International Unix

[zben at umd5.UUCP]

>>>Wouldn't it be easier to convince the Europeans to speak English? :-)
>>Far easier would it be to get all Americans to speak Dutch... :-)
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>True.  Look at what attempts to be English.  :-) :-)
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The really interesting thing is that it makes perfect sense to a literate
American reader.  (I know, roger, null set :-)  One feels a sense of oddness
while reading them, but the meaning is certainly clear enough.

The first would be perfect American English if written in the negative:

>>Wouldn't it be far easier to get <random predicate>

The second implies to me that the referent is actually alive and attempting
to pass itself off somehow!  This might be something like the English idiom
"on a plane" giving foreign readers a mental picture of riding on the
*outside* of the fuselage of the plane, or of asking for "the milk" to mean
"give me all the milk in creation".

Not to mention "Throw your father down the stairs his hat!"  :-)

-- 
Ben Cranston  ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben  zben at umd2.ARPA