American Cultural oddities

Subject: American Cultural oddities
From: Bert
Date: 17 Apr 98 - 02:33 PM

As an ex Limey who's now an American I find these things twice as amusing. F'rinstance

Indians, Aren't Indian
Buffalo Aren't buffalo they're Bison
Black eyed Peas are Beans
Lightning Bugs are beetles (If you call them Fireflies they're not flies either"
Bald Eagles Aren't bald
Antelopes are pronghorn...........

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Roger Himler
Date: 17 Apr 98 - 07:02 PM

Josh White Jr. sings a song (actually recites over music) about the oddities of the English language. For example, why do we drive on a parkway and park in a drive way? If the plural of mouse is mice, why isn't the plural of house, hice?

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From:
Date: 17 Apr 98 - 08:18 PM

There is an old story of a zoologist who wanted to study the mongoose. He wanted two of them but didn't know whether to say mongooses or mongeese.

The letter he finally wrote to order them was

Dear Sir, Please send me a mongoose. While you are at it please send me another one.

Murray

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From:
Date: 19 Apr 98 - 08:26 PM

And hamburgers aren't ham . . .

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 19 Apr 98 - 10:28 PM

American cars don't sport bonnets. American women have periods. Do they have full stops in UK?

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 12:31 AM

G'day,
The magazine "Australian Women's Weekly" has been published monthly for a few years now due to economic constraints. They decided not to change the name to "The Women's Monthly" or "Women's Periodical".............

Only our sentences have full stops.

Date format: what is the logic in having the medium sized unit first, followed by the smallest then the largest??????? We work logically from smallest to largest. Digital watches made in Japan have the American format - very annoying, at least Microsoft gives us a choice!

American cars don't have mudguards or boots either do they? Nor do they run on petrol?

It seems odd to call autumn "fall". Especially here where nothing actually does. Our trees live all year round.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 12:43 AM

I take it you're metric now, Alan, but how long ago was it that Australia went metric? What system did you have before?
How about coinage? I know you're on a decimal system now, but how long has that been, and what was your system before?
Besides all that, how did you come up with the size for the sheet of paper you sent me? Helen says it doesn't come out even in either meters or inches. It makes about as little sense as our standard 8-1/2 by 11 inches. By the way, until not too long ago, we U.S. Government workers had a different standard for paper - I think it was 8-1/2 by 10-1/2, just enough to cause confusion.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 01:03 AM

G'day Joe,
You'll find an answer to the paper size question in the 10x faster thread (which I hadn't seen for a few days - haven't been able to connect).

We went metric in the early 70s, before that we used the Imperial system which is almost the same as yours except for minor differences such as the size of the ton.

We changed to dollars & cents on 14/2/1966, leaving behind the old pounds, shillings & pence, and in the process lost some good slang.

And by the way that should be "metre"!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From:
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 06:48 AM

In the US it's meter.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Dani
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 08:00 AM

Our boots ARE our mudguards, and don't go calling them rubbers!

Dani

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: aldus
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 08:06 AM

In Canada "ton" is tonne. I find the American pronounciation of "zed" as "zee" extremely odd. Also, when did an entre get to be a main course. I would not call these "cultural" oddities, plain oddities will do.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 09:40 AM

Do Americans have a culture? What's that? We don't have such rigid classes. A young Scotswoman emigrated to the US and decided to get into Scottish Country Dancing. She had been in the servant class in Scotland. They had a difficult time teaching her not to stand rigid and look only at her feet, she was supposed to watch the other dancers, to see what the immediate situations was, not to just listen for orders.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: aldus
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 09:50 AM

You don"t have such rigid classes in America ? I would not suggest that theory to a person of colour. Every society has classes, where we differ is in what we base thses distinctions on..in America it is colour.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Earl
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 09:50 AM

In keeping with the earlier theme, do Canadian women use sanitary serviettes?

