Charles Angelich wrote in a message to Tom Walker:

CA> Nothing particularly wonderful about English really

Except that I'm *real* used to it...   :-)

CA> but German friends have admitted that typing the same 
CA> documentation for a computer program in German requires almost 
CA> twice the typing. They have some VERY long words (mostly 
CA> consonants) that look like joke words (to me) but aren't. :-)

They sure do have some long words.

CA> Personally I would've favored Spanish but the wise choice would
CA> probably be Chinese. They have the longest history and
CA> outnumber everyone else. Lots of people we could chat with. :-)

I'm not too fond of that idea.

CA> IBM is shipping millions of jobs offshore to India which should be
CA> interesting.  90% of the people in India can't read/write English
CA> and the country has over a dozen languages.

Lots more than that,  actually,  maybe hundreds.  But they can't all talk
to each other and use english when they want to.  It's also the language
that they use to conduct their government and technical education in.  And
some of those tech graduates are reportedly *real* sharp,  on a worldwide
basis.

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