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POPSA little Kiss The older lady was thinking, "Isn't it wonderful that even in this permissive day and age there are still young women who have a little self-respect and dignity?" The young woman, shaking her head and greatly puzzled, asked herself, "Why in the world would any man in his right mind want to kiss an old fossil like that when I'm sitting here?" The Sergeant Major, rubbing his sore face, was outraged that any woman could ever think that a man in his position would try to sneak a kiss in the dark. And the private, grinning from ear to ear, was thinking, "What a crazy and mixed up world this is when a private can kiss the back of his hand and then smack a Sergeant Major in the face and get away with it!"
5
POPSEnglish language in the future In China, this sort of free-form adoption of English is helped along by a shortage of native English-speaking teachers, who are hard to keep happy in rural areas for long stretches of time. An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese.