Re: Do you want a French "little" or a Dutch "little"? :))

Tim May sikyal:

> Well, a 100-year-old English building isn't as outrageously old as a
> 100-year-old American or Australian building*, but it's still older
> than the buildings most people live and work in.  You probably
> wouldn't call it very old, but it'd still be an old building (despite
> the fact that you could find something five times that age not so far
> away, if you looked).  Context-dependent.
This reminds me of the joke: Americans think 200 years is a long time. The
British think 200 kilometers is a long ways.

Of course, the Rightpondians are crazy here.  200 years is longer than any
of us will live, but 200 km won't even get me to Portland from my home in
Seattle.  And who uses kilometers, anyway?

:=)

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton