[Buddha-l] Mere mereness

[Richard Hayes]

On Thursday 31 August 2006 05:35, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> Alas, the reach of the anglophones goes far. Sometime between
> 1960 and 1967 someone stole Platon's 'n'.

I'm sorry to hear that. On behalf of all anglophones (who have given 
me permission to speak on their behalf), I apologize to the 
speakers of Dutch. And to Platon and Pyrrhon, whose names were 
unceremoniously truncated by the lazy English tongue.

> The French and Germans guarded the
> 'n' against all lingual intrusions. They also purified their
> computerprograms from anglophone influence. The French even
> didn't accept the word 'computer' but insisted on 'ordinateur'.

The French are always so sensible in linguistic matters, although 
not always as sensible as the Quebecois, who guard their language 
from English incursions even more assiduously than the French.

> It's like the Punjabi habit of dropping the 'a' at the and of
> words, which thurns Buddha into Buddh, while the Bengalis on the
> other hand talk about Buddho.

The people of the southern regions of India compensate for this by 
retaining the 'a' and adding an 'n'. So there we can find Raman and 
Krishnan and perhaps even Buddhan and Platon. (Or do they add 
an 'n' to arrive at Platonn?)

By the way, are you people in Holland mourning the loss of one of 
our favourite planets, Pluton? Myself, I think it's only right to 
decide that Pluto and Neptune are not planets, since neither of 
them is mentioned in the Pali Canon, which contains all truth.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico