Reason #783 that Phnee shouldn't be allowed near politics

[mousme]

There was a lot of screaming at the television tonight. A lot of it involved the words "LIAR!" and "OHMYGODDIDYOUHEARTHAT?!?"

I flicked between the U.S. debate and the Canadian debate. Palin made my ears bleed. "Nucular." Didn't the U.S. learn their lesson about letting people into the Oval Office who can't pronounce "nuclear?" (Yes, yes, I know it's an "accepted" regional difference, blah, blah, WRONG!)

The Canadian debate made me want to throw heavy things at the television. Not because of what was said, although there was plenty of screaming about that. No, what got me was that the moderator intervened, not once, but several times in Harper's favour, defending him against both Dion and Layton on at least two occasions that I can think of off-hand.

What. The. Fuck?!?

I don't understand why this happened. I don't understand why all five leaders didn't jump on him and tell him to shut the fuck up. I kept looking back at my mother and asking: "Why is he speaking? Why are they letting him speak? Why is he letting his lips flap with opinions about the content of the debate? Why?"

There are no words. I am incensed. So much for a "neutral" moderator this evening. The French moderator was fantastic, but sadly only French-speaking Canadians got to see what a well-run debate looks like.

Comments

Stupid American Question

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have to ask this.

Isn't typing in English faster?

Don't you have to do things to your keyboard to get all the cedillas and accents and whatnot? Even if it's just shifting or alting or something?

I am embarrassed to ask, but must know.

*blush*

Re: Stupid American Question

[aislingtheach.livejournal.com]

No problem, I am happy to provide an answer. :)

Thing is, we got all sorts of different keyboards, right? So in Québec we have keyboards that allow easy and fast access to the é, ç, è, ü, ô and all that sort of funky stuff ;)

There is a specific key for é, and then for the others we only have to press the «accent» key and then the vowel and voila! ;)

I have used azerty keyboards as well as english keyboards and I was sooo confused - as well as very much frustrated at not being able to use my funky french stuff (with the latter). And in order to use my irish gaelic fonts, I needed to integrate (as software) a special keyboard to which I could have access with alt + shift. If I had not done this, it would take me an eternity to write basic mutated letters like ċ, ḋ, ḟ, ġ, ṁ, ṗ, ṡ, ṫ, not to mention their ſ and ɼ ! :D

Re: Stupid American Question / French Keyboards

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

Eeep! Sorry it took me so long to thank you for this.

I feel much smarter more sophisticated now. :)

Re: Stupid American Question

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Yep. As aislingtheach said, we actually have keyboards with most of the accents incorporated, which is why to this day English-only keyboards tend to defeat me, even when I'm just trying to type my name correctly. ;)

Re: Stupid American Question

[karine.livejournal.com]

And the apostrophes and quotes are in the WRONG place on the English keyboards!!! :P
[/silly]

Also, in terms of writing in French rather than in English, while French uses more words, and longer one, to say the same thing, there are just some moods, things or expressions that communicate that much better in one language rather than the other. I don't know if you've ever witnessed multilingual people having a conversation, switching back and forth between them, because some things are better communicated with a certain French expression despite the fact that they'd been speaking English a moment before, for example...

(edited for spelling, d'hur)

Re: Stupid American Question

[swestrup]

I often have the opposite problem as French keyboards usually get the extra keys for the accented letters by making certain characters like {|}[\], MUCH harder to type. But when programming you need them all the time.

So, I program like a frozen slug when on a French keyboard.