I need to work out a quad-lingual joke sometime: English, German, French, and Mandarin.
This is not even slightly true.
Base 10 was used because people in one influential area counted the tips of their fingers. But there are recorded (and in some cases still living!) finger counting systems where they count using the gaps between the fingers (giving us base 4 or base 8 depending on how many hands are used), using the thumb and the finger segments (base 12), the same as base 12 plus the finger roots (base 16), etc.
There is literally nothing “natural” about base 10. Indeed it’s not even a particularly useful system; bases 12 and 16 are far more useful given how you can do divide them in many more ways than base 10. It just happened to be the one that was used by the cultures that became most influential.
(Western) base-10 needs two hands. Base-12 is one-handed. (There’s a base-10 system used in China that’s one-handed, mind. Or, rather, it’s one-handed until you reach 10.)
Also some maths operations can be done fairly easily (like division) with the base-12 finger-counting system.
Binary finger counting is a pain in the ass, though. Too complicated for most people.
There are a great number of ways you can count on fingers. You can easily support base 4, base 5, base 8, base 10, base 12, base 16, base 19, and even higher (144, say) with finger counting. There’s nothing particularly “natural” about 10.
I hate you. So much.
All these high-quality puns in response are leaving me kinda blue.
Does anybody actually think he’s going to see the inside of a cell?
Yes. Life is a constant struggle for … the person … who can read without difficulty and not for the one who gets confused by trivial and common formatting. That’s definitely how it works.
“Dissenting” is to the left of “the” in the comic example I gave. Did that confuse you too? If one confuses you and the other doesn’t, I really don’t know what to say. They’re using the SAME FORMATTING. (It’s called “centred text”.) If both confuse you then at least you’re consistent (but very bizarre given how common this formatting is).
…
I don’t even know how to respond to this.
Kirk’s complaint is at the top. Not only is English read from left to right, but it’s also read TOP TO BOTTOM. This fact has been used all over the place in writing, including in comics:
(So ubiquitous is this format that I literally just popped a comic I was in the process of reading up onto my screen and there it was in one of the frames! I didn’t have to go searching.)
You’ll also see it in advertising, in some books with fancier formatting, and a whole bunch of other places.
So remember not only “left to right” but “top to bottom” and you’ll do fine.
Where did you find a picture of my termite!? 😮
French people in general freak me out.
. . .
… Wait for it! …
. . .
I mean they eat pain for breakfast!
I’m pretty sure the other states have similar incentives.
Fifteen. Seconds.
The Model 3 is an overpriced, shoddily-assembled car. The only reason it’s the “affordable” one is because of the huge amount of tax incentives E-vehicles get. If you had to pay the actual cost of a Model 3 you would not be calling it a “fantastic car”.
I know it’s hard for the Tesla cultists to accept, rather like the Apple cultists before them, but Tesla products are not good products for the price.
The North American dialects pronounce the ‘r’ in those words because they’re rhotic dialects. Most British, Australian, and New Zealand accents don’t pronounce the ‘r’ because they’re non-rhotic dialects.
Just remember that Brits don’t pronounce ‘r’ unless it’s not there. So the phrase “Law and Order” is pronounced sorta/kinda like “law rand ohduh”. The two 'r’s that are actually present are not pronounced, but the linking sound between “law” and “and” is the ‘r’ sound. That isn’t in the orthography.
And people say English is a hard language to learn! This is me scoffing!
There’s also this version.
👏