The Jumping Frog of White Trash County

I am now and then confronted by people who think that computers can translate. Often these are people who want to underpay me for a translation (that they surprisingly couldn't get a computer to do).

At any rate, just for fun, I looked up my last post on google.fr (le French Google) and had it e-translated into French. Then I cut and pasted it into babelfish.com and had it e-translated back into English.

It's very funny. The joke about the noun and the verb is actually much better without the lame puns. It's got a sort of exuberant literalism that the original lacks.

Is it "the white refuse" a language?

Today somebody asked with polished curiosity what is my first language. It is English. What we were both speaking.

One of us better than the other, apparently. Ampèreheure, well.

I wonder which language which it thought was my mother tongue. Anacolouthian? Fragmentese? Babbleonian? Is the gibberish a true language? It was probably my first language, come to think on top.

I do not think that this dialectal difference returns to me inintelligible. The differences are subtle: for example, whereas many people observe television or the teeVEE, I Always observe "TEEvee." with the definite article.

I also say "different do not employ whom" rather than "different of" And I the subjunctive when I speak and I employ a negative double from time to time. Not when I write, at the moment even where I speak. Or if I howl at "TEEvee" when the play above. I also like the modal double. As in: "Feemus, would not owe you must howl at TEEvee."

It is always English, however.

Here a joke of linguist for you: Which is a language? A dialect with a gun.

Here another: What the verb do they say to the name? I would ask you to combine, but I am afraid which you would refuse.

Ah, ha ha ha. My god, I am a bundle. I think that I now must fight upwards.

I think my favorite bit is: "if I howl at 'TEEvee' when the play above."

Now there's some poetry for you.

Here's Mark Twain's proof that things go just as wrong without computers.