h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...people who pronounce the Dutch painter as "Fan Kock"?

Those dreadful Americans are closer to the Dutch with their Van Go. A little.

Well the usual BritEng pronunciation is Van Goff. Americans at least have the excuse of following the pronunciation of the country in which he worked.

Dutch is a very practical language. What better way to clear out the phlegm of a morning than to say 'Goedemorgen'?

Well said, Ed. I am very glad that there is usually a telephone line between me and anyone speaking Dutch.

I've taken KB's comments re "avoid" vs "prevent" on board.

However, suffice it to say that (to my mind) the one is passive and the other active. And the people on Radio 4 that I heard using "avoid" definitely meant "prevent".

Hmm...not too sure about BritEng. A hootoo friend lately tried to translate Welsh into spelling - they can´t be homo sapiens down there.

No. They *meant* 'avoid'. They were just using the word in a different way than you do.

My theory is that Wales exports its vowels. To Finland.

They should have exported Tom Jones.

They did. To Vegas.

Ed, if I were female I´d say you are not a nice person.

That's what all the women say.

Can anyone suggest the proper adjective and adverbial
variations of the noun tangent?

I want to say tangenital and tangenitally but they
seem wrong somehow.


~jwf~

Tangential. Tangentially.

Two words which were almost made for you.

You've spelt them wrong.

tangential and tangentially.

He did it on purpose, didn't he?

Yes and no.
I honestly didn't know but I was fairly sure
it wouldn't be tangenital. And I didn't want it
to be tangentic or tangentical and tangentically
or tangental and tangentally.

~jwf~

I found the idea of a tangent one of the hardest to believe in mathematics - that a line which touches a circle only touches it at one point. If you can understand that, then the whole of topology is a doddle.

What the eff is complicated about a 90° angle to the radius?

Tangenital is a visual pun.

http://www.photos-public-domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/blue-crayon-drawn-male-gender-sign-or-symbol.jpg


~jwf~

It is hard I suppose to imagine a line not squashing into a circle a teeny little bit. Every time you put a board on the ground, it ought to touch in the centre.