D users in Munich, Rome, Venice, or Frankfurt?

[Georg Wrede]

Paul D. Anderson wrote:
> Trass3r Wrote:
>> Georg Wrede schrieb:

>>>> :D good old cliches.
>>>> but well you're right. we simply got the best beer in the world ;)
>>>> Though it's "das WC".
>>> That's a toilet for pets. Der WC is men's room, die WC is the powder room.
>> Nope. There's no differentiation.
>> But "die Toilette" or "das Klo" is more common anyway.

You're joking, right? Everybody "knows" {der|die|das} WC and their 
meanings. (Outside of Germany, that is.) :-)

> Aren't languages wonderful? Here's a language that goes to all the
> trouble to have gender-specific articles and doesn't use them for
> restrooms!!

Actually few languages do. And the gotchas and their history and origins 
are intractable to the casual observer.

> (Yes, I know "gender" in a language doesn't necessarily corellate
> with "gender" anatomically. And I'm not suggesting Engllish is any
> more logical than the rest. A good read on the subject is George
> Lakoff's "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things".)

Well, at least the Spanish got the genders of Key and Lock (la clave, el 
candado) the wrong way. It's like calling 0 male and 1 female. (You do 
the math. I mean, the assosiations.)

A serious point, however, is that (in my first language) Finnish, the 
spoken language doesn't only *not* differentiate between gender, it also 
/doesn't/ differentiate between humans and other instances (be they 
living or inanimate!!!). You'd say

"se meni ulos" -- {he | she | the dog} went out
"se putos" -- {he | she | the dog | a flowerpot | a brick} dropped

Contrast this to "modern, politically correct American English", where 
one says "she" of the programmer, and "they" of any third person. The 
latter of which is not only semantically + grammatically incorrect, it 
also makes sentences cumbersome, but foremost, diffuses and murks up the 
original intent of the author.

> And, BTW, if we're discussing changes to the newsgroup structure, it
> might make sense to have an "off-topic" newsgroup for these kinds of
> discussions.

Errr, the mid-thread derailing of a topic is what makes the most 
entertaining, often even unexpectedly informative (and therefore 
idirectly, very valuable) contributions to our newsgroups.

The fact that (even NG discussions) tend to derail intermittently, does 
seem at first look, as simply an annoyance that only introduces static 
and clutter to an otherwise worthwhile use of bandwidth. Fact is, the 
cost of that is actually less than the benefit, because only by allowing 
it, many treasures otherwise forever undiscovered, are found.

It also allows the posters to feel less tense about their choice of 
words, about their threshold of including associated or whimsical 
thoughts -- thus not reducing brain capacity that would better be used 
to freely advance the issue at hand.

(There's an as-yet unpublished web site (www.bubblefield.com) that 
purports to graphically examine such issues. Also, some of Lakoff's 
writings tangent the issue. But the best proof is: why do a bunch of 
intellectually challenged housewives more than stand their ground in an 
island community, simply by never letting there be a second of silence 
when at least two of them are present. To an outsider the "discussions" 
are a hopeless meandering of one-sentence thoughts directly associated 
up by any one of the previous 4 sentences (by either party), and no 
analytic, rational, or disciplined approach or choice is ever excercised.)

-----

Whatevvva!!

Threads explicitly meant to be off-topic might as well be posted on 
another server, in a newsgroup geared towards entertaining, or in-office 
unwinding. Their Expected Value (as in statistics) to our cause is way 
below that of the in-thread derailments.

And last, discussions in such "officially OT threads", tend to 
spontaneously "re-enrail" way less than those of the "simply derailed" 
threads. What that loses us is a "proper" thread, only it is now located 
  in an unexptected position, which in practical terms is comparable to 
mining for gold outside the beaten path.