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Alice
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 11:10 AM

The US is so large, that every state and sometimes county or city within a state has its own culture and dialect. There is a website called "slanguage" where people can post the particular curious sayings of their city. I have friends who are an elderly couple from England. They have visited Montana several times, and questioned me about why we say things "wrong" (of course their way is the correct way ;-) ... in particular the difference between a robin and a thrush. I also went shopping with the lady, and she was quite amused when I called a waistcoat a vest. The states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, the Dakotas, Oregon, and Washington, have a relatively similar American dialect, which is similar to the Canadian provinces north of us (eh). The actor Gary Cooper was born in Helena (where I was raised) and his speech was like the average farm, ranch, small town Montanan. Yup. Nope. Television and the migration north of Californians has changed our speech somewhat, but a small town or ranch person still speaks like Gary Cooper. (Like my Uncle Gene McConnell, who lives in the woods and still "rolls his own". ) Here we call a ditch that is along a road a "barrow pit" and at the turn of the century, cowboys would describe something that was good as "boss" or "out of sight". Those two phrases re-surfaced in the surfer/beach boy era. I'd love to add more, but it's Monday.... better get back to work.
alice

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Whippoorwill
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 11:29 AM

In the midwest we call them "borrow pits." Usually they're man-made ponds or lakes where dirt was "borrowed" to use as fill for a new roadway. When I was little I could never understand why they called it borrowing if they weren't going to put it back. Come to think of it, I still don't understand.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Jon W.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 11:42 AM

I live in Utah now but grew up mostly in Colorado (pre-teen) and California (teen years) and never heard of a 'barrow' or 'borrow' pit until I moved to Utah. But the explanation I heard matches Whippoorwill's so I suppose the spelling should match his too...Isn't "barrow" a form of ancient tomb?

By the way, in my tiny Colorado town in the 60's many of the men still rolled their own tobacco cigarettes. In California in the 70's the only people who rolled their own weren't filling them with tobacco.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: aldus
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 12:04 PM

Yes, Canadian women use sanity serviettes, so do Canadian men. We are very sanitary people.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 12:26 PM

Back to trivia. I was working at NIST this morning, so went over the see the US secondary standard of length, which was about 250' away. It was the primary standard from 1889 to 1960, when it was replaced by the wavelength of an Argon emission line (now obsolete, too, but not offically replaced yet). The sign say 'meter' (not 'metre') bar. It came from near Paris, International Bureau of Weights and Measures (its mame in English) and was probably a metre bar until it got to the US.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: steve t
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 12:32 PM

Good answer, Aldus.

With respect to measurements, we've got it very strange in Canada. Most people I know think of things in a mish-mash of metric and imperial. Cars travel about in kilometers per hour but their fuel economy is often thought of in miles per imperial gallon (4.54 L). You compare meat prices in dollars per killogram, but often buy it by the pound. Paint is usually sold by the litre but construction matirials are sold by the pound or foot. And milk comes in one and a third litre bags :-)

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Alice
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 01:00 PM

Whippoorwill and Jon, Now you've got me wonderin'. I always heard my dad and everyone else pronounce barrow pit like "wheelbarrow". Any etymologists out there with time to track down barrow pit vs. borrow pit? Barrow, as you mention, has one root meaning of being a burial mound, but it also has a root meaning of 'to carry', as in wheelbarrow. In mining, a barrow is a heap of accumulated rubbish, or refuse without valuable ore. Could it be from mining? A pit to throw refuse and waste?
alice

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 06:04 PM

Governments often dowdle. The US started in the 1970, and for reasons I'll never understand, decided to drop their target date and put the whole thing in limbo. This was after many gasoline filling stations already had metric pumps in use (and subsequently abandoned). I know of several scientists at NRC Canada that were leaders in new technology of time and length measurements. They had a better caesium clock (so did GB) than us Americans. But an American got the Nobel last year for laser cooling of atoms, so one can get emission lines with practically zero doppler broadened line widths, which will lead to abandonment of the caesium clock as the standard. Length is already defined by time. The proportionality constant is the speed of light in a vacuum (299792458 kilometers per second).

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bill in Alabama
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 06:28 PM

Alice: It's quite likely that "Borrow Pit" is an example of two linguistic processes: folk etymology and functional shift. In the first process, an unfamiliar word is given a new pronunciation and a manufactured etymology through analogy with a more familiar word. It is logical to assume that, if a pile of earth or slag is a barrow, then a pit from which material was taken in the creation of the barrow would be a barrow pit. A person unfamiliar with the use of Barrow to refer to a such a mound, however, would assume that he was hearing the more familiar word Borrow, and would give the verb a noun use (functional shift) and an etymology which explained the term "borrow pit." This is not the most common manner of word formation, but it's not that unusual, either. I would bet that the original term was, indeed, "Barrow Pit."

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Jon W.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 06:49 PM

The metric gas pumps arose more from the fact that gasoline went to over $1.00 a gallon and rather than replace their pumps (which would only allow a double-digit price) the owners retrofitted them to dispense in liters. I remember the word "gallon" being covered with a sticker that said "liter". As the pumps were wore out and were replaced they went back to gallons, but with a three-digit price capability. I guess the government finally gave up on pushing the metric system because we the people just plain wouldn't adapt to it. Most of us concede that it's superior but we (excluding me, of course) don't have a good enough grasp of how long a meter is, how much a kilogram weighs, and how big a liter is. The advent of two-liter pop bottles has probably done as much to promote the metric system as anything the US government did for the previous thirty years.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Earl
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 06:49 PM

I always thought that one reason the metric system didn't catch on in America is the the other system (whatever its called) is so much a part of the language. Also, the general feeling that with government, if you give them a centimeter they'll take a kilometer.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 08:14 PM

There's a lot of resistance to metric. Getting used to a new system is always traumatic for some. Some industry has difficulties, too, but surprisingly to some is that other industries already do everything in metric, and covert results back to English for their advertising and PR. Even I who have been using metric since about 1950 can't make fast conversion of galons to liters. Length I can do easily if you don't need much accuracy. (legally and scientifically exact- 1 inch = 2.54 cm). Weight I can only remember approximately 2.2 pound per kilogram. My scientific calculator had the conversions stored in them, but it went caput, and I haven't tracked down who now sells it retail in my area, and my 'math' one doesn't have them. Someplace on my hard disk I've got them stored along with the latest CODATA values of all the fundamental constant of physics, but I haven't used them for years, and don't know where I put them. And even if I get a laptop I'm not likely to carry it around when I go shopping.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 08:32 PM

G'day all,

Paper size: I notice that Alan of Australia refers the question of paper formats to "the 10x faster thread" - this I have not seen but the Internation Paper sizes are relentlessly metric and exquisitely mathematical.

The base size is A0, which is a sheet of one square metre with the sides in ration of 1:root 2 (~1.4142). This gives a sheet about 1.188 m x 840 mm. Because the ratio is 1: root 2, whenever the sheet is halved, the ratio (the shape of the sheet) remains the same and the area is divided by 2. the fourth division is called A4 and (at 210 mm x 297 mm)is the handiest size for correspondence.

When introduced in Australia, A4 replaced both Quarto (8 1/8" x 10 1/4" or 206 mm x 260 mm) and Foolscap (8" x 13" or 302 mm x 330 mm). These always seemed to be too squat or too tall and A4's 1:1.4142 is a pleasant ratio for most purposes.

Decimal Coinage: At least when we called the main unit a dollar, in 1966, (from "thaler", from "joachimstaler" - a coin made of silver mined in Joachimstal, Bohemia) we avoided the idea of Bob Menzies - our Prime Minister at the time - of calling it a "Royal"! (this derives from the Spanish "dollar", actually called a "Real" - or "royal" in English. Our first official currency in the early colony of Sydney was Sapnish "dollars" with a "dump" punched out of the centre. The "Holey Dollar" was valued at 5 shilling and the "dump" at 0ne shilling and threepence.

The British set out to decimalise their currency in the early 19th century and introduced the Florin (2 shillings) to replace the Crown (2 shillings and sixpence). The first florins were actually marked "one tenth of a pound" but a new war with France (who had full metricated and decimalised) caused the florin to be known as the "The Traitor's Coin!" and stalled further decimalisation for one and a half centuries.

"American English" Although many of British background rail against so-called Americanisms, a surprising number are survivals of good old British usages now forgotten in Britain. Both "Fall" and "Zee" for Z are in this category.

I am intrigued to note that the 1811 "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue", a dictionary of London street slang and thieves' cant lists "Pig" for "policeman" and "Screw" for copulate. Most people think the Americans made these up in the 1930s - when they appeared in American crime novels. in fact the Yanks maintained old customs that went out of fashion at "home".

Time Format: There is a tale about, from the days when Australian newspapers still sent reportes out to interview ordinary travellers at airports. A reporter found himself talking to a Swiss, from the International Standards Organisation. He asked what "International Standards" were all about.

The ISO chap said: "Well, look at the way you write the date: it is (say) the 11th of May (say) 1960. You would write 11/5/1960 but an American would write 5/11/1960. You would read that as the 5th of November! The reporter said; "Right, I see the problem - which one does ISO say is right?"

The reply was; "Neither! We would write 1960/05/11. The reporter was completely baffled, but ISO dates are the most logical format and can be infinitely extended or placed (Year/month/day/hour/minute/second/etcetera). I use them for filing purpose with my photography - so a file number is also the date.

Actually, I saw, in a novelty shop, a "Star Trek" calendar clock which gave the date in intergalactic time format - ISI dates!

It's a big world, with a complex and multi-layered history. We should avoid assumptions about national characteristics - especially in any sentence containing the words "error" or "wrong".

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 09:30 PM

2 root 2 is 1.414213562. 1 root 2 is 1. My 10 year old plotter has simple selection to set paper to standard metric or standard American. (US government standard letter size is 8 1/2" x 11") Schools use the smaller size, and I have to go to a stationary store, not a drugstore or supermarket, to get the standard letter size.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Pete M
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 10:15 PM

I seem to remember being taught that the metre was introduced by the French in a revolutionary fervour and was quintessentially gallic ie logical, franco-centric and *wrong*. It was originally defined as 1*10-7 of a quarter of the earths circumference on the longitude of Paris! Unfotunately the Earth cheated and refused to be a sphere so its ended up I think as some obscure multiple of the wavelength of an emmision line of krypton 86 (any advance on this Bruce?)

Incidentally I did hear on the radio that in the bulb fields of Holland wherte they have been metric for ages, they still uses the foot as a measure of length as it an empirical unit that everyone carries round with them!

Pete M

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 20 Apr 98 - 11:34 PM

There used to be many measure of 'foot' in Europe. One popular one was the length of an Innsbruck work shoe (whyn Innsbruckians all had the same size feet I don't know. I must have been painfu to have them stretched or excess cut off). the yard inn England was made by Henry VII the distance from the center of his nose to the far end of his longest finger with his arms out horizontally.

I am not up on the latest regarding length standards. At the time I retired several lasers had been tested for stability under certain (not too critical) operating conditions, and been found to be suitable as standards. Defining the standard is one thing, but implimenting it is another. If you have the laser frequency measured (Canadians and American pioneered this, is my understanding) then by counting the wavefont that go through past a point in one second gives you the wavelength. nu*lambda = c (speed of light.) However you can't see wavefronts pass a point and you have to get at it by interferometry, finding out how many wavelength you can but in 1 meter. There are all sorts of little errors that creep into interfermetry, and it takes lots of research to figure out exactly how many, and to be able to accurately calculate how much effect each one has. A simple one is tht you have to reflect the light off of a mirror.

One thing is where is the mirror surface. In a way there really isn't one. The electromagnetic radiation (light) penetrates into anything you want to call the surface before it reflects. This depends on the material the mirror is made of. So you have to study the materials and their behavior and see if the effective penetration also depends on the actually intensity as well. Beside the interferrence there's also some diffraction. Lasers do some other strange things on reflection that one can't even see with common (blackbody) sources. The angle of incidence isn't exactly the angle of reflections like the undergrad physics books tell you. There are a pile of these kinds of things and all have to be carefully studied and quantatively understood before you can get the correct answer out of your experiment. The last I knew the correct wave equation for a gaussian beam of a single mode (TEM 000 mode)laser had not been figured out. There's an approximate solution that's very good, and is probably good to 1 part in 10 to the 9th power (1 part in 1000 x 1 billion). The intensity distribution from the center of the beam asy you go out from the propagtion axis isn't precisely know. do you go out in a straight line, or along a wavefornt. What's the precise wavefont. Not precisely known. So where you try to measure the intensity. As with most things there's an uncertainty principle. You can narrow things down prety well, but can't get them exactly. This stuff wasn't my field of expertise, but we needed the results of it, so kept our eyes on it to some extent.

In a seminar on the current states of length measurenments, Ken Evensen (one of the principle researchers in the field) showed a newspaper clipping he otained from the editorial page of a small town newspaper. It had been published severl years earlier. (This was before the speed of light above was adapted as a definition defining length). The editor has seen that NBS researchers had determined the speed of light to be (figure above) within an error of + or - 2 meters per second. Why don't they just shut up until they get it right.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 06:48 AM

Talking of rolling your own, that's how I got started on the demon nicotine. I still make sure I have the "makins'" when I go camping, although I don't smoke anymore except when camping. Whenever I'm with the kinfolk from Scotland we have a few old worn out laughs over some of this stuff, I'll be asked if I want a "fag" and declining the offer, will ask if anyone would like to join me in buying a bottle and going off on a "bender". No one wants to join me on a bender since that to them means "fag" to me, but they'll stick a "butt" between their lips suck on it.

I recall reading somewhere (I think B.A.Botkin) about how some of the early English settlers in the southern U.S. pronounced "ask" as "Aks". Which may or may not be the reason that "Aks" is the pronunciation among some of our African-American brethren, a case of the Black community preserving an older form of regional English which has died out elswhere.

But if I had "barrow/borrow" pits near my house, folks trying to capture my pronunciation would probably spell them "barru pits" or "borry pits". By any 'count, it's time for me to "hit the hay", so I'm off to stick my head in a bucket (Cuz I'm so bright, Mommas gotta put a bucket on my head a'fore the sun kin come up). Cuz where I am, Dawn is "spreading her rosy fingers across the sky". Chow, Ya'll.

Frank.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From:
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 07:40 AM

"Ask" is still "aks" all over. White,black, green or purple. Especiaaly prevelent in Louisiana.

One way to get my wife seeing red is to use it when we go out.

Bob Schwarer (ex TN,LA,WI,IL,&FL)

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 07:48 AM

Gee Bruce, is that another cultural oddity? I thought 2 root 2 was 2.828427125!!!!!!!!! Most of our stores are stationary, but we get our paper from stationery stores, and our medicines from pharmacists.

Hopefully nobody's taking this thread too seriously - it's all meant in good fun

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 08:52 AM

I lost the non-American notation and took 2 root N to be the 2nd root of N = 1.414, but you take 2 root 2 = 2* square root 2 = 2.828

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 09:00 AM

Right!
I should have written it in C in the first place: 2 * sqrt(2) = 2.828

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: steve t
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 09:35 AM

...written it in C...

c is what? 3.00 x 10^8 m/s or 1.86 x 10^5 miles/hour?

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 09:39 AM

Here it's the former, in some places it's still the latter. If you're a programmer it's neither.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bert
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 09:44 AM

Alan,
Actually you don't write in "C"; you HACK in "C". They didn't really name that language they GRADED it. :-) But that's probably another thread "Programming folklore".

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 01:24 PM

The exact internationally accepted definition of c is given above. So is that conversion of inches to centimeters, so you can get the speed of light to 9.5 significant figures (log base 10) in miles per day, per hour, /s (per sec), or whateever you like.

We American are pretty inventive on our spelling, too. We toss out some letters that only confuse spelling, like stationary and stationary. The English aren't as fond of 'e' as they used to be. Just look at 16th and 17th century manuscripts and look at all the extra e's at the end of words. [I think they're e's, but they look just like their o's, so context has to tell you whether shoo is shee or shoe.]

I think it was the Americans who also invented that great word 'aint'.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: aldus
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 01:53 PM

I must disagree with Bob on the subject of "Zee" . it was never British or English in usuage, In fact, Americans used Zed until well into this century> As for Fall most research defines it as an American word for Autumn.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 01:57 PM

Actually I made a big mistake in my note before the last multiply symbol in text should by x, * is computerese [one or two s's? I would be easier if we went back to the old long s, as long as we found somthing else.] that seems to be creeping in. Also Ammericans have way to much shortcut jargon for square root, and its not well standardized. 2 or 2nd root for square root, 3 (more often 3rd) root for cube root, root n for square root, and the like, and I sometimes prefer the UK terminology.

After trying to read old manuscipts for a couple of days, then typing up text of something else, most of my proof reading is taking out the extra e's I put on just about everything.

The English didd't want to reform speling of script in the century so they had to outlaw having gender for shoes. Only the scholars at Oxford and Cambridge could keep straight the hoo shoo and the shoo shoo. That reminds me I haven't put on my website the ditty "How Oxford Scholars Spend Their Time". It explains the old saying that at Oxford they didn't have any forenoons, just afternoons.

Even in the 1730's in England they couldn't handle the long s. One finds the future Kitty Clive called Miss Raftor and Miss Rastor.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 02:17 PM

One of the first things I did when I got Acces to the Folger Shakespeare Library about 25 years ago was to copy some old som\ngs from manuscripts of 1625-35, and checking against copies printed later in drolleries and the Percy Folio MS. They generally agreed pretty well, but some things I really couldn't read (and still can't) so I practiced on some photo-facsimiles in Sam Shoenbaum's 'Shakespeare's Lives' untill I got better at it.

