Leroy_Brown said:
LOL! But what are they gonna do if they realize calculators can't do fractions?
nonpareil. I've never seen pareils
... I'm not surprised - it's adjectival ! .... means "similiar"
.... and .... I may be wrong, but I believe that at least one company (Texas Instruments ?)
does indeed make a calculator that does fractions ! (Although, if I recall ... it takes a little getting used to, to enable and interpret the display ....) .....it may not be still in production,though.
This is fast becoming a most interesting thread, isn't it ! It may well have started out as a humorous gesture, but in fact it's becoming quite a (serious but fun) discourse on the main difficulties of English as a second language. The incredible number of "irregularities", the homonyms, illogical pronunciation
et al .... !
Someone like Lexico is much more qualified than I am to attempt to explain this - but I'll try to give it a shot in the fewest words possible ....
Basically, English isn't a
pure language at all - but a (linguistically) modern hybrid of Low German, French, Old Norse, Latin and Greek .... with a sprinkling of Goidelich and Gaelic Celtic thrown in for good measure.
It's the ultimate
"pidgin" language !
Thus, the use of certain suffixes and prefixes can differ - depending upon which root language the term comes from. Whole sentences may contain a
totally different vocabulary and have
identical meaning - depending on wether or not they tend to being "Upper Class" (Norman French roots) or "Lower Class" (Low German roots).
Add to this the even more modern complexity of 'colonial' usage (American, Canadian, Australian/New Zealand, Caribbean, Indian ... ) usage ... and, yes ... you will have a few problems with learning English !
...but the stress is
few - we're very tolerant !
We're still sorting it out, ourselves !
Regards,
?W????