I think Baton Rouge, Louisiana has got a nice name, hasn't it?

Americans are inherently much against statism. However, are the bureaucrats in its government naturally apt to be wanting to be more of statists deep inside their hearts?

English became the lingua franca of the world. In essence, it's a phonetic language. By contrast, Chinese is a symbolic language. So the translation of some Chinese words into English can be funny.

A real-life example happened in a Montreal office with a Chinese whose last name is 缪 (spelled commonly as "Miao" in English and pronounced as /'miau/, according to the pronunciation of the original Chinese word). So when one vocal Western colleague of hers learned that her family name is such, the female co-worker uttered "oh my God, her name is Meow" (In English, "meow" means the crying sound made by a cat).

:-)

J said to the store clerk, "I've been kept being asked what my postal code is, for your company's customer locations survey, since last year. Has any new store been opened during the interval?"