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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim May" <butsuri@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: Do you want a French "little" or a Dutch "little"? :))


> H. S. Teoh writes:
>  > On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 05:14:00PM -0400, Nik Taylor wrote:
>  > [snip]
>  > > Yeah, I think most Americans would consider a 100-year-old building
to
>  > > be very old.
>  > [snip]
>  >
>  > Whereas in places like England, people would laugh at you if you
pointed
>  > at a 100-year-old building and called it "very old".
>  >
>
> 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.
>
> These days most people have little historical perspective anyway,
> regardless of where they live.  At least, so it appears to me.
>
>
> * I don't mean to imply that the age of these buildings literally
>   incites outrage in the former colonial nations, of course.
>
Not really. In fact, there are a nice little row of 400 year old houses near
the town centre.  Trust me, most buildings in England are older than you'd
think.  My school is 104 years old...

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