Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Babies before marriage??

Where can I find a dinner (1636) after sleep (1358)?
How many people accept placing their mother (332) before their girlfriend (6366)?
Weren't we (as nice boys and girls) supposed to place you (14) before the I (11)? I the donkey...
How many of you agree in placing the devil (4802) with a feminist (4803) (or what be worse still, conversely)?
And who the hell uses blakelock (39893)?


This is the one of the most interesting page I have seen in the past few days. Simple count of words which are commonly used in the English (not American) language. This is what they have on their website:

WordCount data currently comes from the British National Corpus®, a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage. WordCount includes all words that occur at least twice in the BNC®. In the future, WordCount will be modified to track word usage within any desired text, website, and eventually the entire Internet.

A very nice experiment which doesn't really produce much but presents itself very well. Do spend some time playing around and you might find some really interesting insights into our vocalising and writing of a commonly used language.

How else would you know that money (227) is more important than God (376) and sex (1236) is far better than marriage (1314) or fidelity (14729)? ;-)

7 comments:

  1. Nice one! How else would we have known all of this indeed...

    Thanks for your comments on my Blog! :)

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  2. You're welcome.

    Think about it, PS. You could actually use it in your marketing research (unless the product goes with a jingle like "dood si safedi nirma mein aaye").

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  3. How else would you know that money (227) is more important than God (376) and sex (1236) is far better than marriage (1314) or fidelity (14729)? ;-) This is what I liked the most about this post of urs.Well presented :)

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  4. Ringrazia la signora Xena.

    Ci sono sensi di interferire l'attenzione di una mente giovane! ;-)

    Pardon il mio italiano.
    Ho fatto alla mattina le olive e trasformarsi in un italiano per il giorno.

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  5. *dazed and confused*

    *takes a second look and thinks she can guess what it says*

    *guessing complete....*

    *has a gut feeling that the guess was a success (although the actual status is pretty much BLANK)*

    *droops for a dictionary*

    ..on second thoughts, mind translating it for me?? *giggle*

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  6. :-))

    You sure are fun. I was wondering which post of mine could earn such comments (when I viewed it in my inbox). I had totally forgotten about this comment of mine!!

    I shall tell what I had intended to.

    Thanks.
    There are ways to grab the attention of a young mind! ;-) (this was in response to your earlier comment)

    Do pardon my Italian. I had an olive in the morning and transformed into an Italian for the day.

    Well, babel doesn't do a good job of translating. :-(

    I am currently in the grasp of Japanese and Italian alter-egos!!
    God help me. Here is one (which your giggle reminded me of) for you.

    A young girl
    Her laugh
    The joys of a winter sunrise.

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  7. Thanx a bunch. You just prevented my hyper-active brain from going crazy, guessing! Sure made life a lot easier !

    Probably I should stop relying on gut-feelins 'cos my intuition has let me down royally today!

    My guess was something like this

    Ringrazia la signora Xena.Greetings Ms.Xena

    Ci sono sensi di interferire l'attenzione di una mente giovane! ;-)U interfere 'n seek a lot of attention.

    *My God…I never did anything like that!*

    Pardon il mio italiano.Pardon me for using Italian in my comment ('in my comment' is implied)

    *Weird, he calls me an interfering ninny ‘n then asks pardon for calling me that in a language I dunno!*

    Ho fatto alla mattina le olive e trasformarsi in un italiano per il giorno.I intially thought u were calling me a 'fatto'...fat gal (which I DEFINITELY am NOT)..but disposed this thought off very quickly. After all, y would a fellow blogger b so rude??..even if he thinks I have a pretty longgg nose ‘n keep pokin’ it into things that don’t concern me.

    I finally decided that u were talking about some Italian maxim 'n linkin' it to the way u've created this blog.

    I don’t believe in assuming things ‘n moving ahead….so, stopped guessing ‘n decided to get it translated! lol

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