Then I went back 20 years later and tried on some pieces I hadnt been able to do before, and redid a few that I wasn't too sure of. My new copies were further from the drollery copies than my originals. English typesetters couldn't read English script either! "The blazing Torch" is on my website. There's one printed copy where it's "The glazing torch".
Sometimes you see somthing copied from an old manuscript with ff at the front of a word. That's just a script capital F, unless, of course it's an H; there's little to chose from, so you just flip a coin sometimes.
Coins only have two sides, so they don't work on script caps B, R, and K, and you've got to roll dice or something like that.
Aint English quaint?

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 04:48 PM

Bruce...(and others) this site http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/Ref.html#fast

has this http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html as one link..it is 5000+ online calculators..(some require java to work)

you can spend weeks playing in the various links here...if Bruce disappears for awhile, I'll know what happened!!

along with these two links, there is little I can't find...

http://www.indy.net/~johnoz/index.html

http://www2.netdoor.com/~smslady/links.html

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 07:25 PM

To Aldus,

Although most cheaper dictionaries take the simple path of defining things like Fall and Zee as American usages, they all show up as regional usage at earlier times in Britain. There is a vast body of English outside the "received" version of Oxford/London/Cambridge and there was even more before the levelling effects of mass media (starting with books).

On a totally different tack, since this thread is "American Cultural Oddities" I notice, as an outsider one especially American Oddity in the discussion of words like serviette/napkin and period/stop. Over the years I have seen this same phenomenon in many American letters columns - a word is taken in only one of its several meanings and a process of reductio ad absurdum / non sequitur is used to make a nonsense of its other, legitimate meanings.

This nevers seem to bother those of British background who are used to a language that made up the rules at it went along. Seriously, this malleability is the glory of the English language, which can squeeze infinite new subtleties from old words. Without this ability, we would all have far less to sing.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 07:35 PM

I am definitely not a linguist, and I had once thought that the multiplicities of meaning of words, and the many substitutes by a word of very smililar, but not identical meaning, made it difficult to be precise in a verbal statement in English. Some non-native speakers of English assured me I was wrong, that it's easier to be precise in English than in many other languages. I still don't understand it, because I still have problems.

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 07:48 PM

Say, am I correct in believing that most English-speakers, other than Americans, aspirate the pronunciation of the letter "H"? I think I've heard most former and current subjects of the Queen say "Haitch," while Americans say "aitch." Am I correct?
....sorry I axed.....
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 08:16 PM

G'day Bruce O,

Ah the joys of English! The many subtle variations in meaning and "respectabilty" of words in English allow one to be precisely subtle about meanings and overtones. This is, of course what the skills of songwriting are all about. Subtleties give a lyric that can be savoured long after the performance and admired for the skill with which the author has underlined points that only become clear on re-hearing or mulling over the song.

I liked the comment, heard a few years back, from a French author/philosopher: "Ah! English is like my wife - I love her, but I can not control her!".

to Joe Offer:

Down among us (reluctant - and maybe not much longer) subjects of the Queen, the 'h' in 'haitch' is definitely not aspirated. Pronunciation as 'haitch' would seem London Cockney to us.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Pete M
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 08:24 PM

Bruce O,

I'm not a linguist either, but we were always taught, and "ahem" years of usage certainly back this up, that the nicety of definition possible by the appropriate choice of words is one of the strengths and glories of the English language. Alas, too little is made of the ability, and all too often precision is mistaken and derided as obfustication and posturing by those too lazy to develop reading skills beyond that required by the mass media ie 8 - 9 years. Since we started by talking about American oddities I should mention an outstanding exception, Stephen Jay Goulds essays are shining examples of how to make the English language work for you, and are clear, erudite, and a joy to read.

Joe Offer, in theory you are correct, in practice like most things which require a little effort to be precise, the practice is declining under a wave of leveling at the lowest common denominator.

Pete M

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 09:00 PM

....the lowest common denominator being the USA, right, Pete?
You know, though, depite what people in other countries may think about us, I think we Americans tend to be self-deprecating.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: American Cultural oddities
From: Bruce O.
Date: 21 Apr 98 - 09:23 PM

No! some do but, it seems we are either too self-deprecating, or too cock sure we are the king of the mountain. Too little ballance at a mean. I've only been abroad once for a few weeks, and saw, in London, for example, so many brassy, cock-sure American tourists out rubernecking and making insulting comments in comparison of things British with things American in a loud voice, that I tried to disguise myself as British, so I wouldn't be thought to be one of them. [And I fooled some of the Americans at any rate.]