1 Billion Friggin' Words ... and I only know about ten thousand of them!

Feeling a little left behind? Well, don't worry, we all are now that the English language has hit 1 BILLION WORDS! Actually, it's 1 Billion different uses of words and in some cases phrases! Anywat, it makes you feel VERY left behind. You think you know a lot of words ... well, you're probably not ready for scrabble against a computer that knows all those words! :-) Most of us don't need such extensive vocabularies anyway. It's not like we're going to need to know a 'cerebral hematosis' from a 'dysathria from inebriation'. [What the frig did I just say again???] So, we can happily plod along knowing a few hundred words and be happy knowing that the majority of the English speaking world will understand us. :-) It's a bit funny that this came up, because I had a slight arguement with someone a short while ago regarding this, as they claimed Japanese has more words etc than English ... their arguement being that you just had to join another Kanji to the end of any word and you have a NEW Japanese word. I could have argued that you could join English words together like that to form new words ... butIdecidednotto. [Yes, I just invented that new word too.] :-) I ended up not replying to the guy, as he obviously didn't know enough about linguistics to understand what constituted a word, and what was a phrase [etc]. It would have discombobulated him and left him flummoxed. Let's face it, on the internet you need to chose your battles wisely, and someone you are probably never ever goin to see or argue with again, really isn't worth arguing with.

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Not that I want people to just beleive anything I say ... because whenever that happens, I always seem to screw up. I don't mind people doubting me and stuff. Sure 99.99% of the time I'm 100% correct ... but there is always the odd occassion ... like today. :-) My mother asked me for the answer to a question while she was playing 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' and I answered for her ... and got it wrong! Bwahahaaaaa! The funny thing was, she had the right answer, but just wanted to confirm it ... but went with my answer instead! Bwahahahaaaa! Lesson today, just because I say it, doesn't mean it's 100% accurate. Even I make mistakes, or have bad sources at times! :-) Now, who wants me to discombobulate them some more? :-)