Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

If you call him a damn liar, he might reply Tanker. He is easily confused. He may think you are talking about the floods.

Something to impress your (intellectual) friends with.......

English number words are pretty logical, but eleven and twelve don’t fit in at all.
Arika Okrent
25 Feb 16

English number words are pretty logical after a point.

From twenty-one to ninety-nine, the same principle applies: you say the tens place followed by the units place.

But the teens are different! Not only does the ten (which is where the word teen comes from) come after the units place (10+7 is not teen-seven but seventeen) and eleven and twelve don't fit in at all.

Eleven and twelve come from the Old English words endleofan and twelf, which can be traced back further to a time when they were ain+lif and twa+lif.

So what did this –lif mean? The best guess etymologists have is that it is from a root for "to leave." Ainlif is "one left (after ten)" and twalif is "two left (after ten)."

So then the question is, why don't we have threelif, fourlif, fiflif, sixlif and so on?

The answer has to do with the development of number systems over history. A long, long time ago, when the number words were first being formed, most people didn't have much reason to distinguish numbers above ten.

In fact, some languages of primitive cultures only have number words for one, two, and many (ie. more than two). So the basic number words up to ten formed first, then they were extended a bit with the –lif ending.

Maybe there was a threelif, fourlif type system, but 11 and 12 were used more often in daily life. Many number systems are based on 12 because it's divisible by the most numbers, and because you can count to 12 on one hand by using your thumb to count three knuckles on each of the other fingers. (We have the word dozen because 12 is so useful). If 11 and 12 are being used more frequently, the forms for them will stick, even when another system starts to develop.

You can extend that idea to other number words. We have more irregularities of pronunciation in the tens (twenty, thirty, fifty instead of twoty, threety, fivety) because we've been making everyday use of those numbers for longer than we have for two hundred, three hundred, and five hundred).

Thousand is an old word, but its original sense was "a great multitude," a non-numerically-specific, but very useful idea. The words we needed earliest, and used the most frequently are usually the most irregular.

So the short answer is, we created words for 11 and 12 a long time ago by calling them "one left after ten" and "two left after ten." They were more useful to us than the higher numbers, so we said them more and they became a habit that we couldn't shake.

It looks like we are in for months of apocalyptic warnings of a Brexit, together with a good dose of love-ins between our Dave and his new pals in the EU. He will be kissing Juncker next and telling us all what a fine experienced man he is.
Fact is that if these clowns really believe their own stories, they should be making contingency plans to mitigate them. Something which they refuse to do. At least publicly.
The more desperate and comical the orchestrated love fests, the more I am convinced the whole business is rigged. Little wonder much was done behind closed doors. Our Dave battling for Britain. Thank god we have finer men and women when the chips are really down.

The betting are 4/11 on staying in and 5/2 against leaving.

Those odds mean nothing at the moment .
Talk to the public .

Fear will keep us in

How nice of our so-called allies to bully and threaten us into voting to 'stay in'. What a fantastic relationship that will make. Just goes to show what most of us already knew, those unelected, undemocratic cretins don't give a flying fig (can't think of a better word) about the UK and it's people.
I was taught to stand up to bullies. Our forefathers would turn in their graves if they thought we gave in to them now.
2517

though it remains likely that i shall vote "out", i also think that "in" will win the day
there will then be much crowing about how those great concessions swung the vote to stay in - load of rubbish of course

How will the out side feel if we leave and then our trade deal with the EU requires us to have free movement of people?

2517.

Are you one of the bullies?

And there was I thinking you had some semblance of intelligence. You only have to look at my posts over the years to obtain the answer to your question.
2517

Does the €U require the rest of the world to have free movement?

68542 - it almost certainly will, but as eu needs uk badly too, there is almost certain to be considerable horse-trading

btw, i note that switzerland has now withdrawn its application to join eu

MaxK
The rest of the world doesn't have free trade agreements.

Greece in recession, the third largest Eu country Italy performing poor, Germany performing poor. Only needs another recession and the Eu will be history. Could never work from the start, with such different economies and wealth. With a very good chance of another recession, the whole Eu could well implode anyway.

Daily Mail - Healthiest at 30, best sex at 32 and happiest at 39: How age determines when YOU reach your peak (but it's all downhill from 47)

France is doing badly as well. The EU is technically recession now.

We should jump ship, before serious troubles hit the Eu.

Mercedes and Volksvagon threaten to stop selling cars to the brits if they leave €urope.

Same goes for France and Italy, no motors for the brits, along with cheese, wine and thousands of other things.


Yep, those continentals are going to pull the trigger, they don't need the trade anyway.

It only runs at 2/1 in their favour....who needs it?

'THREATEN'? All just words.