RagnaToad
Shake it like a polaroid picture

Well then, if this is what it's like to be a grumpy old man, then BRING IT ON! There are a lot of things to complain about

I don't understand why they called it football when it's a completely different game, with a completely different type of ball, with a completely different type of .... I could go on for days.

Let's just settle at the fact that Americans like to steal our words and change their meaning. Best example is the word "Liberal". To them it means someone who supports a welfare state. To the rest of the world it means the French Physiocrats, and the later English School of Liberalism, including Smith, Locke, and Ricardo, who believe in limited state intervention into the economy, and free markets.

And then we've got the whole -ization suffix problem.

And the word "mom".

They bastardise the English language.

Yeah they're the so-called indigenous people. Well, 'so-called' in that it's nothing like Australia or Africa or the Americas where there were people living and thriving for millennia before they were "found" by white people. The Maori came here in about 950, from this place they called "Hawaiaki" which is either somewhere in Indonesia or Hawai'i. So that makes everyone here immigrants to a greater or lesser extent.

Oh, and *looks down* ... rugby is far superior to football and American football.

I guess people's idea of "real" football just depends on where he or she lives in the world. Football is still better than soccer, though. And rugby.

As an aside, did you know that the two main islands of New Zealand were, literally a few weeks ago, found to have no official names? They've been calling them "North Island" and "South Island" (no "The" in the names), and intend to keep it that way. Which I think is a shame, as the Maori alternatives are so much more beautiful: Te Whanganui a Tara (North Island) and Te Wai Pounamu (South Island). Hmm yeah just to leak some New Zealand geography

Yeah it's a couple of 100 kilometres from New Zealand, it's just New Caledonia. I don't know why all your European brethren came here and started calling everything 'new' this and 'new' that, but they did. Apart from loads of Pacific Island languages, French is the next most used, pretty much because New Caledonia is so close, and also because the French tentatively tried to take over South Island before the British, and they even speak French to this day in Akaroa, near Christchurch. Of course, you probably have no idea where these places are, but that's all good

Man I really wish I was bilingual, but only speaking English, I really don't have a great need to learn something else. Though I did learn French for three years. Kinda the next most useful language around here, what with Nouvelle Caledonie and all

Google is the most intelligent being on the planet, my friend. Google knows everything, and everything that it says goes. And where I'm from, your football is called 'soccer,' or if somebody is a politically correct prick, 'European football.' 'American' football is just called football.

What's Esperanto? He made a good point in that video (surprisingly); what's the point of making a new language? Only reason I can think of is like a hybridisation of two or more languages (like Bahahsa Indonesia), or a simplification (Simplified Chinese - or does that only apply to written Chinese?).

Noam Chomsky, Major Twentieth Century Writers

He's a linguist and left-wing thinker. Quite possibly my favourite 20th century figure. He's a libertarian socialist, so we'd both agree with his writings.

Here he is with Ali G: YouTube - ali g interviews noam chomsky

http://thefinalfantasy.net/forums/hu...-cow-game.html

Dunno if you've seen this yet. Thought you'd like it. If not, just ignore it

Mean, linguistics? Have you studied nom nom nom nom nom Noam (Chomsky)? I like old Chomsky, and his name.

Yeah learning the finer points of something you enjoy can ruin things. Like when I was studying geology, because I really enjoyed it at school, but to come to uni and to focus on the biology and chemistry behind it all really stripped away the fun for me, so I moved to human geography, which I used to hate, but now I love. Go figure, uni does some strange things at times.

It would suck to be under the US system, here in NZ getting into uni is easy, and they give loans to anyone who applies. I don't know if that's to the discredit of our institutions, but it certainly evens the playing field, and we have fewer of those elitist types here too.

I do know that when Orwell wrote 1984 he was dying of emphesyma (I am sure I have spelled that wrong). The entire novel was written in a small cottage on an island in northern Scotland, and he died soon after. It was his last will and testament; it was his dying vision of what was to come.

It frightens me. Some of the tactics of the government in the books ring true to today - the constant War on Terror is the never ending battle between the nations, terrorist attacks are the shells that drop on Winston's city. You can tell Orwell had given up, but I'll stop here. Once you finish the book, let me know. The ending is unstoppable, unforgiveable, and horrific. It bears the most discussion.

I am free from study for a whole year. I feel nice and free. For this next year I get to be the teacher rather than the student.

I believe he was; but he was also deeply affected, as was Burgess, by what happened to the Russians after their revolution. I can only imagine the hope that scholars had when Marx's work led a revolution that was meant to end in utopia; I can only imagine the despair that took hold when it all fell down. Something akin to it was touched on in a book I read lately, Persepolis - it showed the reluctance of the Iranian people to accept that they had deposed the Shah only to end up with something worse.

tbc...

Hah, I know you weren't attacking Scotland, but most of us have a kind of defensive complex about this place because it gets slagged so much. The government love to wash over the problems that we have by concentrating on our history; the rest of us just mock it, laugh off violence and teenage pregnancy. But it does need solved.

And as for Burgess, yes...unless something is done he could prove to be horribly prescient. Orwell too, but in a different way. Have you read 1984 yet?