Comment moderated for rule-breaking.. Show it anyway

I love history. So very fascinating but just because someone likes it more than a phone doesn't make them weird.

I'm gonna give #1 the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he/she probably said this ironically.

But where is the irony?

Do you mean sarcastically ? I see no irony in this.

Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.

Pffft. What I read: "I'm getting an iPhone for my bday fml" not really an fml if you ask me

Even parents have fallen into the so common desires of society nowadays... (wanting everything related to apple)

Apple sucks! PC and Android are better!

52, Keep dreaming. Instead of wasting your time on OS/platform wars, do something useful. All operating systems are crap.

Couldn't OP just look up St. Simon's whatever on an iPhone? They can do more than make calls. (I've had this thing for months and JUST found that out!).

62, IF the book is old it ain't the same thing. Another problem is that iPhone is too small for reading good books comfortably. Yeah, you can do it, but there are better ways to do it.

I agree with 52, i have a Samsung Galaxy S3 and its way better then an iPhone

iPhone 5 is better than any Android phone and iOS is better than any version of Android.

How about you all quit arguing which one is better. I use both on a daily basis and I personally prefer the freedom of Android, the look, and the speed. There is not 1 thing it can't do. I usually tell people that don't know much about tech to get an iPhone because generally they are very simple.

Ha ha! Y'all got trolled! :P I really don't give ashit. I just wanted the entertainment of watching people argue. But now I have to go to work. Have a nice day. :)

iOS and Android are both really bad. They're both designed to be very closed platforms, and in iOS's case it's an admittedly censored platform.

Until you can install your own OS on your own phone like you can do with computers, you really aren't going to have a very good phone OS.

Sad really

Who even wants an IPhone? Androids are all the rage.

Silly parents, iPhones are for kids!

And sometimes for silly history buffs.

hopefully one day you will get it, and become that rich odd person your parents used to know

#5 are those the extended lyrics from that song my Gotye?

I just had to sing the song when I read that comment... Now you're just some rich odd person that they used to know! Not really in tune, but you can make it work ;)

There's nothing wrong with you. History is one of the most important and awesome subjects. Keep your head up! iPhones are awesome though. :)

If you're not buying them, then post the link here! I'll sell my iPhone to afford it.

That's what I wanted to say too

I know it's a stretch, but what if...(here it comes) what if OP downloads the volumes onto her new iPhone? Not all at once, but one at a time. P.S.- I understand that some people might prefer the actual paper form of books.

It's a 1865 edition!! No electronic device can even come close to that kind of paper.

Your reply should have been, "Sorry mom and dad, but considering my gene pool, normal is not an option." Fight fire with fire I say.

Or, seeing that you hail from France...

"Désolé mama et papa, mais compte tenu de mon patrimoine génétique, normal n'est pas une option." Combattre le feu par le feu que je dis.

Congratulations! You've passed the "show others I can speak French" level!

It was badly translated, at the end at least.
Did you just run the english phrase through goodle translate or something?

I thought google translate was how everyone speaks other languages.

#14, not so fast! Since this is a French site, I'll bet the comment is being reviewed for quality. I suspect this is a direct translation of some English idiom that sounds bizarre in French.

It's fun to tease the French that way. I used to tell my French girlfriend from many years ago that the biggest football game of the year was Les Peaux Rouges (?) versus Les Vache Garcons.

they'd probably just say "Les Red skins" with an abominable accent, you see. Not everything translates, they borrow a lot of words from us.

#32 We say Peaux Rouges for Red Skins, and I beg to differ but you will find much more French words in English than the other way around... Most of your military vocabulary for a start (capitaine, lieutenant, général, armée, canon, pistolet, as a few examples, are French words that gave you the ones you currently use), lots of words in cooking (cuisine, sauce hollandaise, etc), words such as cul-de-sac, savoir-faire, laissez-faire (in politics), diplomatie, docteur, etc etc.
And I'd like to hear your accent in French before you start on ours.

Just a question then, how old are you? Because english has become grafted into almost every sentence french people speak, at least where I live, and in and around my age group (12-28 years)
Words like "challenge" "business" "hardcore" "fun" "discount" and all sorts of other bastardisations of my native tongue are thrown about casually. As well as over used phrases like "What else?" or "Made in..." and swear words. All with a half-assed pronounciation.

I wouldn't mind showing you my accent.

Actually, 32, my high school French teacher told us that the French actually have an official council that regulates proper use of the French language, and they routinely purge foreign influences, including American lingo and the English language, from the French vocabulary. On the one hand, it reminds me too much of George Orwell's "1984," while on the other hand, it would be nice if we English speakers had a council to keep the word "axe" from being used to pose a question.

