Re: an announcement...

Barry Garcia wrote:

> dennis@himes.connix.com writes:
> > Keep in mind that that's British English.  Most Americans would have no
> >idea what you mean by "flatmate", as "flat" is never used in that sense
> >over
> >here.  Your original term, "housemate", would work fine, although I would
> >lose the hyphen.
>
> Americans who haven't heard British English would say "flat mate? why
> would your mate be flat?".
Not necessarily.  There's a discernible difference in sentence stress
patterns when using "flat mate" (both equally stressed) and "flatmate"
(stress on the first syllable with a slightly shortened vowel in "mate").
In other words, they'd know it's a word, but wouldn't understand
its meaning, unless they've been watching East Enders a tad too
often on public television. :)

> The only useage I have heard for a housemate is
> roomate, even though they don't share rooms :). I like 'housemate'
> personally.
Here in my dorm, we differentiate "suitemate" and "roommate" to
show who actually shares the room with you, and those who only
live in the same suite.

With apartments, however, this seems not to work very well, perhaps
because the term "suite" connotes a mass of such room arrangements,
whereas apartments may be only a few rooms.

I dunno.  I guess I vote for "housemate" too.  Anything else would
probably sound pretensious to the point of being painful.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.
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