Personality

Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.

What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.

My bot finally ran off and started chatting with other bots on her own! I'm so proud of her!

Okay... might be time for me to get offline and get a life...

that's how I learned it

I know we're probably finishing this topic, but I just want to add my last few comments. English is one of the hardest languages because there are so many exceptions to the rules but we just don't realise it because we don't learn it in the same way as we would learn french or german. I mean, do you actually know what a subjunctive verb is? Probably not, because you've haven't sat down and learnt it, yet you probably use them all the time. (Akanke, incidentally, is very picky about non-subjunctive people haha!) Also, how would you pronounce 'ough'? It could be anything: bough, through, cough, though, thought, hiccough...

Just my tuppenny's worth.

Um... I'm an American of Very Little Brain. What's a hiccough? What's a tuppenny?

Hiccough is pronounced hiccup, and a tuppenny is a (no longer existant) two penny coin.

Also, you can spell potato GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU...

Hiccough is the official english spelling of 'hiccup'. I won't insult your intelligence by explaining what a hiccup is. (But Akanke might! Sorry to keep mentioning her, I'm not trying to plug, honest...)

Tuppenny was the old word for two pence. If you give your "tuppenny's worth", it's just a figure of speech meaning you're giving your opinion on an issue.

This hiccup thing is exactly why I say we Americans shouldn't call our language English. They're really two different things. The tuppenny thing makes sense now that I know what a tuppenny is. I've put in my two sense on many occaisions.

Well, it is called "American English" for a reason...

English takes roots from Latin, Norman French, Danish and German because at some point the peoples of these countries established a presence or conquered Britain. Then of course you have the languages of the various peoples who were there first. It's the main reason why every rule has so many exceptions, because words that fit the rule come from one language and words that don't from another. I would speculate that the 'ei' words come from the Danes (or at least somewhere in Northern Europe) and the 'ie' words are from French.

It's the main reason why English is such a fast moving ever-changing language. It comes from the culture(s) in which is was constructed. It's also the reason why it's such a sponge, appropriating words from other langauges willy-nilly. English has the biggest lexicon of any language in the world. It never throws away a word just because people forget what it means. It might just become useful later.

I always thought that part of the reason that English lexicon is so big, is because there is a tradition of making dictionaries in English that actually include all the words that English-speaking people use. In Spanish, for example, there is a tradition of not putting whole groups of words in the dictionary for various reasons, most notably, because they are "too new" or "slang".

I have a response for this in seasons, so if people want to keep going with the whole language discussion, why don't we pick it up there.

Several german words are in the english language because of the Anglo-Saxons.(the word "wife" comes from the german word "Weib" - which is related to a married female)
And, just to point this out, what about the words "rucksack" or the "kindergarten"? (Not to write of the word "kitsch"/"kitschy")