The average weight of a Brazilian anaconda is 148.5kg. Thusly, the combined weight of 16 will be 2,376kg.

At a football/rugby match, why is it always the fat bloke who takes his shirt off?

Sorry about that.

Norman French ... like French, only different.
Most "French" people as we now know them didn't speak "French" as we now know it but spoke their own local language.


Well, they were Norman ... descended from Norsemen who "settled" in the fertile limestone area now known as Normandy.
To communicate with the Lord of the Manor you'd speak French but, out in the fields, English was still the lingua franca ( sorry), so a sheep, which is Schaff in German, a word brought here by the Angles (or Saxons, not sure which) out in the field became Mouton by the time it got to the Lord of the Manor's table.
As Dally mentioned, many of their words entered our language.
For many centuries if you wanted to show you were "educated" or sophisticated, you'd drop a few French words into your conversations, hence Shakespeare used French-speaking as a theatrical device to show how a character had ideas above his social station.

EDIT - Forgot to mention, as late as the 1790's, only about 12% of French people spoke what we now call French.

Whats the frequency, Kenneth ?

There was a three-part comic documentary done by Eddie Izzard some years ago, [iMongrel Nation[/i, looking at the ethnic origins of the British.

Anyway, one of the segments had him going to Leicester University (IIRC) to learn to speak a little Old English. He then visited rural Holland and went in search of a farmer to ask to buy a cow from – using Old English. And that was an interesting way to show the links between English and Dutch.

I guess that depends on which of the French languages of old, is actually the "Old French" in question.

Why is it that when driving along the motorway, if you happen to glance across at a driver in another vehicle they more often than not can tell your looking at them and will glance back?

This also happens if someone looks at me, I can sense someone looking at me and will look back.

Is this telepathy?

... and of corse "Dutch" is basically the word the Germans use for their own language.

Thanks, I'll do that.

Indeed.

You can see the links really easily in just a few basic words.

So, for instance:

Milk - melk - milch.

Or

Thank you - dank u – danke.

And why do they instantly stop picking their nose when they glance? I know they were doing it, they know you know they were doing it, so why not carry on picking while glancing?