Thank you. I had an *excellent* teacher for the first year and that made such a difference.
I picked up the Swiss accent from my then g/f who was from Basel. She had friends over from time to time and we often talked in German. I obviously picked up some of the linguistic character that way - just as I did with French from my Provencale friends here.
Graham
I hadn't realised that the states could be so individual in that respect. Naturally I'm aware they have their own legislatures or whatever but I had imagined that a school curriculum would be pretty much uniform nation wide.
In 100 yrs ? It's already been thought about ! Things like that will determine the future path of the EU and the support for it and its institutions. France votes on the new 'European Constitution' this weekend. Many expect a *no*. EU integration may be going too fast for most ppl here.
Latin always struck me as a pretty useless language to learn. Didn't have a choice though. Would have far rather learnt Italian or Spanish.
Oh - I know a few words of Swedish btw ( well actually Norwegian - but the Swedes can understand it ) ;-)
Graham
Yes indeed. It escalated somewhat. Born of frustration and unhappiness over certain issues perhaps ?
That'll explain the posts I've seen from certain rednecks who refer to Arabs as camel jockeys and attribute them no intelligence.
I have a friend on msn who used to live in Quebec. She said she felt both herself and her kids were discriminated against for being natural English speakers.
The problem is *nationalism* rather than nationality IMHO.
Lol. I also talk Basic ( several versions ) , Fortran ( university days ), PL/M 51 , Pascal and do a little DSP assembler when required.
I saw some C code once ( they were offering me a job ) and thought 'not damn likely' ! I can kinda read it though if it's not too complicated. The regular use of 'void' really gets me though.
Graham
Hm. Over *our* heads? That's interesting, because it seems you're the confused one.
Dave was talking about Germany. You know, it's that country on mainland Europe, kind of south east of the UK and across the North Sea. The Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, you may have heard of him, opposed the war in Iraq. Does that ring a bell? Well, he just called an early election. Maybe you should watch the news. I hear the BBC is good. Do you get them over there?
Pretty similar here actually. Recently some public information leaflets have been printed in several languages for the benefit of non-English speakers.
There's a bit of a debate here about immigration currently. I don't think it's too much to ask that immigrants should be able to speak English. This has been causing a problem since some immigrants ( mainly of Pakistani origin ) have never learnt to speak English and this creates a problem when they need to access public services specifically such as old age care.
Graham
Why ? Somewhat irrelevant to anything that was being talked about in this thread.
And I was talking about the recent British election where Blair was seen as an electoral liability for supporting the US. He has been seriously humbled by the event and will not continue as Prime Minister for much longer.
Who mentioned any German election and what's that got to do with anything ?
Graham
Why draw the line at insects? How can you not understand someone wanting to avoid local food and then say you'd avoid local food (such as bugs)? You are either very stupid or a marginally clever troll. I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm leaning toward troll. I feel sort of guilty for responding to you.
In maybe a two square mile area (five-ish square kilometers) of Bangkok, Thailand, there's Pizza Hut, Hard Rock Cafe, McDonald's, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Sizzler, KFC, Outback, and Au Bon Pain, among many others. I found the food at all of them was higher quality in Thailand than in the US.
Did Blair get to choose the date of the election? Unless I missed something, Dave was talking about Germany, where Schroeder just opted for an early election.
Oops, I was wrong. I didn't realzie they get to pick the election date in the UK too. I had just heard a report about Schroeder doing the same thing when I read Dave's post and mis-connected the two. Apologies to Dave for publicly misinterpretting his post. Some apologizes to Graham too. And with that, I'm done with politics in this newsgroup.
See the execellent reports on the European Constitution referendum fight in France on the 'Courageous French Likely To Defeat Globalist Elite's Plans For A European Constitution' page at
He sure did ! He had about another year to run if he wanted IIRC.
I'm puzzled how that could have come into the discussion.
Graham
I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be better if we had fixed elections actually so that temporary popularity effects would count for less.
No problem. Thanks for your explanation.
Graham
in article snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com, Pooh Bear at snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote on 27/05/2005 06:35:
I wouldn't say "seriously" ... The majority of the Labour Party in Parliament is so much more than the final time the Tories scraped through. The swing was nothing at all like when the Tories were ousted. I think the last war in Iraq may have been on some people's minds when they were voting, but nothing like the majority of the voters.
Given the way the Labour Party have shifted to the centre, it's a shame the Tories do not have a credible leader - they might actually be a good opposition, otherwise. Bring back Michael Portillo, or better still, put forward Boris Johnson as Tory leader. That would be a scream :) I'd vote for either of them!
Paul
Education in Scotland is different to that in England. And that before the semi-federal system with the Scottish Parliament.
Now you see what you made me do. Post OT cr@p instead of posting answers on how to fix the hydraulic clutch on a 900 that uses steel rope to operate the clutch.
Charles
in my first post to this
...which explains you bringing Bush, Blair, and Rice into it... how, exactly? See, that's why I pointed out that you're doing it.
But couldn't a small car manufacturer work out partnerships with bigger ones to share technology? Isn't this what SAAB originally did? Doesn't CAD/CAM and contract mfgr plants make it easier to start a car company?
I think if you put an average human in a foreign group he would pick up the language pretty quickly. As they say about necessity...
Schroeder is on his way out. It's the economy, stupid!
Same problems in USA. It used to be that USA immigrants would take language classes at night at the local high school and be proud of it. Now with "Multi-Culturalism" it is an affront to suggest to an immigrant that he should attempt to learn English. But that really doesn't matter in the long term, because his kids will learn English and he will die.
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