[sadact]

Originally posted by Developer:
January 2nd 2003

December 5th 2001

Congratulations. You win, with a time of 4 hours and 29 minutes (If I am not mistaken).

[ZackS]

Originally posted by sadact:
Damn the EU, making me use those pesky metric meters instead of my great british SI meters. What are you on man?

Uhh, the UK uses a mixture of SI and metric units. Official uses (products sold by weight/volume) must be reported in metric, but things like distances between cities are reported in miles. Gas is sold by the liter but efficiency is measured in miles per (imperial) gallon. The only reason the metric system is used at all is because it is forced by law according to the European Union. I've explained this all before.

What are YOU smoking, man?


And as for the watches, yes, my Timex does the 24 hour clock too but you have to do a set cycle just to toggle it. I meant one button to toggle it.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by sadact:
Damn the EU, making me use those pesky metric meters instead of my great british SI meters. What are you on man?

ROTFL. I wondered the same.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ZackS:
Uhh, the UK uses a mixture of SI and metric units. Official uses (products sold by weight/volume) must be reported in metric, but things like distances between cities are reported in miles. Gas is sold by the liter but efficiency is measured in miles per (imperial) gallon.

Please tell me which of the units cited in the above example are metric ones and which are SI ones.

Do not hesitate to ask me for guidance when you discover that your phrase "the UK uses a mixture of SI and metric units" is abject nonsense.

The only reason the metric system is used at all is because it is forced by law according to the European Union.

This also is abject nonsense for which there is no basis in fact. Norway uses the metric system and it is not in the EU. Switzerland uses the metric system and it's not even in the EEA never mind the EU.

The fact that successive UK Governments have used the European Union as a convenient scapegoat for the introduction of metric units in the UK does not mean that we would have not taken the entirely sensible step of adopting the same measurement system as is used by the vast majority of our trading partners anyway, even if we had remained outside the Union.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ZackS:
Do you complain when products made in China sometimes have oddly translated instructions?

Sure, it's a bug that some bits of OS X append AM/PM to the 24 hour clock, but that's because it was made in the US.

Is it really that hard to flip the shorthand date if it's from a US source?

Where is the problem?

On your first point, yes I do. It provides a very poor user experience if a product which you have spent money on comes with instructions that have been translated on the cheap.

Secondly, no, it's not because it was made in the US. It's because it was made by a company that is so incredibly parochial that it places virtually no importance on ensuring it ships an OS and applications which correctly allow people to use their local date and time format.

Thirdly, no, of course it's not. But it's extremely irritating when I have do so in the daily use of my operating system.

And finally, the problem should by now be rather obvious. However, I will just conclude by saying that Apple needs to take a serious look at its quality assurance procedures to ensure that junk like this doesn't get out the door.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ZackS:
And as for the watches, yes, my Timex does the 24 hour clock too but you have to do a set cycle just to toggle it. I meant one button to toggle it.

What on earth is a set cycle?

I've never seen a watch that can't do both 12- and 24-hour time.

[Zadian]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
Please tell me which of the units cited in the above example are metric ones and which are SI ones.

The Si-Units are:
length - meter - m
mass - kilogram - kg
time - second - s
electric current - ampere - A
thermodynamic temperature - kelvin - K
amount of substance - mole - mol
luminous intensity - candela - cd

The SI System ( Syst�me International d�Unit�s) was created 1960 (after years of negotiations). The Meter was invented in the French Revolution and adopted in 1889 by most countries, including the USA and Great Britain.

The main reason for the metric system (and the following SI-System) was to use a decimal based system and to eliminate conversion problems.

more information can be found here:
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/history.html

PS: i think a day should have 10 "hours" and one "hour" should be 100 seconds and a week should be 10 days...

[Mediaman_12]

Originally posted by Zadian:
PS: i think a day should have 10 "hours" and one "hour" should be 100 seconds and a week should be 10 days...

You do realise the French had a brief experemant with 'metric' time.

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
Yes, the menu bar clock menu extra displays the 24-hour clock correctly, but this is only because - absolutely incorrectly in my view - it ignores the system defaults.

It is correct to ignore the default view - it should be completely customizaeble. The menu bar is to tell you the current time, not historical dates. When I want to know what time it is, I want to know it is 11:30. I don't need to know it is 11:30:23 AM (I couldn't care less about the seconds, and I know if it is 11:30 am and not pm). Why waste menubar space for seconds or AM/PM?

But if I'm looking at a file timestamp, I can't tell if it was saved at 11:30 am or pm, so it is important to follow formatting there.

[Zadian]

Originally posted by Mediaman_12:
You do realise the French had a brief experemant with 'metric' time.

I didn't knew that, but then the French did many "funny" or interesting things in the time shortly after the French revolution. After all they wanted to create a new, better and logical society. (And failed because humans aren't logical).

But i realise why they abandoned the idea of a decimal based time system. Some things can't be changed easily, especially if they are such an important part of daily live as it is "time". And it's very hard to overcome century old cultural standards.

Length and mass measurement units weren't cultural standardised (every country had it's own standards), so it was easier to create a new (cultural) standard for them (meter, kilogram).

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by Zadian:
The Si-Units are:
length - meter - m
mass - kilogram - kg
time - second - s
electric current - ampere - A
thermodynamic temperature - kelvin - K
amount of substance - mole - mol
luminous intensity - candela - cd

The SI System ( Syst�me International d�Unit�s) was created 1960 (after years of negotiations). The Meter was invented in the French Revolution and adopted in 1889 by most countries, including the USA and Great Britain.

The main reason for the metric system (and the following SI-System) was to use a decimal based system and to eliminate conversion problems.

Of course I know all that.

The point I was making was that the original poster (ZackS) seemed to be implying that the 'metric' system and the 'SI' system were materially different - he said "the UK uses a mixture of SI and metric units" - when in fact they are virtually the same.

(To be quite correct, we should say that the SI system is itself a metric system).

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by hayesk:
It is correct to ignore the default view - it should be completely customizaeble. The menu bar is to tell you the current time, not historical dates. When I want to know what time it is, I want to know it is 11:30. I don't need to know it is 11:30:23 AM (I couldn't care less about the seconds, and I know if it is 11:30 am and not pm). Why waste menubar space for seconds or AM/PM?

But if I'm looking at a file timestamp, I can't tell if it was saved at 11:30 am or pm, so it is important to follow formatting there.

The danger with that argument is that you can quite easily contrive other situations in other applications where you might not want to use the OS default time format as well. Should you then be able to customize the time format on a per-application basis? If so, then there might as well not be an OS default, unless you're advocating users having to make a messy choice between the OS default and a custom time format for every application that they use. That, of course, then departs from the simplicity which the Mac is renowed for.

The menu bar clock's behaviour is also inconsistent though, because, while it allows you to use a time format which is completely different from your default, it doesn't afford you the same privilege for the date. I obviously don't think it should, but if it's going to let you to do so for the time, then it should let you do so for the date as well. After all, you're not viewing "historical dates", just today's date.

[clebin]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
Strange you should say that, because that is precisely what most people in the EU do already.

And what, pray tell, is so inherently ludicrous about saying "I'll meet you at 20" rather than "I'll meet you at 8"?

My, this was a long time ago.

There's nothing inherently ludicrous about it in a country where they use that notation, but in a country where we use the 12-hour clock people will think you a complete bore and someone incapable of giving a straight answer.

I know a lot of complete bores, and they can't understand why people don't always shop around for the best deal, don't have the best credit card deal, don't do particular things in the most efficient way. Basically they can't understand why you don't apply a cold logic to your everyday life.

Frankly, if you're the kind of person who says "it's 2015" or quibbles over date formats, I would put you in the bore category. All cultures thrive on idiosyncrasies whether they are logical or not. There are enough illogical idiosyncrasies in the English language to fill another 200 pages of this thread, even without our transatlantic differences. It's what makes life so rich.

But to come back to what is a simple premise, even for dumb insular Americans to understand Apple do not always treat international differences with the respect they deserve. A bug like this simply should not appear in a final OS release.

Chris

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by clebin:
There's nothing inherently ludicrous about it in a country where they use that notation, but in a country where we use the 12-hour clock people will think you a complete bore and someone incapable of giving a straight answer.

I know a lot of complete bores, and they can't understand why people don't always shop around for the best deal, don't have the best credit card deal, don't do particular things in the most efficient way. Basically they can't understand why you don't apply a cold logic to your everyday life.

Frankly, if you're the kind of person who says "it's 2015" or quibbles over date formats, I would put you in the bore category. All cultures thrive on idiosyncrasies whether they are logical or not. There are enough illogical idiosyncrasies in the English language to fill another 200 pages of this thread, even without our transatlantic differences. It's what makes life so rich.

I suspect if you look at the history books you will find that all civilizations first used the 12-hour clock. That doesn't mean it is the most logical or sensible, but it was used first nonetheless. Now, presumably at some point those countries which now predominantly use the 24-hour clock had to change. Furthermore, I suspect the change didn't happen overnight, and gained popular acceptance over time.

In the UK at the moment, we are in something of a hybrid situation (as with many other things). Many people still use the 12-hour clock in everyday conversation, but a lot of times in the public arena are published using the 24-hour clock (the on-screen clock on BBC NEWS 24 is one example that springs readily to mind). Furthermore, both Apple and Microsoft use the 24-hour clock by default in their latest operating systems when you set the locale to United Kingdom.

In my mind, the change to widespread use and acceptance of the 24-hour clock in the UK is clearly well under way. Therefore, it is not to be unexpected that some people will start to use the 24-hour clock in everyday conversation (nor, indeed, that the people that do so will generally come from the higher socio-economic groups, where such behaviour is more likely to gain acceptance).

The point I am making is that, as I said above, adoption of the 24-hour clock - which, I detect from some of your other comments, you are certainly sympathetic to the use of - in the UK will not happen at the snap of someone's fingers. It will take time, and some people have to be the ones to start using it.

As far as your more general comment about "bores" is concerned, I first of all have to recite the old saying, "It takes one to know one", since I really believe there is a lot of truth in it. However, on the more substantive issue, I don't really see how you can call someone who takes full advantage of the free market system a "bore", whilst, at the same time, giving (presumably) some term of affection or praise to someone who throws their money around willy nilly without giving a second thought to getting a better deal.

And on the last of your paragraphs which I have quoted above, is there not something of any inconsistency in saying, on the one hand, that all cultures thrive on idiosyncrasies, whilst, on the other, dismissing some people as "bores" rather than just people with particular idiosyncrasies?

[ducasi]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
Why on earth would anyone want to use a time system that gives two hours of the day the same number? We don't do it for minutes, seconds, or even days, months or years, so why hours?

It is utterly nonsensical.

We do do it for minutes, seconds, days, months and years.

When I say "10 o'clock", it's ambiguous. It could either be "10am" or "10pm". When I say "10 past", it's also ambiguous - 10 past what? It's 10 minutes past the hour 24 times a day - how do we cope??? Would you give each minute of the day a different number? Likewise, seconds.

Days... "Tuesday"? Which Tuesday? Months... Which April do you mean? The last one or the next one? Even years are ambiguous - did you mean B.C. or A.D.?

Having known other people who tried to live a 24 hour clock life, all I can say is... get a life.

Oh, and Apple should fix their applications and operating system to make them do what ever their uses want them to.

Cheers --D*S

PS> Confession time... I've got my own pet hate for people who confuse "12 noon" and "12 midnight" with "12am" and "12pm" - times which don't exist. The 24 hour clock removes this confusion. I wouldn't mind using the 24 hour clock, but it's a culture change that's not going to happen any time soon.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ducasi:
We do do it for minutes, seconds, days, months and years.

When I say "10 o'clock", it's ambiguous. It could either be "10am" or "10pm". When I say "10 past", it's also ambiguous - 10 past what? It's 10 minutes past the hour 24 times a day - how do we cope??? Would you give each minute of the day a different number? Likewise, seconds.

Days... "Tuesday"? Which Tuesday? Months... Which April do you mean? The last one or the next one? Even years are ambiguous - did you mean B.C. or A.D.?

