
I often thought a sand witch was some sort of evil magic user of the beach.
My Hobby: Mentally inserting the wrong curse words during TV show *bleeps*.
Astrology's calendar isn't exactly very well documented, I pick "or not".
Why the heck would we want to switch? First of all, we don't have the neolithic era down to the day, which we would need. Second of all, the astrological calendar system you are talking about would get far too convoluted and would be utterly ridiculous besides.
Whatever your opinion on christianity may be, for practical reasons we really should just stick with the current year system. CE and BCE have commonely replaced BC and AD, so there's that. The technical hurdle alone would be crazy to deal with. We can devise a new one for when we land on Mars, and we will in fact be forced to as Mars years are longer (unlike dog and cat years, because contrary to popular belief cats and dogs revolve around the sun in roughly the same amount of time it takes humans to). Currently we don't really have a calendar system in place for Mars, but upon landing on it we could easily set up a Martian calendar starting with year 0 AC (after colonization, as in my cheaply made space novel/love story/political intrigue novellette).
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Oh I have one thing to add here. If there's no year zero, then not only are the decades "wrong", but the year itself is wrong! It shouldn't even be 2008 right now but 2007! Think about that.
You know, a while ago I realized that decades and centuries are all wrong too... if there's no year zero, why do decades and centuries start on the zero year too?
lazyfatbum Wrote:Silent letters.
Bomb
Dumb
Plumb
Thumb makes sense, because you often here people say the B at the end, but it's still retarded. The entire french language is retarded and somehow we get the rejected words with silent non-sounds for absolutely no reason. Then you have unnecessary letters like in the words 'Although' or 'thought' which again, ('which' is also retarded) makes no god damn (N + M = M sound!?) sense.
Sandwitch? Nope. Sandwhich. Still not there. It's a sandwich.
Wich, however, is not used in any way other than in the word sandwich even though (!) it's the exact same phonetically as Which and Which, so why not just use Wich? because people are dum and would get confused if they read that the evil wich tried to steal Dorothy's shoes, wich contain magical powers.
This is why I purposely misspell things as much as possible, I'm eeting, the dumass threw a bom, weet bred, I thot it was altho i cude be rong.
Fuck you Webster.
Silent letters do have meaning though, either by telling you how to pronounce the other words in the sentence or for historical reasons... I don't like the idea of getting rid of them. Sure English has bizarre spelling rules, but it's a language with the largest number of words of any language ever, and assimilates or creates new words all the time... we don't exactly have the equivilent of a French Academy to choose which words are in and which are out and how to spell them properly.
As for calendar, indeed, there's no real reason to switch when what we have works well enough.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Whatever your opinion on christianity may be, for practical reasons we really should just stick with the current year system. CE and BCE have commonely replaced BC and AD, so there's that. The technical hurdle alone would be crazy to deal with. We can devise a new one for when we land on Mars, and we will in fact be forced to as Mars years are longer (unlike dog and cat years, because contrary to popular belief cats and dogs revolve around the sun in roughly the same amount of time it takes humans to). Currently we don't really have a calendar system in place for Mars, but upon landing on it we could easily set up a Martian calendar starting with year 0 AC (after colonization, as in my cheaply made space novel/love story/political intrigue novellette).
Yeah, and sci-fi stories usually have different calendars on different planets, though there is frequently also some kind of standard calendar they can all compare to for precise date comparisons. It makes sense that you'd need both.
A Black Falcon Wrote:You know, a while ago I realized that decades and centuries are all wrong too... if there's no year zero, why do decades and centuries start on the zero year too?
You see that's the thing. From there the next logical step is realizing that if we apply it to the 1000's, the 100's, and the 10's, there's no logical reason why the 1's should be an exception. Same logic applies. No year zero means that the year 2008 is actually the year 2007.
And that is when I realized we have an absurdity in place. What are we to do? Move the entire calendar back a year? That, would actually balance it. The calendar would then start at the year 0. However, no one's going to do that. So, we might as well just make 1 BC the year 0 AD (meanwhile 1 AD can be 0 BC), as astronomers do, and it'll make things a whole lot easier. It's not really much different than making 24:00 synonemous with 00:00 in military time.
ABF you fucking urine stain/ E and (sometimes) I are used as a silent letter to denote a change in the pronunciation of a letter before it (as opposed to using dots and dashes above the letters)
So:
ABF you fucking URIN stain, carries the characteristics of words like "Urn" causing you to want to pronounce the word as "err en". In fact by adding the silent E at the end, you give the word weight that creates a longer word, causing the U to sound as Y.
ABF you fucking urine STAN, obviously we create a new word (in this case a name) by only changing the way we sound out the A sound. Instead of Ay (as in hay) we get Ah as in apple. The I tells us that we can add the particular A sound to create the new word to reference a permanent spill or mark (in this case urine).
God, I hate you.
"Agape"?
"It means "open"."
"You know what else means open? OPEN!"