Plan B Forum

Take the two words, "completed" and "finished".  What is the difference?  For years, no dictionary has been able to define the difference — until Sun Sherman, an American Indian, offered the following observation at a linguistics conference in England.

His response?
• When you marry the right woman, you are 'complete'.
• When you marry the wrong woman, you are 'finished'.
• And if the right woman catches you with the wrong woman, you are 'completely finished'.

His answer received a five-minute standing ovation.

-"BB"-

I am sorry BB, but with no factual information at all about the post above, I smells like a urban legend to me and the post belongs in the Laffs file not lifestyle.

snailgate

And if you're solely of Finnish ancestry and marry the wrong woman, you're completely Finnish and completely finished.

Burning Petard wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:14 pm

I am sorry BB, but with no factual information at all about the post above, I smells like a urban legend to me and the post belongs in the Laffs file not lifestyle.

snailgate

You're right, BP, I'm sure it's as bogus as a four-dollar bill.  But I thought it was humorous.

And 'humorous' can have a place in a regular thread too. I refer you to the "Bernie" meme thread in the "General Stuff and Tabloids" page, for example.

-"BB"-

What's in a word? Letters mainly.

Yeah constants and vowels, with too many of the Welsh.

Gob wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:13 am

What's in a word? Letters mainly.

Over a billion Chinese would probably disagree...

Koreans, Japanese, Egyptians, Assyrians, Maya, Tlingit et al.



yrs,
rubato

As I recall, Koreans use a phonetic alphabet where the letters are based on the tongue position in making the sound; generally, there are three letters to each word. The Japanese predominantly use letters in the Katakana alphabet in most cases as well, although some older words are depicted as characters.

Well, I think there's a question here over what constitutes a letter. Ideograms and languages based upon them do not use "letters" - is that the point? So 1 2 3 4 etc. constitute language; Hangul constitutes language; but neither uses "letters"?

Kamsahamnida

I guess you will have to ask rubato; he was adding to Econo's point that Chinese do not use letters, and I just pointed out that at least two of the six examples he gave do use phonetic letters in their written language. As it goes back to Gob's post pointing out "what's in a word", it's hardy worth arguing about. But then, we don't get a lot of posts here...

Going down the "reductio ad absurdum" argument, there are no Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Egyptian, Assyrian, Maya, Tlingit, ideograms in "a word". Are there?

Maybe, maybe not, or maybe not applicable. Kind of like sleeves on a vest.

What's in a letter?

Words, mainly. Even in China, Korea, Japan and so on.

And what's in an envelope? A letter.

"Watson! A letter opener"

Isn't it really an envelope opener? I guess the name might be true for those old onion skin air mail envelopes where the letter was written on the inside (to save weight) and the envelope opened so you could read it, but I haven't seen them for years.

I'm pretty sure a letter is someone who rents or leases. It's not common but it's possible to open one of them with a letter opener.