Nice try, but you missed the point.

With seconds there is a direct one second-one number relationship within each minute.
With minutes there is a direct one minute-one number relationship within each hour.
With days of the week there is a direct one day-one name relationship within each week.
With calendar days there is a direct one day-one number relationship within each month.
With months there is a direct one month-one name relationship within each year.

The only exception to the above is hours in the 12-hour system. For some utterly bizarre reason, there are TWO hours with the same number within each day.

This leads to ambiguity in a way that none of the other 'ambiguities' that you highlighted do. Face facts.

[ZackS]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
Of course I know all that.

The point I was making was that the original poster (ZackS) seemed to be implying that the 'metric' system and the 'SI' system were materially different - he said "the UK uses a mixture of SI and metric units" - when in fact they are virtually the same.

(To be quite correct, we should say that the SI system is itself a metric system).

Scanning through a few google results, I see that I've been using the term improperly, sorry about that. You probably should have picked up on that from the fact that I was arguing about a mixture of SI/Metric and Imperial units. Jeez, I get a term wrong and in makes my argument make no sense. I'm not a retard, why didn't you just correct me before I made an ass of myself?

[ZackS]

Oh, and a set cycle on the watch is pressing and holding set, then clicking a button about 6 times to get around to the 12/24 option. I just want a button to toggle between the two, what's so hard to understand about that?

[aaanorton]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
Nice try, but you missed the point.

With seconds there is a direct one second-one number relationship within each minute.
With minutes there is a direct one minute-one number relationship within each hour.
With days of the week there is a direct one day-one name relationship within each week.
With calendar days there is a direct one day-one number relationship within each month.
With months there is a direct one month-one name relationship within each year....

With 12h hours there is a direct one hour-one number relationship within each morning and a direct one hour-one number relationship within each evening.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ZackS:
Scanning through a few google results, I see that I've been using the term improperly, sorry about that. You probably should have picked up on that from the fact that I was arguing about a mixture of SI/Metric and Imperial units. Jeez, I get a term wrong and in makes my argument make no sense. I'm not a retard, why didn't you just correct me before I made an ass of myself?

Well, since you were arguing from an opposing position to mine, it was hardly in my interests to help you out, now was it?

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by aaanorton:
With 12h hours there is a direct one hour-one number relationship within each morning and a direct one hour-one number relationship within each evening.

I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever heard anyone refer to 13:00 as being in the evening. Furthermore, even if you could come up with some catch-all term to describe the 12 hours in a day that follow noon, your argument would be still be completely contrived and, really, quite pointless.

It is no coincidence that there is no word to describe the two 12-hour blocks of time in a day, and if people genuinely thought of the 12 hours before noon as a completely different block of time from the 12 after, there wouldn't be such a thing as the 24-hour clock.

[danengel]

Everybody use the format

2003-10-18 21:29:38 GMT+01

and we're all happy. Until then Apple please fix their bugs.

For those metric freaks see the Swatch Internet Time http://www.timeanddate.com/time/internettime.html. It divides the day in 1000 units with no time zones. However it's hardly used.

[aaanorton]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever heard anyone refer to 13:00 as being in the evening. Furthermore, even if you could come up with some catch-all term to describe the 12 hours in a day that follow noon, ...

You mean like... "afternoon"?

your argument would be still be completely contrived and, really, quite pointless.

Pointless??? My position is pointless? Pphhhffff... You got some set of blinders there, pal. Virtually every person posting here has agreed with your initial statement: appending AM/PM to a 24 hour clock is a bug, a mistake. Yet you keep going on and on about how the United States is so "parochial" and Apple is so US centric, simply because we say 1 PM (which is perfectly correct) instead of 1300, for no better reason than that's THE WAY YOU PREFER IT. And then you have the nerve to call my post pointless?
You should really take your own advice and "face the facts"; the world does not revolve around your concept of right and wrong. People have different ways of expressing everything. It is our job as humans to adapt and communicate, not reject and condemn.

It is no coincidence that there is no word to describe the two 12-hour blocks of time in a day, and if people genuinely thought of the 12 hours before noon as a completely different block of time from the 12 after, there wouldn't be such a thing as the 24-hour clock.

This is so silly and idiotic, that I have no comment to offer.
And speaking of silly and idiotic...

I suspect if you look at the history books you will find that all civilizations first used the 12-hour clock. That doesn't mean it is the most logical or sensible, but it was used first nonetheless.

Gee, Professor, tell me more about history! Ancient civilizations were so stupid... Not only did they tell time wrong, their stuff was probably all mis-sorted on their computers. Stupid ancients...

I suspect that if you had any sense at all, you'd know that civilizations first used the sun to tell time. Therefore, before and after its apex (by their reasoning) makes PERFECT sense.
You really need to drop this cause. You've gone for 3 pages now and haven't posted anything valid, let alone interesting, since we agreed there is a bug back on the first page. Ya, you cleared up some Euro metric semantics, but who cares?

[freeandunmuzzled]

Originally posted by aaanorton:
Because eventually some of the people who drive on the left will go to places where people drive on the right, and vice versa

what do you mean 'eventually.??!!! the US is full of people from left hand driving countries (Britain,Japan...) already! I am from the UK and I have lived in the US for 6 years. I never had any problem driving on the right because relatively speaking you are on the same side because the steering wheel is switched. The only wacky thing I did find myself doing was reaching to change gear with my left hand...

ridiculous. as is using two measurement systems when you could just use one.

the problem with the US is you inherited all the stubborn, insular, xenophobic traits of us Brits.

[I Me Mine]

Hey, has anyone got the time?

[sadact]

Hm, I was wondering what day the week started on. Does a week start halfway through the weekend? Which came first, Monday or Tuesday? :-)

[aaanorton]

Originally posted by I Me Mine:
Hey, has anyone got the time?

Ya sure, it's 18.42 PM.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by aaanorton:
Ya sure, it's 18.42 PM.

Well, to be fair, that was rather funny.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by freeandunmuzzled:
ridiculous. as is using two measurement systems when you could just use one.

Precisely. I mean, why not just change to metric and be done with it?

Are people in the US really too stupid to cope with a quick transition? I genuinely don't think they are.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by aaanorton:
You mean like... "afternoon"?

I have also never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever heard someone refer to 22:00 as being in the afternoon.

This is clearly a slight digression from the subject at hand, but you are presumably aware that, just because two words have been joined to form another word, it doesn't mean that the resulting word automatically inherits the meaning that the two words would have if written together but separated by a space. The words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are classic examples of this. One's boyfriend or girlfriend is normally assumed to be one's partner, not just one's friend who is a boy or a girl.

[ducasi]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever heard anyone refer to 13:00 as being in the evening. Furthermore, even if you could come up with some catch-all term to describe the 12 hours in a day that follow noon, your argument would be still be completely contrived and, really, quite pointless.

It is no coincidence that there is no word to describe the two 12-hour blocks of time in a day, and if people genuinely thought of the 12 hours before noon as a completely different block of time from the 12 after, there wouldn't be such a thing as the 24-hour clock.

Um... How about "am" and "pm"???

Frankly there are more potentially confusing and ambiguous things in modern life than the 12 hour clock. Fortunately, being humans (most of us) we are good at dealing with ambiguity. In fact, we usually enjoy it.

Ever heard of something called "humour"?

Some history...

Although some early civilisations divided the day into 12 units, each lasted an average of 2 hours - they weren't necessarily uniform. The romans divided their days into 7 periods such as "matins" and "vespers", and their nights into "watches" of 3-4 hours each. The Saxons had "morning", "afternoon" and "evening".

The 12/24 hour system began to be established with the introduction of mechanical clocks, around about 1300AD. I believe the first mechanical clocks which used the 12 hour system tried to imitate sun dials, so they divided the day into day and night, so midday would be 6. The problem was that as the day began at sunrise, the time varied through the year with the seasons. So instead the day was divided by the meridian, which is (more or less) constant through the year.

The day still started at sunrise. Much of our language (like the words tonight and tomorrow) reflect this. It was much later that midnight was taken to be the end of a day and the start of a new day. Only then would the 24 hour clock make sense. I think that happened around 1600AD.

