Not really? Hole has an absolute definition of a hollow place or opening in a surface or solid.

The better question is usually one to do with relevancy. That there are naturally 4 holes in a t-shirt doesn't matter if I'm asking about how many holes are in a damaged one. The same goes for straw, to what type of hole are you caring about.

Luckily we have a field of mathematics to solve problems like this. "Topology... is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing holes, opening holes, tearing, gluing, or passing through itself" (Wikipedia).

From my (admittedly basic) understanding, a straw is topologically identical to a donut (torus), which has only 1 hole.

I'm British and blame Europe for all the influence, however I was born in Ireland and now live in the UK.

cough spelling bee US

English is my wife's 3rd language. Her spelling, grammer, and punctuation is light years ahead of me.

They also have spelling competition in other languages (like Spanish)

it's a Boolean, not a number. it's either true or it's false there aren't any other options.

Answer: don't ask a topologist

Your own wiki link says the spelling bee in Uganda alone has 10 different languages.

Also Hindi, one of the "3 other languages", is the third most spoken language in the entire world.

I guess what I'm getting at is...you were wrong.

See...I'm conflicted about this. Because every language has nuances that other languages don't - words which are very good at describing an emotion or thought.

The Russians have words that describe love differently than English. The Chinese have words that express sadness better than English does. But English feels very precise, and serves the purpose of expressing a very specific thought without verbosity. Granted, verbosity is what we're good at, very often without good reason, but I feel the extra words help hone in on the precise idea.

But then again, I circle back to Russian, where I can express a feeling or vibe that English words cannot hone in on in the same amount of words.

Its....weird...

What's the Russian expression for "Language is weird." And does it translate the idea in as few words? Genuine question, I'm still studying.

Yeah, it's impossible for us to tell how other species experience these things, or if they're able to tell the difference at all. To us, it seems to hinge on cultural expression of self experience, conceptualised through language. Do other animals even have the capacity for any of this?

If you want to dig a hole that is 3 feet deep and 2 feet diameter you could dig half of that.

My brain is not necessary for the continuation of human civilization. But another part of my body is essential for human civilization's continuity.

I'm fascinated by how the brain misguides itself thinking of himself as a third party, driving our bodies to do things so that we may supply for his needs.
Layers and layers of mischief and deception, lies about ourselves that we believe while we are aware of the same lies but chose to ignore them.

If you dig a hole and fill half of it with water is the whole hole dry

Fair enough

Exactly this.

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What I'd you and someone else both dug a whole together at an even pace? I feel like each of you dug half the hole.

If you dig for an amount of time and then someone else continues, you have dug halve of that hole.

It is geometrically similar to a donut. Donuts have one hole. So the earth would have one hole in it. Straws are the same way.

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Sure you can. Just make someone else dig the other half. Now you have one hole dug by two people. So you dug half a hole.

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Male seahorses are the pregnant ones.