Harvard's finest Best Buy employees are not.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I've read that English and Russian are two of the hardest to learn...

I can count to 4 in Russian. That qualifies me for the Russian Upper Class Twit Of The Year Competition.

[ArcticChicken]

I've read that English and Russian are two of the hardest to learn...

In Russia they don't have spelling bees, because Cyrillic is an invented alphabet, so there's only one way to get any one sound. Instead, they have grammar bees.

[Kogarashi]

I can count to 4 in Russian. That qualifies me for the Russian Upper Class Twit Of The Year Competition.

So what does that qualify me for? I can count to 39.

[blas]

I can count past 3 in English. Where I work, that's an accomplishment!

[wagegoth]

I could go on at length and detail about the history of the development of English but I'd rather not get too far off topic

It's fairly simple, English is mostly Germanic when it comes to grammar, due to the invasion of the Saxons. However, some of the old Celtish language still comes through, especially in names and some spellings. There was even some Latin left over from the Romans. Then the Norman French invaded, and added French to an already mixed-up language.

That's why spelling and verb conjugation are not consistent, we have four languages joined together. If you look through an English dictionary, check out the language source of the word. You'll regularly see the above four languages listed as sources for words.

[Andara Bledin]

This is where I fail, wrong book. I can't think of the title right now. But it was the first book she published and there was only a first edition. It's especially frustrating because it's the first book in a trilogy and I can't start reading it on book 2!! That's just insanity.

I have no idea what book you're looking for, but here's another page of her works:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/patricia-briggs/

I suspect, however, that you are looking for a copy of Masques, which is available at Amazon starting at $189. >.<

^-.-^

[wagegoth]

If it is Masques that you're looking for, here's some info from Patricia's site:

MASQUES: The first book of the Sianim series, and my first book. Hard to find, but a good romp!
Masques and its sequel, Wolf's Bane have been resold to Ace, and are to be written into a single book. However, my editor has asked me to write the additional books in the Mercy series first. I honestly don't know when I'll be able to get time for Masques, so I can't give you any idea of when it will be published -- sorry!


I love the Mercy Thompson books, but I haven't been able to get into the others. I was very bummed that I had to pass up the signing she had in SF for Bone Crossed.

[jjllbb]

Honestly, I went to college and I STILL can't spell. In fact, I've had a lot of SC's talking down to me like I was an idiot because I spelled something incorrectly. Spellcheck is just as important as calculators these days. Its nothing to be ashamed of.

[tropicsgoddess]

I'm assuming English and French are two... what's the third which is so hard?

Chinese...number one the characters, two the fact that there's a TON of different Chinese dialects (i.e. Cantonese, Madarin, etc.) and people think Dutch is hard.

[RootedPhoenix]

I think English still wins for the sheer number of times I have thought "Why do you do THIS to ME?!!!"

....and it's my native language. (I don't speak anything else yet, but I will!)