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From: jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane)
Newsgroups: rec.games.trivia,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: At Last!  The voice of Reason!
Summary: This post contains some random bit of linguistic fluff.
Keywords: bean counters, decade, French, second
Message-ID: <1881@osc.COM>
Date: 18 Jan 90 03:09:25 GMT
References: <50810@bbn.COM> <1484@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> <3612@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> <30874@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <1990Jan16.104013.15688@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane)
Followup-To: rec.games.trivia
Organization: Object Sciences Corp., Menlo Park, CA
Lines: 19

In article <1990Jan16.104013.15688@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> migod@csri.toronto.edu (Mike Godfrey) writes:
>However, there is also a problem when you consider other languages.  The 
>French for "two" and "second" are "deux" and "deuxieme" respectively -- they 
>*are* related.  The same is also true in German (and, I would imagine, Dutch).  
>Do we now rewrite the French/English dictionaries?  If so, how?  We need a 
>new word in French, but we must place it between "first" and "second", unlike 
>English.  More and more confusing.

We already have the word: `second[e]'.  It basically means: of two things, the
one besides the first.  Fortunately for us it's etymologically unrelated to
`deux', so we have the following correspondence:

zero   premier    the best, the ultimate, etc.
un     second	  the runner up, next to best, etc.
deux   deuxieme   two away from the best
trois  troisieme  three away from the best
et cetera...

Easier than English, huh?