Re: CHAT: Dutch

--- Tim May <butsuri@...> wrote:
> Boudewijn Rempt writes:
>  > On Thursday 11 April 2002 22:09, Tim May wrote:
>  > > Boudewijn Rempt writes:
>  > >  > On Thursday 11 April 2002 20:50, John Cowan
> wrote:
>  > >  > > Boudewijn Rempt scripsit:
>  > >  > > > Purely in alphabetic order, purely in
> alphabetic order. No slight
>  > >  > > > intended, indeed not, wouldn't occur to
> us, not at all.
>  > >  > >
>  > >  > > Don't try to bamboozle *me*.  Had the
> order been alphabetic, German
>  > >  > > would be first and Dutch last....
>  > >  >
>  > >  > Reverse alphabetic? No, I can see this is
> not going to work...
>  >
>  > > I believe he's pointing out that "Duits" comes
> before "Nederlands".
>  > >
>  >
>  > Of course!
>  >
>  > > Well, that's some time killed finding an online
> English-Dutch dictionary...
>  >
>  > Kennelijk ben je erin geslaagd!
>
> Apparently it's not a very _good_ dictionary - the
> best translation I
> can make of that is "Obvious basket you therein
> something [maybe to do
> with being beaten]". o_0
>
> Hmmm...
>
> Deutsch         Dutch   Allemand        Duits
> Englisch        English Anglais         Engels
> Französisch     French  Francais        Frans
> Niederländisch  German  Neérlandais     Nederlands
>
> All the languages except English have some kind of
> "Holland" based
> alternative for Dutch, but it doesn't change the
> position.
>
> Weighting them all equally, it does look like the
> first and last
> positions should be reversed relative to the order
> they took on the
> boat - if we're really committed to being
> alphabetical, that is.
Firstly, the pedant in me wants to correct your
misspellings in the French column. "Francais" should
be "Français" and "Neérlandais" should be
"Néerlandais", and of course, the capitalization is
not necessary, but I see why you used it here.

Secondly, I would suspect that if we didn't want to
show a bias to any particular language, we would
alphabetize the native names of the languages, yet
again making:

Deutsch
English
Français
Nederlands

But in the end, I still don't get the joke. :)

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