But I didn't mean formally borrow words from us, I mean day-to-day, on the streets or among french students/citizens/people, they've become heavily influenced by english.
The teenagers get influenced by a lot of rap lingo and other popular phrases and twists from english, the geeks use a mountain of english words from what I hear from my friends when I see them. And for business-like things there are a lot of words un-translated.

Plus, all the memes they use in english, or words related to things they saw in memes or on 9gag...

Aw shit. The rappers are getting to the French youth, too? Where's the next ship off this planet?

#55 > I'm 33, so not exactly light years away from your age group. And true there are quite a few English words in French, especially in the business language for obvious reasons, although I never heard anyone saying "what else" in everyday language. This fad started in the past decade or so to be honest, I never heard much English words in my childhood or teenage years or even in college and I grew up in a regular suburb. We get a lot of American series / movies and nowadays, more and more are available in the original versions in the cinema, TV or thanks DVDs. It does sound cool and fun to use English words when you speak in French but the same way it sounded cool and fun when I was a teenager to speak reversed language.
# 56> you make it sound as if the Académie Française (Académie, here is another word :)) go round threatening people to speak proper French. It's nothing like that. You will just not find an English word in a dictionary when there is a proper translation in French. And yes I think it is import to preserve a language as much as you can, even if it will always evolve. Some French speaking Canadians are much more hard core than we are since they are completely invaded by anglicisms. Language is part of your identity and culture.

it all depends on where you learn french. Here in Canada we are taught Quebecois in school which incorporates a mixture of arcadian french, english, slang, parisian french. Go to France and try to speak it and the reception you get is very very unkind. Our teachers did not warn us for that situation in Paris at the airport when our plane to take us to Rome took off as our plane with us on it landed in Paris....was...an interesting experience.

@61 however, the French have been actively trying to purge its language of english polution, like "Le blue jeans" or "Le hot dog". Americans only started doing this during the "Freedom Fries" era.

EDIT: whoops, didn't see that #56 said the same thing.

Who cares

65 - the "freedom fries era" was by and large said sarcastically by the American populace making fun of the [email protected] politician who suggested it.
If you want a decent language purge, look at WWI. We got rid of lots of German words (my favorite being the German spitz breed of dig getting renamed "American Eskimo" in the USA).

#65 We say "le jean" for jeans and always have, since there is no word in French to describe this type of trousers. And we say "hot dog" as well, never heard anything else to call this sandwich. I heard people from Québec call it "chien chaud" which is the literal translation of "hot dog" but I don't know if this is true.
We're not that extreme, puh-lease -_-

In Quebec the signs often say chien chaude, as using English on signage without French in larger letters is a criminal offense. Fines up to 10 grand per sign, or up to a year in jail for repeat offenders. Their language police are insane, especially considering that Quebecois is barely more French than creole is.

French is a larger part of the English language than the other way around. That's because for a large part of the late Middle Ages French was the language of the educated. France also invaded Britain. So the British language has French influences in the sciences due to the great number of works written in French and the English everyday language has French influences due to the normands' invasion. English is now coming into the French language because anglophone music is the most played music in Europe. English is also spoken by most French as a second language and the incorporation of English into French comes naturally

Originally English was a mixture of the "barbaric" languages of northern Europe, when William the Conquerer conqued Britain, French mixed in with English as the Norman culture mixed in aswell.

If you all really think about it, English and French have similar words to each other because they both have been subjected to Latin. Which a lot of French and English words are based on?

Largest tangential response thread ever.

#150 > French comes from Latin, English comes from Germanic and Nordic languages. The latin sounding words in English come from French

Not all of Canada. In nfld we learned French. I am not understood in Quebec, but I am in St Pierre

I find this totally great, and I say this as someone with an ancient iPhone that was handed down to me and lots of old books. (And a crush on a French history student, but that's neither here nor there.)

#63 - I've not had this experience, though I know people in Paris can be blunt to say the least. But generally, I've not had any troubles about my Canadian accent, and when going out for drinks I play it up for laughs and totally exaggerate. French isn't my first or second language, so maybe the fact that it's fairly obvious I'm not a native speaker makes people more receptive. Who knows.

Anyways, deinitely screw the norms of society. And the tactile pleasure of reading old books is something you can't replicate in the digital medium. Well, not if you're an aesthete, anyways.

shouldn't that be "outrageous accent" to be perfectly correct.... a la Python.

What you got was The 2013 edition of Steve Jobs cellular IPhone #5 extended ratio edition. Happy Birthday.

Wait, what?

Shut up.

OP SAID HIS PARENTS GOT HIM AN IPHONE INSTEAD OF THE BOOKS HE WANTED FOR HIS BIRTHDAY!!!!!!! DO..... YOU UNDER.....STAAAAND?!

You weren't loud enough.