The Best of Andy Rooney
Sometimes it's hard to decide what to think and write about. What I do is turn to the first thing that occurs to me.
For instance, I might be able to make something out of the difference between the words "some time" and "sometime" and even "sometimes." I'm not sure, but I think the word "sometimes" would come closer to being slang than regular usage. American grammar and word usage puzzles me "sometimes," and I can imagine if I was born in China or Japan, where there are so many more characters in their languages, how difficult that would be to master.
I'm surprised by the sheer number of languages we have in the world. I read somewhere that there are almost 8,000 languages in the world. Some obscure languages are spoken only by a handful of people, and languages like Chinese, English and Spanish are spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
Many more people speak Chinese than English, for example, yet most great Chinese literature probably hasn't been translated into English. I'm sure there are books in Mandarin Chinese comparable to say, "Mark Twain," "The Iliad," or "Gone With the Wind." I wouldn't be surprised if China had produced a writer like Shakespeare and India harbored a Hemingway.
If so, I wonder if their work has been translated into English so I can read it. I don't care what the original language was. Just tell me a good story. I'm probably missing out on reading some of the great Chinese writers of our time.
In school, I studied French but unfortunately, I didn't learn enough of it to be able to talk to the French people when I served in France during World War II (although I always had the feeling my French was better than their English). Of course, I don't think my French teacher at the academy would have been able to order lunch in a Paris Burger King, either!
English is the third most spoken language in the world. The most spoken is Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish is No. 2. English is far from perfect, but I couldn't order something to eat in Spanish or Mandarin.
I think it would be a more cohesive world if more people spoke fewer languages. It's too late to do anything about it, but I think all the people of the world should learn to speak one universal language. Of course, I wouldn't want to be on the committee making the choice.
The Best of Andy Rooney - Humor & Satire Classics
- There's No Joy in Junking Your Christmas Tree
- Food for Holiday Thoughts
- Warning: Antiques are Addictive
- Make Christmas More Like Christmas
- Christmas: Fugeddaboutit!
- Hard Choices in Store
- Try Some of Andy's Christmas Tidbits
- A Homemade Thanksgiving
- The Junk Building Boom
- Vive La French Food
- Is It Music or Noise?
- Presidential Debates Reveal More About the Candidates and Less
- Forget the Birthday Greetings
- Sort Well-Aged from Old
- Silence is a Wonderful Sound
- Politicians Have It Hard
- Time on My Mind
- Police Report
- We're Doing Too Much Kissing
- Home is Always The Best Place to Be
- The Glories of Maturity
- The White House? No Thank You
- An Appreciative Husband's Gratitude
Humor & Funny Stories - We Need A Universal Language | Andy Rooney
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