The 24 hour system counting from 00:00 to 24:00 seems to be a relatively recent invention, dating back to the late 19th century.

Maybe in another couple of centuries we'll all be using the 24 hour clock, with some people trying to persuade us that "Internet Time" is the only reasonable system to use.

If anyone knows more details of the creation of the 12 and 24 hour clocks I'd be interested in hearing them.

Cheers, D.

Edit: How ironic is this: "Originally posted by ducasi on 10-19-2003 12:00 PM"?

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ducasi:
Um... How about "am" and "pm"???

Nice try once again, but "am" and "pm" are not words in the normal sense of the term.

We don't routinely say things like I'll meet you on "Wednesday pm".

We can argue about this ad infinitum, but clearly, In the modern world, there is no reason for the continued use of the 12-hour clock, which is indisputably less sensible than the 24-hour clock.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ducasi:
Ever heard of something called "humour"?

I know very few people who find telling the time funny.

[JKT]

Originally posted by ZackS:
<snip>

Sure, we use a different system for writing dates, but seriously, why do you care? Is it really that hard to flip the shorthand date if it's from a US source?

<snip>

Where is the problem?

The problem should be blindingly obvious by now - it isn't that we are incapable of flipping a shorthand date if we know the source is a US one, it is the fact that our applications present us with a confusion of formats because some of them are badly coded. We have to ask ourselves "is the date in that app the correct format or is it the wrong format?" That is a huge problem which simply should never have existed and which most definitely should not continue to exist now after how many days, months, years of MacOS X! We should be able to look at any date in any application and KNOW that it is the correct format for us because that is what we set up in our sys prefs.

Anyway, another comment on date format conventions. The problem with the US shorthand, be it MM/DD/YY or the written/spoken "October 20" is that it doesn't make any sense grammatically. The thing the US seems to have forgotten is that these constructs are a shorthand for a full English sentence (e.g. "Today is the twentieth day of the month of October in the year (of our lord) two thousand and three"). The English shorthand formats don't break the structure of that sentence whereas the US ones do... Putting it another way, the US formats are bad English.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by JKT:
The problem should be blindingly obvious by now - it isn't that we are incapable of flipping a shorthand date if we know the source is a US one, it is the fact that our applications present us with a confusion of formats because some of them are badly coded. We have to ask ourselves "is the date in that app the correct format or is it the wrong format?" That is a huge problem which simply should never have existed and which most definitely should not continue to exist now after how many days, months, years of MacOS X! We should be able to look at any date in any application and KNOW that it is the correct format for us because that is what we set up in our sys prefs.

Precisely. Aside from the fact that there appears to be a bug in Panther that causes AM/PM to be appended to all 24-hour times, it is ridiculous how many Apple apps ignore your OS default time format (iChat is one that springs to mind).

This is just sloppy - and, indeed, some may say lazy - coding. There is no excuse for it.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by JKT:
Anyway, another comment on date format conventions. The problem with the US shorthand, be it MM/DD/YY or the written/spoken "October 20" is that it doesn't make any sense grammatically. The thing the US seems to have forgotten is that these constructs are a shorthand for a full English sentence (e.g. "Today is the twentieth day of the month of October in the year (of our lord) two thousand and three"). The English shorthand formats don't break the structure of that sentence whereas the US ones do... Putting it another way, the US formats are bad English.

Also a very good point.

What I don't understand is how the US ever derived such a back-to-front date format in the first place!

[ZackS]

Originally posted by kennethmac2000:
Also a very good point.

What I don't understand is how the US ever derived such a back-to-front date format in the first place!

"The X of Y" in basic, nongrammatical English equals "Y X".

The School of Engineering. Engineering School.

The 21st of October. October 21st.

You get the point. It's not grammatical but it's a mental pattern that the English language takes.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by ZackS:
"The X of Y" in basic, nongrammatical English equals "Y X".

The School of Engineering. Engineering School.

The 21st of October. October 21st.

You get the point. It's not grammatical but it's a mental pattern that the English language takes.

Hmmmmmmm.... seems like a pretty lame defence if ever I heard one.